King's Spanish Grammar & Vocab

King's College London (KCL) is releasing an app intended for beginner Spanish language learners. The app helps to build the fundamental understanding of the grammar through KCL-made resources. At the core, these are: lecture videos that teach you the concepts, situational videos where the concepts are applied in an animated scenario and interactive exercises that reinforce your understanding of the grammar concepts. There is much more than that!

The app is split into 9 topics that progress in difficulty. These topics are: Greetings, Checking-in, Sightseeing, Directions, Eating, Likes, Planning, Shopping, and Dating. Each topic offers its own set of videos, both lecture videos and situational videos, as well as its own exercises.

The exercises come in a variety of formats such as drag and drop, typing, listening comprehension, true or false and multiple-choice type questions. To help you make a better use of the exercises, a Revise section is included where you can track the scores of all the exercises you have completed and re-attempt the ones you have scored the least in.

A glossary of all the terms used in the app is also included, offering both a browse-by-letter and search functionality.

Numerous audio resources for learning the vocabulary: learn the pronunciation of the letters of the alphabet, the numbers, days, holidays, seasons and months as well as time!

There is also a recording tool for you to use alongside the many audio resources included to practice your pronunciation. The audio included in the Resources section is available in Spanish or Mexican accents, so you can learn whichever you prefer or both!

Check out the excellent resources previously available only on the KCL web, now on Android!




Regarding app permissions:
The app requires several permissions in order to run properly. The ones that people may be concerned about are the ability to Record Audio which is described in detail in the Privacy Policy and the WiFi access. The app will not require Internet access if it has been installed correctly by the Play Store. In cases that it does not happen, the app will correct the error itself by contacting Play Store and downloading the missing file. This is the only reason why the app requires WiFi permissions. After you confirmed the app has been successfully installed, you can turn off your internet connection and full functionality will remain.
The quickest way to test if the app has all the files it needs is to launch a video in the Reflect section, under any topic. If the app crashes, then files are missing. It is unlikely you will ever see this happen, but if it does all you need to do is close the app and start it again. It will re-download the files itself and give you a progress tracker for the process.