Making the Most of Weekends

I must admit it: I love the radio. I really like being able to do things which I need to do at the same time as listening to people telling me about interesting things. When I was younger, I used to listen obsessively to music programs which played the latest chart toppers and I would spend hours humming the songs to myself…I realize that I now prefer programs in which I can listen to the presenters speak…it must be my age.    

It’s quite common to find comments in the media which complain about the language which journalists use and especially, about the Spanish language which Spaniards must listen to (or rather agonizingly bear in many cases) during talk-shows which, in my opinion, enjoy incredible popularity and audience ratings.  

Of course, I’m not neutral in this matter. I have a professional inclination to make my own educational judgments and responding to the information which I receive isn’t exactly new to me: everything I see from my perspective as a teacher gives me inspiration, a TV advert gives me an idea for a classroom activity, a newspaper article gives me the urge to cut it out, to change it and…to the classroom it goes!...something similar is now happening to me with the radio. And it’s not easy to find programs in which they not only use the Spanish language in its pure form but whose topics are also related to it.

Recommended listening

For fifteen years, I have been listening practically every weekend, from eight in the morning until one in the afternoon, to a program called “No es un día cualquiera” whose presenter, Pepa Fernández, is a highly-knowledgeable woman who is interested in anything that has to do with unusual language usage. This is something which I love. In this program, there are sections which can entertain virtually any listener (or escuchante as listeners are referred to on the show) and this includes non-native speakers interested in the Spanish language as well.

Thanks to the wonder of technology, this program is available to listen to live on Spain’s National Radio website: http://www.rtve.es/radio/no-es-un-dia-cualquiera/ and we can also listen à la carte to sections or parts of programs which most interest us at any time. We can even download sections to our cell phones, iPods or to just about any device you have, and listen to them again and again: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/no-es-un-dia-cualquiera/

We could even say that among the wide range of radio programs available to us, this program is the crème-de-la-crème when it comes to a well-spoken show — something I personally really appreciate.

Of course, I’m in Spain and I have the opportunity to listen to this program on the radio during weekend mornings …But if I lived beyond Spanish borders and didn’t have the option to listen to this program via the internet, I would listen to another program from the Spanish public radio website which even Spaniards unfortunately don’t know much about, Radio Exterior de España, the channel which plays programs for foreigners, is broadcasted outside of Spain.

This program is called “Un idioma sin fronteras” (A language without borders) (http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/un-idioma-sin-fronteras/) and it dedicates an hour to news about the Spanish language, new literature, awards and conferences and advice regarding the correct use of the Spanish language under the guidance of the Instituto Cervantes and the Fundéu,the Foundation of Urgent Spanish which is sponsored by BBVA andla Agencia EFE, the largest news agency of the Spanish-speaking world.

We’re listening to the radio in Spanish while looking for those programs or sections of programs which interest us and so, we now have a new use of our time on the weekends in which we are improving our Spanish and learning about the ins and outs of the language itself.