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iLoveLanguages Review: Puerta del Sol
from Champs-Elysées
Champs-Elysées
is a publisher of monthly and bi-monthly "audiomagazines" in French,
German, Italian,
and Spanish. Each issue comes with a CD or cassette
containing
that month's program and a booklet with a written transcription of all
the audio. Having studied both Spanish and French for a while
in
college, I was interested in giving their audiomagazine a try to see
how useful it really is. Being stronger in Spanish, I got a
copy
of Puerta
del Sol to test out.
When it arrived, I got a CD and a 72-page book with a full color
picture of Alejandro
Amenábar
on the cover (the rest of the book is in black-and-white).
Inside
the book was the complete transcription of audio from the CD along with
the super-useful glossary,
which I'll describe a little later. No longer owning a
portable
CD player, the first thing I did was rip the CD to MP3 files so that I
could listen to it on the go. Transcription and book in hand,
I
was ready for the next morning's commute to work to begin brushing up
on my Spanish.
The first thing I noticed was how professional the audio program
sounded. I guess I was expecting something like I remember
from
the language lab in college - an introduction and instructions,
followed by the listening lesson, all with crackly, muddled sound.
Instead, I felt like I was listening to a Spanish news
program
from the radio or TV. The CD had 9 different articles
(stories),
with alternating announcers (a man and a woman), sound bites from news
sources, interviews, and short musical interludes between articles.
It was like listening to a Spanish version of NPR or the BBC.
The second thing I realized is how little Spanish I really knew, and
how hard it was to follow along with the spoken audio alone (especially
when listening to native Spanish speakers, who can talk quite
fast). So I read along in the book while I listened to the
audio,
which is of course the point of a product like this. Even
though
it's been a while since I officially studied Spanish, I was able to
follow along fairly well and get the gist of the articles, even if I
didn't know all the vocabulary that was being used But this
is
definitely not something for learning Spanish from scratch - the focus
is on native speakers covering current events, and there's no
dumbing-down (or slowing-down) for people just starting with
Spanish. The benefit to this is that you're listening to real
Spanish spoken by real Spanish speakers in a realistic way - like you'd
hear if you were actually in Spain or Mexico. The down side
is
that it's going to help if you've already got some Spanish under your
belt before tackling a product like this.
While reading through the book as I listened to the audio, I made
frequent use of the glossary that appears on each right-hand page of
the book. In each issue of Puerta del Sol,
Champs-Elysées has highlighted several hundred difficult,
special, or idiomatic words and phrases in the audio transcript, and
provides English translations and often further descriptions of the
significance or history of the term. This was a great way to
get
introduced to terms that I hadn't learned before, and to be able to see
them in the context of an actual article or story (as well as hear them
spoken, since there are no pronunciation guides for the glossary items
in the book). I
did, however, lose my place in the text whenever I would look over at
the glossary definition for a new term, since when I got done reading
the glossary, the audio program would be a good several sentences
beyond where I left off. Pausing the audio as soon as I came
to
something I wanted to read further was a necessity, and I also found
myself rewinding frequently to listen to particular passages over
again. The glossary is a tremendous help for anybody who
isn't
fluent in Spanish (which, if you were, you wouldn't need this product)
because it points out words or phrases which may be troublesome or new,
and tells you what they mean so you don't have to pull out your
Spanish-English dictionary for each one.
One thing I found hard to ignore while I was listening to the audio on
the Puerta del Sol
CD was the pronunciation, primarily of the soft "c" sound (as in cine).
The Champs-Elysées products are based on European
languages, and that means that the Spanish that the native speakers are
using is from Spain, not Latin America. Having studied
exclusively from Latin American Spanish teachers, the pronunciation
(where the soft "c" is spoken as a "th", so cine sounds like
"theenay") struck me as odd, but it didn't interfere with my
ability to
listen to and understand the audio. However, since I live in
the
US where Latin American Spanish is much more commonly used,
I'd
love it if Champs-Elysées had a Latin American version of Puerta del Sol.
After listening through the whole CD and following along in the book,
I'd picked up some vocabulary that I hadn't known before, and I had a
better idea who Alejandro Amenábar was (he directs films,
or películas,
but
I didn't catch what they are about).
I found that listening through it a 2nd and 3rd time, I was
able
to catch a little more than I'd done the first time through, but my
Spanish ability became the limiting factor because there was just too
much vocabulary that I didn't recognize.
I'd also picked up two additional products that go along with Puerta del Sol -
the issue's Audio
Flashcards CD, and its Study
Supplement.
The Audio Flashcards CD is a more direct learning aid - about
100
of the highlighted phrases from the glossary are presented in English
and Spanish (first one direction, then the other), with a pause in
between to give you a chance to repeat it (or try to remember and speak
the translation). Going through this repeatedly definitely
gave
me a leg up on the more difficult vocabulary from the Puerta del Sol
audio and text, and the Audio Flashcards are spoken slower to make
hearing and focusing on the phrase easier than it is while listening to
the full audio program. The Study Supplement is 8
double-sided
pages of exercises related to the various articles in the audio
program, similar to what you might expect in a language lab workbook.
The exercises, which range from fill-in-the-blank
to summarize-the-article-you-just-heard, are designed to help
you evaluate your listening/reading comprehension,
since in order to answer the questions you've got to really pay
attention to what is being said in the articles. (And yes, an
answer key is provided.) These two
additions go well with the Puerta
del Sol audiomagazine (CD and book), but they do cost
extra.
So, is Puerta del Sol,
or Champs-Elysées' other audiomagazines (in French, German,
and Italian), worth buying? That depends. Puerta del Sol is a
quality product - the audio on the CD is excellent and has all the
trappings of a high-production radio news program, and the
transcriptions and glossary are top-notch additions. But it's
definitely not for beginners - this is not so much a product for learning Spanish as
it is for improving
your Spanish (primarily your listening and pronunciation skills).
Even someone just starting Spanish could benefit Puerta del Sol's
native-Spanish speakers and radio/TV-like presentation (which is, I'll
admit, a lot more entertaining than the tapes you're likely to listen
to in the school's language lab), but it must be used in
conjunction with Spanish language instruction, because there is very
little teaching involved (some of the glossary entries discuss grammar
points and etymology related to the word or phrase being highlighted).
Using Puerta
del Sol is a lot like listening to a Spanish-language
radio or TV station (with no commercials), but with a very-helpful
transcript (so you can read anything that is difficult to understand or
unfamiliar in the audio) and glossary (which can help define terms you
may not be familiar with). (It would be even better, in my
opinion, if there was also an English translation of the entire Spanish
text.) If you've been studying Spanish in an organized
setting for a year or more, Puerta
del Sol offers a comfortable middle-ground between Spanish
Internet radio stations and the audiotapes that came with your Spanish
textbook. But it also requires a determination and
willingness to try to learn
from the audiomagazine, since just popping in the CD and listening to
it once probably isn't going to do you much good. If
you've been looking for a way to listen to, and learn from, native
Spanish speakers, Puerta
del Sol could be a useful tool for you.
Resources
- Un País de Gordos
sample article from Puerta
del Sol (in PDF). Includes the transcription of
the audio (the audio link is below), the glossary, and the article's
footnotes.
- Un País de Gordos
audio from Puerta
del Sol CD (MP3 streaming audio). Open the
transcript (in the link above), then click on the audio link to follow
along.
- Puerta del Sol Website
-
Champs-Elysées Website (which includes Spanish, French, German, and Italian audiomagazines).
Tyler Chambers, 9/1/2005
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