Spanish Story Video: La sobrina

Stories are an extremely effective way to learn language, so we have created a series of short Spanish video stories for beginners. The Spanish story video we feature in this post is La sobrina. The narration of the story is in the present tense, and you’ll find a free set of activities to download below.

So far, we have filmed 10 Spanish video stories that focus on a few key structures. In each video, someone narrates an anecdote to a friend. The stories have built in repetition to provide repeated exposure to the vocabulary and verbs. There are two videos of each story, one we narrate in the present tense and the other with a narration in the past. So, if you like you can also see La sobrina with a past tense narration as well.

You can find more information and additional activities for these video stories on the Spanish Stories for Beginners Page.

Spanish Story Video Activities

There are lots of ways to use a present tense Spanish story video. The free download below has several activities for La sobrina including:

• a vocabulary activity
• a sequencing activity
• comprehension questions

The activities for our other video stories include:

• listening practice where students fill in key words
• comprehension questions about the story
• a paragraph with a written version of the story and comprehension questions
• prompts to retell the story

You can also:

• ask students to illustrate the story
• ask students to change one element in the story or change the ending

Additional Spanish Learning Materials

If you are interested in additional learning materials for our videos, be sure to check out the Spanish Playground YouTube Channel Membership. We offer a variety of video-based activities several times a month.

La sobrina: Spanish Story Video in the Present Tense

In this video, Juan tells Pamela about a recent visit to his sister’s house and how he got along with his two-year-old niece. The introduction has a variety of tenses, but then Juan narrates his story entirely in the present tense. The “narrative present” is common in Spanish, just as it is in English, so it makes a great way to practice listening and speaking in the present tense.

You can watch the video below or on YouTube at Spanish Story | Present Tense | La sobrina.

Activities for La sobrina

Get a free set of activities for this video here: La sobrina: Present Tense Spanish Story.

More Spanish Stories in the Present Tense

We’ll continue adding Spanish stories to our present and past tense playlists on the Spanish Playground YouTube channel. They all have a limited number of target structures and built-in repetition. We film them with native speakers and add gestures and expressions to make them comprehensible for novice learners.

Your feedback helps us decide what materials to create, so we would love to hear how these stories work for you or your students.