Coffee Break Spanish Level 3

An intermediate Spanish course from the Coffee Break Academy

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If you're vexed by your verbs, find pronouns painful and you're completely stumped by the subjunctive, this is the course for you! Previously known as Show Time Spanish, Coffee Break Spanish Level 3 is the third level of the award-winning series for learners of Spanish from the Radio Lingua Network.

What does the course contain?

There are forty lessons in total, representing over twenty hours of audio content and hundreds of pages of lesson notes and exercises. In each lesson, native speaker Alba and teacher Mark discuss a particular topic. Topics include travel, cultural points, language-learning, and current affairs. The course also features a telenovela - a serialised soap opera or radio play - which will help you to develop your language skills further.

Show Time Spanish features native speakers from around the Spanish-speaking world, with special episodes on Latin American topics and discussions about how the language varies from country to country.

How does it work?

Each lesson - or "show" - starts with a first "act" in Spanish featuring the conversation between Alba and Mark.

The team is joined by José for the intermedio - a light-hearted intermission with Spanish tongue-twisters, jokes and lots more.

The second "act" is presented by Mark in which he talks through the interesting vocabulary, the complex grammar and the idiomatic expressions used earlier in the show.

You can access the audio lessons where and when it suits you, so it's easy to pause and rewind if you've missed something, or to listen again to an explanation of a grammar point, helping you deepen your understanding and develop your confidence in using Spanish.


Your Instructor


The Coffee Break Spanish Team
The Coffee Break Spanish Team

The Coffee Break Spanish team includes language teachers, native speakers and host learners, making your experience learning a language fun and enjoyable. You can be sure every course has been carefully written by experienced teachers to ensure you progress steadily through the lessons.


Class Outline


  Lesson 1 - Meet Mark, Alba and José and a tongue twister
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  Lesson 2 - Progressive tenses using estar + gerund
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  Lesson 3 - Spanish Halloween and reflexive verbs
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  Lesson 4 - The pluperfect tense and the subjunctive
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  Lesson 5 - Verano Español Episode 1
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  Lesson 6 - The pluperfect tense and using double indirect pronouns
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  Lesson 7 - The Seasons and combining object pronouns
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  Lesson 8 - The future perfect tense and use of soler
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  Lesson 9 - Expressions followed by the subjunctive and por and para
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  Lessons 1-10 Quiz
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  Lesson 11 - New Year's Resolutions and the preterite tense
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  Lesson 12 - Register of language used in poetry
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  Lesson 13 - Subjunctive triggers and expressing opinions on social media
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  Lesson 16 - Possessive pronouns and uses of the subjunctive
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  Lesson 17 - Imperfect subjunctive and phrases to express surprise
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  Lesson 18 - Discussing advantages and disadvantages
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  Lesson 19 - lo + adjective, siempre que and para que
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  Lessons 11-20 Quiz
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  Lesson 21 - Indirect and direct object pronouns
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  Lesson 23 - Using the imperative combined with object and reflexive pronouns
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  Lesson 26 - The verbs quedarse and fijarse
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  Lesson 27 - Alternative forms of possessive adjectives
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  Lessons 21-30 Quiz
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  Lesson 31 - Geography and traditions of Colombia
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  Lesson 32 - Music and literature of Colombia + impersonal verbs
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  Lesson 33 - Tourist attractions of Mexico
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  Lesson 36 - Geography and culture of Chile
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  Lesson 37 - Chilean culture and language
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  Lessons 31-40 Quiz
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  We would love to hear from you!
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Main audio lesson

Each audio lesson is 20-25 minutes in length and features the main learning content including dialogues in Spanish, explanations in English and lots of examples to help learners understand the lesson.

Lesson guide and transcript

We provide a full transcript of all the Spanish contained in the lesson, and comprehensive lesson notes with explanations of the grammar and idiomatic expressions used in the dialogue.

"Encore" audio episode

Having listened to the main audio episode and worked through the notes, it’s now time to test what you’ve learned. The “encore” episode provides a series of translation challenges to test your understanding, and Mark talks through the sample translations, explaining the tricky language points. Our Encore episodes last around 10-12 minutes.

"Encore" lesson notes

We also provide the written version of the translation challenges contained in the “Encore” audio lessons.

Frequently Asked Questions


How long do I have access to the course?
This is a lifetime access course: you pay once and you'll have access to the course for as long as you like - across any and all devices you own.
When does the course start and finish?
The course starts now and never ends! It is a completely self-paced online course - you decide when you start and when you finish.
Can I download the materials for offline use?
You can download the lesson guides and store them on your device for handy reference. You can also download the audio files so that you can listen on the go.
Is there a free trial?
Absolutely! You'll see on the course curriculum above that the materials for lesson 1 are available to preview. Simply click on the "Preview" button for each of these lessons and you can get a feel for what is involved. We can also send you our Course Curriculum document which outlines the grammar topics and vocabulary areas covered in each lesson. Just pop your name and email address in the box below and we'll email you a copy straight away.
 
 

Verano Español

Every fifth lesson of Coffee Break Spanish Level 3 is an episode of our soap opera radio play, Verano Español - "Spanish Summer". In this telenovela you'll follow the stories of Spanish dad Antonio, his Scottish wife Iona and their bilingual daughter Laura, as they spend the summer in Spain and experience Spanish life - and in some cases, love - first-hand! Best of all, the words and phrases used in the script will be familiar to you as you'll have covered them in the previous episodes of the series, making Verano Español the perfect way to consolidate your learning on a regular basis.

Coffee Break Spanish Level is a highly recommended 2nd stage Spanish course. This is particularly useful for someone who like myself has spent a year or two with beginners level Spanish (or perhaps has followed levels 1 and 2 of Coffee Break Spanish), and is now looking for something a little more challenging, yet entertaining. This is it! Mark and his co-presenters use a highly entertaining format to gently introduce the listener to more complex language features whilst at the same time preparing the ground for the main "shows" which occur every fifth episode. If you're seriously interested in moving to an intermediate level course, or wish to revise some "rusty" language you may have learned years ago, give this course a try - you will not be disappointed.

KenTheProg, iTunes UK Review

Professional, useful, stimulating and challenging! As someone who admittedly has a firm grasp of the Spanish language, this is a podcast to keep even the most advanced level speakers on their toes. If you are learning Spanish at a high level in education in your free time, I thoroughly recommend this podcast to help you out. I just wish that this had been available when I was doing my GCSEs or A-Levels!

istabo, iTunes UK Review

I love this podcast! Because I teach ESL, I am very picky about choosing language learning materials for myself. The people who constructed this program clearly took great care in making something that really promotes learning, plus I have fun listening to it. The vocabulary and grammar instruction is quite relevant. I feel so motivated when I hear the same phrases used later in the "telenovela" (every fifth episode). I usually listen to each episode twice, but I like how they build on each other for continued mastery. I have tried many other podcasts in several languages and this one is by far the most professional, the most creative, and the most useful in advancing my abilities.

Lupus, iTunes USA Review

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