English Learning Doesn't Need to Be Painful!

Learn how to learn English painlessly--without a boring study of English grammar or vocabulary. 

Painless English

¡Hola! Welcome to Spanish from Zero, a podcast for people who are just starting the amazing journey that is learning Español. Today we’re gonna practice talking about occupations. 

Here’s how it usually goes:
• ¿Qué haces? (What do you do?)
• Yo soy… (I am…)

Note that in Spanish we tend to NOT use articles (a, an) when describing someone’s job title:
Yo soy profesora. (Literally: I am teacher)


The other thing we have to keep in mind whenever we’re describing someone is their gender. These are the most common word endings when it comes to occupations:

• Gender neutral endings:
ISTA: el artista / la artista, etc.
NTE: el estudiante / la estudiante, etc.

• Feminine vs. Masculine endings:
O / A: el secretario / la secretaria, etc.
OR / ORA: el profesor / la profesora, etc.


Okay! Now that the explanation is out of the way, let’s practice a little bit. I’ll say a couple of sentences and you need to figure out if I could be describing a man, a woman, or either one:

Es arquitecta 🏗️
Es programador 💻
Es analista 📉
Es presidente 🏳️
Es veterinaria 🐾
Es electicista 🔌
Es asistente 📋
Es dentista 🦷
Es fotógrafo 📷
Es mecánico 🔧
Es doctora 🩺

How was it? Let me know if you have any questions, and subscribe to get the new episodes as soon as they come out. ¡Gracias por escuchar! :)

Spanish from zero

Listening practice for beginners • Talking about occupations

¡Hola! Welcome to Spanish from Zero, a podcast for people who are just starting the amazing journey that is learning Español. 

Today’s practice is focused on the verb Tener (to have), although I’m only gonna use it with Yo (yo tengo) and Tú (tú tienes), so it’s really simple!

I’m just gonna talk a little bit so you can practice some listening, and I’ll also ask some questions so you can try answering them out loud. Or feel free to write your answers in the comments, that way I can go over them and give you some corrections!

If the audio is too hard, here are some hints that can help you figure out what I’m saying:

¿Tienes un 🚘?

¿Tienes un 🎸 🎹 🎺 🎻?

¿Tienes una 📷?

¿Tienes 🐱 🐶 🐇🐾?

¿Tienes 🌻?

¿Tienes una 📺?

Let me know if you have any questions, and subscribe to get the new episodes as soon as they come out. ¡Gracias por escuchar! :)

Listening practice for beginners • Tener

¡Hola! Welcome to Spanish from Zero, a podcast for people who are just starting the amazing journey that is learning Español.

Today’s practice is focused on two really useful questions that are gonna help you get unstuck when you don’t know a word.

• If you want to use a word but you don’t know it in Spanish, you can ask:
¿Cómo se dice ___ en español?
For example: How do you say “class” in Spanish?

• If you encounter a word in Spanish but you don’t what it means, you can ask:
¿Qué es ___?
For example: What’s “clase”?

So, in this episode I ask 12 of these questions for you to answer, but you’ll see that they’re all really easy:

¿Qué es Hola? 
¿Cómo se dice Thank you en español?
¿Qué es Lo siento?
¿Cómo se dice Hi en español? 
¿Qué es Gracias?
¿Cómo se dice Sorry en español?
¿Qué es Por favor?
¿Cómo se dice I don’t know en español?
¿Qué es De nada?
¿Cómo se dice Please en español?
¿Qué es No sé?
¿Cómo se dice You’re welcome en español?

And finally, let me leave you with this question: 
¿Cómo se dice clase en inglés?

Let me know if you have any questions, and subscribe to get the new episodes as soon as they come out. ¡Gracias por escuchar! :) 

Listening practice for beginners • Asking for clarification

¡Hola! Welcome to Spanish from Zero, a podcast for people who are just starting the amazing journey that is learning Spanish.

Today’s practice is focused on the verb Ser (to be). That's the verb we use to talk about someone's occupations, origin and title.

The exercise is really simple. I’m gonna say a couple of sentences, but the subject (i.e. the person) is missing. For example, if you hear “am from Colombia”, the subject missing from that sentence would be "I". 

Ready? Here are the sentences:

Soy de Argentina.
Es de Perú.
Eres de Guatemala.
Son de Colombia.
Somos de Chile.
Es doctor.
Soy dentista.
Somos amigos.
Son hermanos.
Eres profesor.

How was it? You can check out the answers and see how you did here: https://spanishconmar.wordpress.com/2022/03/11/spanish-from-zero-02/

Let me know if you have any questions, and subscribe to get the new episodes as soon as they come out. ¡Gracias por escuchar! :) 

Listening practice for beginners • Ser (to be)

¡Hola!  Welcome to Español from Zero, a podcast for people who are just starting the amazing journey that is learning Spanish.

Today’s practice is focused on the verb Llamarse (to be called). Basically the verb that we use to talk about people’s names.

The exercise is really short and simple! Your job is to find the mistakes in these sentences (only one of them is correct):

Yo llamo Rafael 
Nosotros nos llamos Pedro y Juan 
Ella se llaman Claudia
Tú te llamas Lucas
Ellos se llama Ana y Sebastián

You can check out the answers here: https://spanishconmar.wordpress.com/2022/03/04/espanol-from-zero-01/

Have any questions? Get in touch and let's get you speaking Español today! 