¡Yo necesito leer en Español! (I need to read something in Spanish for free time)
Hola,
I am in need of something I have to read in Spanish for my class. I am currently in my 5th year of high school Spanish, AP Language level (Español 9). I was told to read some sort of book or a variety of magazines. Any suggestions of things that are 1) Interesting, and 2) Won't require me to look up a majority of words in a dictionary (some obscure words are fine, but nothing technical or full of idioms (I do know some, but I assume there are a lot I will not understand))?
Gracias,
N. S.
7 Answers
Maybe will be good for you, to read newspapers, my country is Guatemala and the newspaper you can to read at www.prensalibre.com, I don't know if will be OK for you, but I hope.....
It really depends on what you find interesting. The more technical terms a text has, the easier should be to understand, as English and Spanish differ in most in their daily vocabulary, but share most of the technical words. For a book of Physics or Mathematics, for example, any Spanish speaker can understand 90% of it, but a book for little children can extremely hard to understand, and many words are not in many dictionaries either.
My advice is that you get yourself books designed for people who are learning Spanish as a foreign language, because they normally include the relevant vocabulary, and they have been purposefully simplified to avoid unusual terms and idioms.
:
¡Yo necesito leer en Español!
By the way: avoid "YO" all the time. It sounds bad, don't use it! And "español" is not written with capital E in Spanish (it is in English, though).
I suggest you try reading either El País (http://www.elpais.com/global/) or menéame (http://meneame.net/). The latter is a spanish equivalent of digg.com, great variety of interesting links posted every day. You can also check other spanish newspapers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Spain) - I find reading articles really helpful in keeping up to date with the language and at the same time memorising commonly used phrases.
In my Spanish class, I found a particular edition of Don Quijote de la Mancha to be a great help. It is published by National Textbook Company of Lincolnwood, Illinois. It is subtitled "An adaption for intermediate and advanced students by Marcel C. Andrade". Margin notes translate difficult words while a note section and a question section at the end of each chapter are great helps.
Another type of book I enjoy are duel language books which have side-by-side Spanish-English versions. I have read a couple of them published by McGraw-Hill. I am currently reading Stories from Mexico/Historias de Mexico which is a series of short stories of Mexican legends. These books are referred to as Side by Side Bilingual Books. They are inexpensive (about $9) from Amazon.com
You could try any of the books of the author Cuautemoc Sanchez but I'll personally recommend the one named Cadena de Campeones, in Mexico It's a book High school students are required to read and is easy to comprehend
I'll see what I can find... My library has a relatively poor selection in both languages though. Thanks.
go to the your nearest children section of your local library and pick up the most sofisticated book you think you can handle.There are different level from Dick and Jane to Don Quijote de La Mancha. hope this works for you
