Advanced Spanish Grammar

If you've reached a point where your current study materials and grammar books no longer cut the mustard, then we may be able to help.

Perhaps you have been using other online tools, such as studyspanish.com or duolingo.com, but feel that you still have many unanswered doubts and struggle to express yourself.

What you will probably have found as your level has increased is that there are fewer and fewer resources available to you. The vast majority of the content is aimed at beginner/intermediate level –not surprising considering most learners don't advance beyond that level, usually due to time restraints or lack of motivation.

What exactly is advanced Spanish?

First and foremost, we should probably be clear about what we mean by advanced.

Fluency and advanced are not necessarily the same thing. Just take a certain Irishman's claims that one can be fluent in three months; that is obviously light years from what an advanced student would be expected to know in, say, a C1 level exam, which requires over a thousand hours of dedicated study. Fluency can be achieved with a limited vocabulary; a truly advanced level student should be able to communicate effectively in a wide range of contexts and registers.

The CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) classifies B2 as upper-intermediate/advanced. Most of the content on españolavanzado.com is around the C1 level, so you will need to have a decent understanding of the basic principles, such as preterite/imperfect, por/para, etc., before you take on our content.

• What is expected of an advanced learner of Spanish in an exam?

"El Diploma de español nivel C1 acredita la capacidad del usuario de la lengua para desenvolverse con soltura al procesar una amplia variedad de textos orales y escritos de cierta extensión en cualquier variante de la lengua, reconociendo incluso en ellos sentidos implícitos, actitudes o intenciones; para expresarse con fluidez, espontaneidad y sin esfuerzo aparente; para encontrar siempre la expresión adecuada a la situación y al contexto ya se encuentre este enmarcado en el ámbito social, laboral o académico, y por tanto para utilizar el idioma con flexibilidad y eficacia, demostrando un uso correcto en la elaboración de textos complejos y en el uso de los mecanismos de organización y cohesión que permiten articularlos.". Instituto Cervantes

• You can find an example exam paper on the Instituto Cervantes page here.
  
• You can see the entire C1-C2 curriculum here.

Our goal

Having lived in Spain for over 8 years, trying all the self-study methods and websites out there, including several well-known grammar books, I have found myself repeatedly disappointed with the result. Few of them venture beyond the well-trodden topics (e.g. por vs. para, ser vs. estar), and even fewer manage to explain the seemingly endless list of exceptions to these general grammar rules.

The feeling of getting stuck in a rut is one that most intermediate learners can identify with. In order to keep making progress many people find themselves resorting to private tuition, whether online or face-to-face. There's no doubt that private tuition is effective, but you have two important drawbacks: First, finding a decent teacher is not easy. If you have any serious grammar doubts, you may struggle to find a teacher that can explain key concepts clearly and correctly; Second, assuming you do find the teacher of your dreams, you have the not-so-minor issue of the cost. A decent teacher will set you back at least 10-20 euros per hour. And, as you will already know, one hour is a drop in the ocean –thousands of hours are required to become fully fluent.

I personally believe that the bulk of those hours can be done alone, using a private teacher to guide you and motivate you –that's where we come in! We put all the resources in one place so you can progress as far as possible without extra help.

In short, our goal is to make speaking like a native as affordable and achievable as (humanly) possible.

What we offer

We offer a selection of current news and opinion pieces, compiled from several leading online publications, combine them with over 1,600 grammar and word usage annotations, complemented by the integrated WordReference dictionary and video search functions, and provide a range of translating exercises, grammar quizzes and further reading materials so that you can consolidate what you've learned. Rather that just learning vocabulary and general grammar rules, at españolavanzado.com we focus on the problematic areas that crop up during the the learning process –you know, those nagging doubts that just won't go away, like esforzarse por/para or morir/morirse, and such.

In the videos section you will find a range of videos and podcasts compiled from YouTube, Ivoox, and Spanish television. Each video has been chosen for its vocabulary content and difficulty level. A large percentage of our content is colloquial Spanish, which is what makes up the bulk of most people's daily interactions, so you will be focusing your energy on practical, everyday Spanish that you will be able to put into practice immediately.

We realize that españolavanzado.com is not for everyone. If your main goal is to be able to get by and communicate the basics, then you can probably do without our help. If, however, your goal is to really sound like a native and get a thorough grasp of the language, then we are confident that you will find españolavanzado.com a valuable resource.

We know we've not got the most slick-looking interface or the most elegantly designed site, but what we do have is solid content. Every single one of our annotations has been written from scratch with the sole purpose of clearing up the –at times maddening– doubts and queries that come up in advanced Spanish.

Well, without further ado, I invite you to give us a shot. Sign up free to get started or try this sample article.

Ánimo,

Fergus & Eva

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-Advanced Spanish Grammar-