Destinos is a telenovela, or Spanish soap opera, with a difference. It’s probably not as corny as most that I have seen on Mexican television because it was created to teach speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in Spanish. Produced by WGBH, the public broadcasting station in Boston, in 1992, it can be watched for free online or purchased as DVDs. You can also download some supplementary materials to your computer at no charge.
Here is how the program is described on its website.
This telenovela, or Spanish soap opera, immerses students in everyday situations with native speakers and introduces the cultures, accents, and dialects of Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico. Understanding of Spanish and appreciation of many Hispanic cultures increase as students become absorbed in the mysterious and entertaining story.
Closed captioning in Spanish can be used as a teaching and literacy resource. The series is also appropriate for teacher professional development.
With 52 programs in the series, I am sure you can learn a lot. I have seen favorable comments about this course at various language-learning forums around the internet.
Here is the page where they describe the Destinos course. Just to give you the flavor, here are the first five lesson descriptions of the 52 given on that page.
1. Unit I
Vocabulario: cognates; family members.
Gramática: ser; articles and gender, possession.2. Unit I
Vocabulario: cognates; family members.
Gramática: ser; articles and gender, possession.3. Unit II: Un viaje a Sevilla, España
Vocabulario: numbers (0-21); academic subjects; animals, days of the week; telling time.
Gramática: hay; estar; ir; present tense (regular verbs); subject pronouns; personal a; interrogatives; adjectives.4. Unit II: Un viaje a Sevilla, España
Vocabulario: numbers (0-21); academic subjects; animals, days of the week; telling time.
Gramática: hay; estar; ir; present tense (regular verbs); subject pronouns; personal a; interrogatives; adjectives.5. Unit II: Un viaje a Sevilla, España
Vocabulario: numbers (0-21); academic subjects; animals, days of the week; telling time.
Gramática: hay; estar; ir; present tense (regular verbs); subject pronouns; personal a; interrogatives; adjectives.
To watch the programs, you need to stream the videos, which means you have to have a fast enough connection. They say, “To hear the sound and view video, you should have Windows Media Player, DSL, a cable modem, or a LAN connection to a T1 line or greater, and have Javascript enabled.” So evidently it doesn’t work for the Mac.
You also need to sign up, which is free and can be done here. Looks like you are expected to be in the US. I didn’t try it to see if it would accept my Colorado address even though I am in Mexico with a a Mexican internet connection. (And that is why I didn’t try out the program… doubt that my connection could handle it.)
If you listen to some or all of these, do come back and give us a report on how you liked it! I have been keeping my eye out for free online Spanish courses of truly good quality, and this may be one.
