Teach Spanish the way it's really spoken. Lupa trains your students to hear language like a native speaker while they listen to captivating stories recorded in Spanish-speaking communities all over the world. The interactive audio player — something you won't find anywhere else — focuses their ears so they can understand real-world accents at natural speeds and build a robust colloquial vocabulary. Lupa fills a crucial gap for intermediate-level learners who've hit the "sound barrier" — where the Spanish they've learned doesn't resemble what they encounter at street level. Lupa is the result of a deep collaboration between Radio Ambulante and Jiveworld.
The Lupa app hosts a selection of audio stories from Radio Ambulante, an award-winning long-form journalism podcast distributed by NPR. These stories are recorded in the field all over Latin America and normally require native-level Spanish fluency to understand. But with the Jiveworld audio player and ear training method they are now within reach for your students. The player gives them just enough help to keep them on the edge of understanding: their ears will quickly adapt to different regional accents and styles, and their vocabularies will expand fast. And because our study-relisten cycle is based around their natural concentration span, they can retain more, study longer, and learn more Spanish.
Lupa offers your students many types of assistance while they listen to the stories. They can use any or all of them — whatever their level of Spanish requires:
- Show just the words they need, and hide the others for their ears to figure out (so it's not just a reading exercise)
- Titles and hints help them stay on-track in the story
- Speed control for the more challenging passages
- Vocabulary that they can tap for instant help
- Language notes about accents and idioms
- "Tricky bits" — we identify spoken phrases that may be harder to decipher by ear
- Intuitive controls for easy navigation within the story
- Bios for the speakers, alerts on non-standard usage, and more
The companion Lupa Classroom web portal provides tools and resources for language teachers. Set listening and study assigments that students will see directly in the Lupa app, and track their progress. Students listen at home and come to class with a deep familiarity with the story themes and vocabulary, ready for productive activity. The most popular stories are accompanied by activity guides and worksheets that make it easy to implement a full curriculum covering all language skills. Most importantly, students will develop an robust ear for the many types and accents of Spanish spoken across Latin America, so they can engage with Spanish-speaking people and media outside of the classroom.