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marisajmostek Last updated: September 22, 2023

4 Spanish Listening Activities for Your Language Lessons

Listening to Spanish passively—that is to say, without really paying attention and comprehending all of it—is easy enough.

However, discerning meaning from what you hear is a bit more complicated. This is especially true if you’re listening to a native speaker.

Along with Spanish conversation, Spanish listening often presents one of the biggest challenges for students.

In this post, you’ll get four effective Spanish listening activities to help your students become great active listeners who actually comprehend what they’re hearing!

Plus, we’ll share some of the best places to find authentic Spanish audio to use in your listening activities.

1. Directions from Native Speakers
2. Similar Word Differentiation
3. Spanish Talk Radio Listening Comprehension
4. Spanish Audiobook Listening Activity
Where to Find Authentic Spanish Audio for Listening Activities

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1. Directions from Native Speakers

It’s all well and good if you can manage to ask someone where to find your destination in Spanish while traveling abroad. However, this generally tends to be the easy part.

Natives sometimes speak quite quickly, to the point where a Spanish newbie cannot understand the response.

Students will benefit greatly from listening to native Spanish speakers giving directions, especially if they end up spending any time abroad.

A great way to practice is to do an activity in class where your students listen to native Spanish speakers giving directions and try to figure out the correct destination.

To find examples of Spanish speakers giving directions, visit a website featuring clips like this one by the University of Texas or browse YouTube.

During class, give each of your students a blank piece of paper. Have them draw out maps based on the directions they hear. At the end of each clip (you can play it multiple times), have students compare their results to see if they ended up in the same location.

2. Similar Word Differentiation

One of the trickiest aspects of Spanish listening comprehension is differentiating words that sound remarkably similar.

Prior to the active listening activities, play short audio clips for them to listen to carefully. These should feature native Spanish speakers pronouncing certain words that emphasize letter sounds. FluencyProf offers a number of clips that are suitable for use in class.

Lingolex is also a fantastic site for listening to the proper pronunciation of Spanish letter sounds.

After you feel your students have a strong sense of the proper pronunciation of the letters of the Spanish alphabet, it’s time to conduct a brief activity for practice and reinforcement.

Prior to class, type up a list of word pairs that sound similar in Spanish. This list should highlight words that vary by only one letter or so, like perro andpero.

In class, ask your students to split up into pairs. Have the students take turns reading one of the two similar words while the other guesses which word the first student said.

An alternative to making this activity a partner exercise is to play the similar-sounding words as said by a native speaker. A really nifty website to use as a resource is called Forvo, which offers the pronunciations of any Spanish word you can think of by speakers from multiple countries.

Learning to detect subtle differences between Spanish words will quickly boost their skills and make them sound more like natives themselves.

3. Spanish Talk Radio Listening Comprehension

Listening to talk radio can be simultaneously obnoxious, entertaining and a good way to pass the time. Talk show hosts are often hired for their unique, booming vocalizations of words. The overall quality of their speaking voices is ideal for clarity over the airwaves.

Therefore, listening to talk show hosts from Spanish-speaking countries can be a great way for your students to practice language acquisition.

There are many websites where you can find clips from Spanish radio show broadcasts to play for your students. You can focus activities around Spanish language radio in a number of ways. One option is to play a number of clips for your students and ask them to guess which country each host is from. Another idea is to play a clip and then have a class-wide discussion about the content of the clip.

You can also conduct this activity using songs from different Spanish-speaking countries and have students guess where the singer or band is from. For this option, it’s best to use more obscure bands or singers so that students won’t know beforehand where they’re from.

4. Spanish Audiobook Listening Activity

Involving tales with which your students are familiar, such as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “The Hobbit,” or “The Hunger Games,” is a great way to keep them intrigued and entertained throughout language lessons. Listening to books such as the aforementioned in class is a wonderful activity to utilize in Spanish class.

An ideal way to incorporate Spanish audiobooks is to play descriptions of various characters or locations found within them. For example, play a passage describing Ron Weasley or Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series. Then, see which student can guess whom, where or what the passage describes first.

As mentioned in the opening section of this post, audiobooks in Spanish can be found on Amazon, via podcast or on YouTube.

Where to Find Authentic Spanish Audio for Listening Activities

One key element to incorporating useful and positive learning exercises into your class is to ensure you have the right tools.

Thankfully, today’s technology has made obtaining authentic Spanish audio from native speakers as easy as clicking your mouse. For the following activities, you’ll need to use varied resources.

Diverse audio input strengthens all-around listening and conversational skills and prepares students for the huge range of situations they’ll encounter outside the classroom. Shake things up and try to track down these different types of authentic Spanish audio.

Podcasts and Conversations from Native Speakers: You can visit a number of sites providing free audio clips. One of the best is Spanish Proficiency Exercises by the University of Texas. It features clips of native speakers talking about diverse topics, categorized by Spanish level. There are also many great Spanish podcasts that you can incorporate into your class.
Spanish Audiobooks: Listening to Spanish audiobooks is perfect for grasping the pronunciation used by native speakers. You can download tons of Spanish audiobooks for free thanks to the internet, and some are even featured in their entirety on YouTube. You can also purchase audiobooks online from sites like Amazon or find selections at public libraries.
Radio Talk Shows: You can find Spanish radio shows on The BBC, this site for Puerto Rican radio or Radios-on-line, which is a resourceful site featuring live streams from programs all over the world.

With all of these resources available at your fingertips, the activities listed above will be easy to incorporate into your classes.

Of course, the above activities are just a few of the many ways you can incorporate listening activities.

Get creative with your activities and try your best to keep them fresh, fun and intriguing for your students!