What is Conexión Español?
irst of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Federico, I'm Uruguayan, a native Spanish speaker and a learner of English, German and French. I started learning English when I was 8 or 9 years old, and as an adult I started learning German — a language in which I managed to pass a C1 exam from the CEFR — and French, a language I'm still struggling with :). I'm a language nerd. Travelling led me to become one and, as a result, I have a master's degree in Spanish as a Foreign Language from the University of Barcelona. Conexión Español is my way of sharing my language with people who want to learn or practise it. I've developed this blog not as a Spanish course, but as a place where I create resources that can help people who want to learn the language to do so. The idea of this post is to help you understand how to navigate the site, because it can, yes, be a little chaotic.
A bit of context.
Later in this article I’ll explain how the website is organised, but first I’d like to tell you a little more about myself. If you’re not interested in this and want to go straight to that information, skip the next few paragraphs until the next heading. That said, here goes: in 2016 I travelled to France for the first time. With a couple of dictionaries, some online tutorials and an app, I was able to learn enough French to get by in Paris. I could give directions to taxi drivers, shop at supermarkets, order at restaurants. And, honestly, that felt incredible.
In 2017 I travelled to Austria and it occurred to me that I could do the same thing I’d done with French: apps, dictionaries, tutorials. But no. I couldn’t learn a single word of German using those resources. Two months before the trip I needed time — something I didn’t have — or help, so I called the Goethe Institut in Montevideo to ask if they had something like courses for tourists. They said yes. Not quite. What I actually started was an A1 course, not what I was looking for, which was to learn the things I’d need to interact as a tourist. But after 12 hours of German classes, once I was in Vienna, I could speak German and I could understand it. In supermarkets, on the street, in taxis. And on my last night in Vienna I had an incredible conversation with the girl working at the bar I went to and another customer: we spoke in a mix of German, English and Spanish. The bar was supposed to close at midnight, but we stayed talking until 3 in the morning.
I went back to Montevideo and kept studying German. My teacher asked me if I was interested in taking the exams, and I said yes. Long story short — I got the best grade of that exam period for my level, and the institute awarded me a scholarship to take a German course in Germany. So in 2018 I took a B1 course at the Goethe Institut in the city of Dresden, in Saxony, and when I got back to Montevideo I decided to apply for a spot in the Master’s programme I completed between 2019 and 2022: all those steps led to the birth of Conexión Español.
Upper article block.
In the upper block of the homepage you’ll find topics — mostly Spanish grammar — organised by difficulty. The first articles you’ll see cover more basic topics, and the following ones cover more advanced topics, so the block is organised in the order of a course. In almost all the articles you’ll also find links to exercises related to the topic, which I create and upload with increasing difficulty.
Lower block.
In the lower block you’ll find the type of articles I most enjoy writing: opinion pieces, motivational posts, phonetics, reflections, humour, colloquial language, and so on. In these articles I treat language — or languages in general — not as a set of grammatical rules to be followed in order to master them, but as living, changing entities, as cultural vehicles, as something that exposes us to making mistakes but also opens the door to other ways of thinking and seeing the world.
Exercises.
In the exercises section you’ll find exactly that: exercises divided by level, reading comprehension exercises with different degrees of difficulty, and a level test which, while not an official certification of your Spanish level, will give you a rough idea of your linguistic competence if you complete it honestly.
This space is and will always be growing: languages have no limits and, on top of that, they’re constantly evolving. There will always be something new. And this space also belongs to all of us: if there’s something you’d like to see on Conexión Español, write to me and let me know. Thanks for visiting, for reading, and I hope this blog is useful to you. Happy learning!
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