Spanish ear training flashcards: "The White Cat"

Single payment: Pay once and use forever.

Use code helado20 to get 20% off.

Offer ends on Friday May 3rd (8 pm US Eastern, 5 pm US Pacific)

NOTE: All story-based flashcards you purchase from Spanish Input will be added to a single deck called "Historias Spanish Input". Inside this deck the cards corresponding to each story are organized by tags.

If you're learning Spanish, your weakest point is probably listening comprehension, even if you haven't realized it yet.

Something that will improve your listening a lot is using the Transcription technique: You listen to a sentence several times, write what you hear to the best of your ability and then compare what you wrote with the original to identify any gaps in your listening. Simple but super effective.

These Anki flashcards take this basic idea and make it even easier to do: Each card presents you with a short audio and a box for you to type what you hear. After you press Enter, Anki will highlight all your mistakes. This will help you a LOT to identify what you're not hearing and fine-tune your ears to how Spanish is really spoken. In the image above you can see an example of one of these cards in action.

For example, look at the flashcard in the image above. Imagine you're studying this card. The audio said "A Helado le gustaba pasear por el barrio" but you typed "A lado gustaba pasar por el barrio". Let's figure out why you might make these listening mistakes.

• Maybe you didn't hear the [e] in "Helado" because in natural connected speech it flows smoothly from the previous [a].
• Also, maybe you didn't pay attention to the word "le". This happens because in English you would just say "He likes..." without needing anything extra. But in Spanish we need to add "le" if we're talking about a third person (él, ella). This exercise forces you to pay more attention to these important details.
• Finally, you might not have heard the [e] in "pasear" because, again, in natural speech it blends smoothly with the following [a].

This is just a small example of the incredible power of these flashcards to help you hear things you just weren't able to hear before and pay attention to important details you were missing.

The example above is one of the first sentences in the story "The White Cat", which I wrote especially for learners using only the most common 5,000 words in Spanish. This way you won't be wasting your time with useless words. I published this story in this video: https://youtu.be/inl79UK3vx0.

HOW TO USE THE CARDS:

1) Listen many times without any text until you fully understand the sentence. Carefully type what you heard, paying close attention to spelling. You can easily repeat the sentence by pressing the play button or the F5 key.

2) Check your mistakes, highlighted in yellow, and repeat the sentence aloud. Listen again many times until you can hear every single word. In Anki there's also an option to record your own voice and replay it. Click on the "More" button while studying to find these options.

3) Check the English translation to make sure you understood correctly. In these flashcards, you just click on "Traducción" to check the translation. In time you'll find yourself checking the translation less often.

4) Open Anki every day to review. This will help you not to forget what you've learned.

For a full explanation of how to use these cards, please watch this video, starting at 13 min 51 sec: https://youtu.be/inl79UK3vx0

PURCHASE OPTIONS

You can get just the flashcards or add a few extras that can help you study and review the story offline, away from the distractions of YouTube.

Flashcards Only for $5
Only the Anki flashcards

PDF and MP3 Package for $10
Flashcards + bilingual PDF + mp3 of the story. Great for printing, highlighting and writing notes, while at the same time you listen to the story away from YouTube. Get this option if you prefer to use your own audio player or transcription software.

MP4 Package for $20
Flashcards + PDF + mp3 + mp4 video with subtitles. The video is of course even more fun than the mp3!

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

To use these cards you first need to install the latest version of Anki.

• For computers, please download and install Anki from ankisrs.net or apps.ankiweb.net.
• For iPhone and iPad, please install the app "AnkiMobile Flashcards" from the App Store.
• For Android please install the app Ankidroid.