When we live in a foreign country, one of the most satisfying moments is the first time you fully understand a casual conversation on the bus. Getting there can be frustrating and difficult for many students. Listening and understanding someone can be a big problem. However, sometimes we are not aware that we don’t even understand all the words in all possible situations in our mother tongue. To get there we must put aside our insecurities and train our ears. In this post we’ve collected some of the best podcasts to improve your Spanish effortlessly.

Our first recommendation is Don’t interrupt me, por favor. This recent podcast is a radio program directed by Spanish journalist Guillermo Fesser, who has lived in the US since 2002. This fun program is in two languages ​​(English and Spanish). Guests and radio hosts switch between the two out of the blue, resulting in conversations that happen in both languages ​​at the same time. If you have a medium Spanish level (and if you are fluent in English), it will be easy for you to follow the program’s interesting conversations. Language is very natural and this podcast will help you to improve your Spanish.

This radio program is not specifically directed to learn Spanish, however words are adapted to a medium level and broadcasters speak slowly and clearly. You can find and example of these programs on the Podcast in Spanish website. Additionally there are audios of different levels that contain tabs to work with them. The audios are natural and easy to follow if you adapt them to your language.

Ben Curtis and Marina Díez offer another series of podcasts dedicated to learning Spanish called Notes in Spanish. This material is also separated by levels, and as in the Guillermo Fesser’s podcast, we can find audios both in Spanish and English. Audios for beginners contain many parts in English, but we can use them to prepare our ears and to understand Spanish better.

Although it costs a small fee, another podcast with al lot of reputation in the Hispanic world is News in Slow Spanish. A news program that offers weekly podcasts in a Spanish, which is adapted for non-Spanish speakers. The web has a free demo version so you can try it to see if you like it!

We couldn’t end this blog without mentioning video blogs. YouTube is full of videos dedicated to all kind of topics. We recommend that you listen to things that you’re interested in, but in Spanish so that you’re more motivated to understand. This is much easier if you use the slow down speed option on YouTube. With it you can enjoy the video with 50 or 75% lower speed giving you an opportunity to understand everything and slowly increase the speed. This option is also great for the high-level students who can speed the videos up, thus training your listening skills more and more.

Finally we need to mention a really important video blog – our On-Español YouTube channel! Our star teacher, Jaume, has lots of free Spanish classes to help you improve your Spanish. Let us know in the YouTube comments if there’s anything we can help you with and we can try to organise a video on that subject!