Spanish

Why is it worth learning Spanish?

Madrid, Barcelona, the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands are only a few hours' flight away and popular holiday destinations for Germans. Whether you spend your holiday in Spain, work in Spain or plan a longer stay: with a good knowledge of Spanish, it is easier to communicate with the local people and learn to understand the culture better.

The Spanish language has spread in the course of colonization and the globalization of trade and has become the official language of 22 countries, from Mexico to Chile, from Caracas to Buenos Aires. The language of Cervantes is the most widely spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, even ahead of English.

Spanish, like French or Italian, is a Romance language and thus is derived from Latin. For this reason, many words are similar and learning is easier if you already speak another Romance language.

Language courses and preparatory courses Spanish

The THI Language Center offers language and intercultural electives for enrolled students of THI. Depending on your degree program, you can take these subjects as electives with ECTS credit or as free electives with a university certificate. To find out which subjects you can choose for your degree program, please contact the responsible program director directly.

In principle, you can take all subjects of the Language Center, even if a module is not offered as an elective subject for your degree program. If you are interested, you can enroll in a subject after consulting the Language Center, in case that there are still places available.

The course offerings for Spanish include:

1. Course-related compulsory and elective subjects with ECTS credits

General compulsory/elective subjects
Electives for language and social competence

2. Free electives that can be taken by all THI students (university certificate)

Please refer to the pdf for the course outline.

For information on course objectives and content, please refer to the Module Handbook of the Language Center .

The THI Language Centre is more than happy to support you in preparing for the Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE) with the

DELE preparatory course

Internationally recognised language certificates such as the Dele examination can only be gained by passing a test taken at a licensed test centre.

The THI Language Centre offers a number of courses for THI students as certificate courses. When students pass the examination at the end of the THI course, they are issued with a THI higher education certificate.
THI students will find details of the THI certificate courses in the Language Centre Module Guide on Moodle.

Learn Spanish by yourself

Instituto Cervantes Munich: Learn Spanish flexibly and from home. Levels A1 to C1. Exams for the DELE Spanish diploma (Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera).
Aprender español: Grammar and vocabulary trainer with exercises, reading texts, audio and videos for listening comprehension.
Todo claro: A wide range of interactive exercises with solutions promises rapid learning thanks to immediate correction of the task. Interactive vocabulary trainer and conjugation exercises. Free of charge.
Lingolia Español: Comprehensive learning platform for grammar, vocabulary, reading/writing skills and listening comprehension.
ProfedeEle: One of the best-known and most advanced Spanish websites. With various exercises for every level and practical tools (e.g. Spanish podcasts, videos for learning Spanish), it helps improve Spanish grammar, vocabulary and listening comprehension.
Veintemundos: A free online magazine for learning Spanish and discovering the Spanish-speaking world. Veinte Mundos offers a holistic learning concept, allowing you to not only read texts but also listen to them at the same time.
Conjugio helps you practice verb conjugations using real sentences instead of relying only on grammar tables. It makes it easier to understand which tense naturally fits in spoken language.

ECOS para estudiantes de español: The Ecos magazine from ZEIT Languages, as an audio trainer with exercise book, combines language training with fascinating insights into the Spanish-speaking world.
BBC en español: The BBC's Spanish news channel reports on international news and news from Latin America.
EL País (Spain): News about current events in Spain and around the world: politics, economics, sports, culture, society, technology, people, opinion, travel, fashion, etc.
El mostrador (Chile): The first Chilean online newspaper with a daily edition, published since 2000.
El Universal (Mexico): Leading news site with current news from Mexico and around the world, with information about politics. With videos, interactivity, opinion, blogs.

Podcasts

News in slow Spanish: The website is in English. With the lessons and podcasts, you can learn Spanish as a beginner, Spanish with previous knowledge, or Spanish at an advanced level. A new episode with a current topic is released every week.
Notes in Spanish: This website is also in English, but offers more material for advanced learners. There are free podcasts for four different learning levels, from beginner to advanced. The dialogues in the podcasts are tailored to the respective difficulty level.
Coffee Break Spanish: This podcast has two seasons for beginners and one season each for intermediate and advanced learners, each lasting 15-20 minutes.
Audiolingua: Short podcasts lasting no longer than 2 minutes. The topics follow the guidelines of the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). Spaniards can participate on this site and upload their own recordings.
Videoele: Video-based and free Spanish courses for foreigners at different language levels.
Spanische Sitcom: The Spanish learning sitcom on YouTube by Lingus TV.

Other YouTube channels:

Tío Spanish - aprender español online: Hand puppet Tío Pepe discusses cultural and grammatical phenomena for Spanish learners in short cartoons. The videos are presented in easy-to-understand Spanish: short, concise and entertaining.
Practiquemos by catalina moreno: Channel by Colombian Catalina, who has a good sense of humour and sometimes dresses up as different people and plays various roles (herself, a desperate student, a university professor, etc.).
Historias en español: enero: Juan Enero's learning method consists of learning Spanish through listening comprehension with the help of stories. Using lots of facial expressions and gestures, the YouTuber tells stories in Spanish that is clear, distinct and not too complicated.
Extra en Español: A perfect series for beginners. Lola and Ana are a couple who share a flat in Spain until Sam from America shows up on their doorstep and makes their neighbour and friend Pablo jealous. 4 episodes.

In addition to multilingual online dictionaries such as Pons, Leo and Linguee, you will find further useful links here.

Real academia: The Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española is a dictionary of the Spanish language published by the Royal Spanish Academy. The first edition dates back to 1780.