I’ve been working on learning Spanish again, partially inspired by recent blog posts on GetRichSlowly. That is also how I discovered a wonderful beginner Spanish learning series by the BBC that is very interactive, natural, and a lot of fun when learning a language! It’s called Mi Vida Loca, “My Crazy Life”. It’s flash based, follows a story, and encourages listening, speaking, reading, grammar, and vocabulary. It’s a 12 week program with a total of 22 episodes, and will even email you a weekly reminder with your next two episodes.

Of course, they also provide PDF files of the vocabulary, grammar, and transcripts for each episode. It’s a full suite of learning and teaching materials! The downside is that they do not offer all of those PDFs in a single download. However, I’ve gone ahead and compiled the vocabulary and transcripts into a single zip file you can download, MiVidaLoca.zip. I couldn’t stop there however!

I wanted some flash cards, but I wanted to make use of my iPod Touch to do it. Sure, I could have bought an app, gotten one of the dozens of ‘decks’ of flashcards for Spanish, but none would be free nor match up with what I was learning each week from Mi Vida Loca. So, I built a simple web-page, optimized for a mobile device (but usable on any computer), that asks you how far along you are, which language you want to be quizzed on, and then displays the words and answers, alternating, randomly from the vocabulary from the episodes! The best part is that once you have loaded the flashcards (clicking Begin), everything you need is run by JavaScript in the page, so you can use it even if you don’t have an internet connection!

If you want to use the new Mi Vida Loca Online Flashcards, feel free to bookmark the link. Enjoy, and please leave any praise or feedback in the comments below. ¡Gracias!

Update Sept 12, 2011

• Added vocabulary for Lessons 7 through 10.
• Added a checkbox to display words only once:
  When you reach the end of the vocabulary, the page is reloaded (internet connection required).

Update Oct 19, 2011

• Added vocabulary for Lessons 11 through 16.
• Each week I add 2 more lessons (as I complete them). All lessons will be available by November.