Basic Spanish 1: Getting Started

Universitat Politècnica de València via edX

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Details

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Provider

edX
Pricing

Free Online Course (Audit)
Languages

English
Certificate

$29.00 Certificate Available
Duration & workload

7 weeks, 4-5 hours a week
Sessions

On-Demand
Subtitles

English

A Best Course of All Time

Found in

Spanish Courses

Part of

Basic Spanish

5.0

Overview

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This 7-week Spanish language course is aimed at students who would like to learn conversational Spanish starting with Spanish basics. The course introduces everyday language and includes activities to practice all four language skills: reading comprehension, writing, listening comprehension and speaking.

This course will introduce you to the A1 proficiency level as described in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL, Council of Europe 2001). After completing this course, you will be prepared to introduce yourself, ask basic questions, and conduct a brief conversation in Spanish.

This course uses reference materials, cultural notes, grammar explanations, functions of language, etc. Students will be able to monitor their progress by taking a number of performance tests and a final achievement test.

Taught by

Ms. Cristina Navarro, Dra. Virginia González and Dra. Ana Gimeno

Reviews

4.5 rating, based on 436 Class Central reviews

4.5 rating at edX based on 149 ratings

Start your review of Basic Spanish 1: Getting Started

Anonymous

Let's be honest. You get what you pay for. I paid $0.00 to audit the course, so I am appreciative of the free instruction. With that being said, let's be a little critical of what is being offered and why I wouldn't pay $40 dollars for the certifica…

Let's be honest. You get what you pay for. I paid $0.00 to audit the course, so I am appreciative of the free instruction. With that being said, let's be a little critical of what is being offered and why I wouldn't pay $40 dollars for the certificate.

The interface is highly outdated, with some of the drag-and-drop exercises being quite ridiculous to land on the correct spot. The UI could use a huge overhaul, but perhaps this is EdX to blame, not the course itself. But also in regards to some of the exercises--the one with the rooms especially was annoying. The awful "diagram" of the room made it difficult to figure out which room was which without putting a lot of time studying it. When I'm trying to learn a new language, the last thing I want to get bogged down with is trying to figure out a cryptic diagram.

Now for the positives. People complained about the speed of the speakers, but most of the time I was speeding up the videos, not slowing them down. I believe the gentleman did talk faster than most of the other teachers, but you could always slow this down.

The material I felt for a beginning course was good as it mixed both difficult and easy concepts together well. It is hard to balance immersing one in a new language without going too fast or too slow and I think the course balanced this well.

So overall, I think 3 stars is fair, but in order to want to pay for this class, I would think it would need to be updated to 2020. It felt like taking Spanish 1 again when I did back in High School (which was 15 years ago).

If they could incorporate (once again, this could just be EdX to blame, not the class itself) a better UI, with more modern features (maybe use React or something?), I think it would be a really solid course. Maybe take a look at Duolingo's programming, and use some of the drag and drop/hover coding that they use.
Anonymous

I love this course. I am always interested in learning new languages since it leads me to comprehend different cultures. Since this course is the foundation, there is nothing too difficult to learn and understand by myself. The course structure is e…

I love this course. I am always interested in learning new languages since it leads me to comprehend different cultures. Since this course is the foundation, there is nothing too difficult to learn and understand by myself. The course structure is easy to follow up, either for the language learning process or psychological and logical thinking, and it is easy to browse and go back to specific weeks/lessons if I just happen to forget it. I have only two little issues with this course. First, some instructors lecture very fast (in Spanish normal pace); it is a bit difficult for me to catch their accent since my ears were not trained to understand it easily. I had to listen to videos many times to grasp correct Spanish words. Second, I always had a problem with the Speaking Lab (I learnt via Google Chrome). When I completed any speaking exercise (many many times), the system would not recognise my completion and just untick my lesson. I had to go back and forth between the Speaking Lab and its adjacent pages 5-20+ times until it recognised my activities. For others, all were good.
Anonymous

Thank you for the amazing course sure. I need more study and practice. The notable thing in the course was it like private teachers for student. They use simple tools to deliver the words and verbs.
Amina Salihu

Ola, I absolutely love the teaching pace and options for lesson repeat. The course had great content that covers all the basics. Where I didn't know a word of Spanish before, I was conversing with my colleagues from Mexico after three months of t…

Ola,
I absolutely love the teaching pace and options for lesson repeat. The course had great content that covers all the basics. Where I didn't know a word of Spanish before, I was conversing with my colleagues from Mexico after three months of the class! I have gone on to take the basic II to strengthen my learning.

What I hope to see improved is the technology around the course. Sometimes I can't read well on the mobile phone version and can't play the video clips. This limits my learning time. A better content editorial is also required. Sometimes, the correct answer choices are marked as the wrong answer! that can be confusing.

Gracias para la oportunidad aprender el espanol
Me llamo Amina
April 03, 2019
Char

I got the paid version and I really though that I would get something more than the free, like written exercises. I studied a lot but I think there is not enough practice. I don't need the certificated, so if I knew that the paid version is the same as the free only without the two tests (midterm and final), I would not have paid.
For the free version I would say it's a great course (5/5 stars).
Iulia Boșcănean

This course helped me put in place all the information I remembered from Spanish music, movies or series. It's really great as a beginner course because it has so many practical exercises that it's impossible not to remember at least a few things. I also liked the way it was structured around basic knowledge you need to have if you want to communicate something simple in Spanish and around specific knowledge such as grammatical aspects. I would recommend this course. I did not like the fact that I was unable to test my knowledge in the mid and final test because I didn't subscribe for a verified certificate, but other than that I can't complain about the usefulness of the course as a whole.
Moo Pl

Well , since i take this course in 2023 , i can say that the interface and the presentation is very old and cheap !
The content was very interesting i had no bases in Spanish but now i can say i can spell and read very well , there were a good balance between easy and a little harder lessons .. but it still basics, you can't really communicate with Spanish people at the end of the course !
I like that we can practice by different exercises , but unfortunately exams are premium so i couldn't test all what I learned in the past 7 weeks .
I didn't spend a cent because i'm learning for fan only , but i can say it's good as a first step in Spanish . Good luck and Adios !
Anonymous

I wanted to do it as a refresher course since I had done a course years ago. I found it to be excellent for basic learners. It teaches you sentence structure using necessary vocabulary and expression. Tasks are simple and interesting. I would recommend the course to everyone who is interested in learning Spanish.
Anonymous

I have been trying to learn Spanish since 2015, but all courses were not as effective as this one. I extemely appreciate the great effort and orgnaization of the material. I am really hooked and willing to continue
Anonymous

I learned quite a bit from this course. It was a great review of what I had already learned in high school but it also nice to have gaps of what I couldn't recall or never learned, filled in. There were a few errors in different parts of the course, but overall it was a nice experience. It has helped me to grow in my confidence that I can hopefully one day become proficient if I stick to it.
Anonymous

Learning the proper articles and such of Spanish isn't very useful to me. I communicate with many people in the restaurant industry and not one of them speaks proper spanish. I just want to be able to communicate with them. Understanding sentence structure is sort of a waste of time. Furthermore, there are many glitches with this course. Often I could only "show answers" once I already got them all correct. That isn't helpful.
Anonymous

The course offers a lot of videos and audio recording which help with pronunciation. However, there is a lot of guess work on the part of the student to determine what words mean especially towards the end of the course. There is a mismatch between the vocabulary provided to the student versus the vocabulary used in exercises and exams.
Cristian Martos

It seems to me a wonderful course,
It starts from scratch, teaching you basic expressions, such as introducing yourself or greeting yourself. You learn to say where you are from, to know how to express yourself about clothes, your family, your house, some usual questions, store products, numbers, etc.
The pronunciation of the videos is very good, both in English and in Spanish.
Thank you very much for this content!
Anonymous

This is a really great foundational course for anyone serious about learning the language. I spent 4.5 years learning Spanish in high school and college, but I never kept up with it. This class helped me start from the beginning and make sure I have…

This is a really great foundational course for anyone serious about learning the language. I spent 4.5 years learning Spanish in high school and college, but I never kept up with it. This class helped me start from the beginning and make sure I have a solid foundation to work off of independently. I was able to complete it in under a week because it was just a review for me.

The one thing I will say about learning the language in general is that there are so many different dialects that you almost need to know what population you want to use it with. Tuteo, voseo, and usted ("you" forms) are really confusing because there are so many different uses throughout Spain and Latin America. There are also some very different vocabulary used. For example, I learned a verb in school that is used casually in Spain that I recently discovered is a curse word in Latin America. Most classes choose to focus on a dialect from Spain first since the language originated from there, but the dialect spoken most frequently in the States is Mexican Spanish. Just a thought/frustration to throw out there! I wish there were a class available dedicated solely to this topic, or one for those who wish to learn more Latin American Spanish, or simply that the differentiation was made more clear between vocabulary in these classes. This class did discuss some of them briefly. I am sure that this will be a similar issue for any new widely-used language though.

Thank you for making this course available on EdX!
Anonymous

This course was okay, I have taken a lot of online classes and this one I wish had been a little more engaging/interactive when it came to the practice. The repetition when learning a language and applying it in many different ways is key to getting it down well.

You will have sections where you will go through practice but just wish there were more. In example, giving me full sentences in english and translating to spanish or vice versa.

The videos were helpful but if you are using your phone they wont count as watched for that section some of the times which can be not so user friendly. I like to do courses at the gym so I can't lug around my laptop.
Anonymous

I completed Basic Spanish 1 and found it’s very systematic and user friendly to learn by my self.
Study material are well blended with pictures, video and audio clips. Compatible to follow the course through mobile phone too.
Anonymous

I did not like the course at all. I learned more with duolingo and Busuu. The audio is not clear, and the speakers speak fast, which is fine, but for a pure beginner, it is helpful to hear things slowly and clearly.
Anonymous

This course is very helpful and informative. As someone who previously took Spanish classes and looking to improve my fluency, it was a great refresher course, especially learning the basics.
Anonymous

Good for the beginner and easy to catch up the lesson for those who has nothing about Spainish laugage
Anonymous

It's a great course! It's well-organized, with lots of short exercises to practice the words in sentences, with audio recordings, and you can also record yourself – to compare with the way the professors pronounce in Spanish. The course is taught by professors and native speakers and is bilingual (it provides explanations and exercise requirements in English). Furthermore, this course is provided by one of the best universities in Spain, I could learn at my pace, and for FREE. Muchas gracias!

I LOVED IT! See you in Basic Spanish 2! And Basic Spanish 3! :-)