Listen to this short Spanish audio description of a very common object. Can you guess what it is? This is one of a series of videos called Adivina la palabra de hoy (Guess Today’s Word). The Spanish audio in these short videos is excellent. The series is produced by the Fundación de la Lengua Española, a private non-profit from Spain that promotes the teaching of Spanish. In this video, two girls describe a common word for viewers to guess. At the end of the video, the word appears on the screen. The video is short, about one minute long.

Listening to this Spanish audio is an excellent language learning activity. The words in the descriptions tend to be used together or are associated with the word you are trying to guess. This is an effective way to expand vocabulary.

Of course, this Spanish audio also makes great listening practice. The sentences are short and the children speak directly to the camera. Children will not understand every word of the description, but that is fine. They are practicing listening for the main idea, that is, how the words that they do understand come together to communicate one concept.

For example, in this video many children will understand the clues amarillo, fruta, comen, monos and abrir. That is probably enough to guess the word. Listening for words that they understand is an important skill in language learning. Children need the opportunity to practice in order to develop the ability to distinguish the words they know in a stream of language.

Vocabulary for the Spanish audio

This is a list of the common Spanish words that the children use in the following video. The words in the list are in the order you hear them. You can listen for these words with your child and try to guess what is being described. The mystery word will be shown at the end of the video, but if you want to know before you listen, scroll down. A transcript, translation and the answer follow the video.

amarillo – yellow
fruta – fruit
comen – eat
los monos – monkeys
mediano – medium-sized
grande – big
pequeño – small
abrir – open
dentro – inside
blando – soft
negro – black
verde – green

Spanish audio transcript

Es amarillo. / It’s yellow.
Y es una fruta. / And it is a fruit.
Lo comen los monos. / Monkeys eat it.
Y es mediano. Puede ser mediano o grande o pequeño. / It is medium-sized. It can be medium-sized or big or small.
Se puede abrir. / You can open it.
Puede ser, por..por dentro.. puede, puede estar muy blando y puede ser negro. / It can..inside..it can, can be very soft and it can be black.
También puede estar verde, la cascara. / It can also be green, the peel.

The word being described is plátano – banana.

You may also be interested in these posts:

Spanish audio – Guess this word 1

Spanish audio – Guess this word 2