This is a fantastic time to be learning a foreign language! The resources available at your fingertips is truly amazing, with many of them free, like Maestro Spanish and Anki.
Today I want to share with you some free resources on YouTube to aid your language learning. YouTube is a great resource for learning Spanish because you can find content that is more accessible for beginners, and the additional context that video provides prepares you well for listening in real-life conversations.
Extr@ is a mini telenovela geared towards beginners. It follows two roommates as a third roommate, Sam, arrives and turns their world around. They assist Sam as he goes shopping, finds a job, and goes on vacation.
This is a perfect resource for the beginner who has ~20 minute chunks of time (the length of each episode). There are 13 episodes in total.
I like this better than Destinos, the telenovela often used in schools.
Minuto is a collection of short segments (around 2-3 minutes) talking about some topic in natural science, like lightning strikes, or why leaves are green, with animation to go along with it.
The Spanish is faster than Extr@, but this is counterbalanced with their short length, so you can listen to them repeatedly, plus, you learn something about Earth while you do it!
Very similar to Minuto de la Tierra above, but based more on physics, so the vocabulary is more specific. If you go through all of Tierra and enjoyed them, then this is definitely a good follow-up.
Do you like watching TED talks in English? Did you know they host them in Spanish also?
Like English TED talks, these span quite a range of topics, but anyone can probably find something that interests them. They are about 10-25 minutes in length, and without any action or animation on screen, you will have to focus on the speaker more to understand.
YouTube's caption features can be very useful for these, as they are speaking at regular speed (at least "regular" for a presentation), which may be fast for many beginners. I would call this an intermediate level set of videos.
Not for beginners, Malviviendo is a "homemade" web series, with very real Spanish. It is fast, with slang, and if you can understand this, you are probably fluent.
Fortunately there are subtitles (in English and Spanish) to help the intermediates follow along. Episodes are about 20 minutes each.