I’m always on the lookout for interesting ways to extend my Spanish, and I’m sure others of you are as well. I came across another series of YouTube videos recently - Español con Juan - and I think they’re great! He explains everything in Spanish, with the very occasional word of English, and he speaks quite fast, but very expressively.
He has a series of videos in which he tells stories in Spanish, repeating certain words and phrases so that you learn new vocabulary in context.
This is a link to a video where he talks about improving your Spanish while not living in a Spanish-speaking country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQGoMH-L1BA
If anyone comes across other useful material, how about posting here?
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He’s absolutely correct: immersion! I lived in Spain for 12 years and even there the challenge is to immerse oneself in the language, which is easy enough if one makes a small effort. Now back in Belgium, I read Spanish (Castellano) every day, bake using recipes in Spanish, do Spanish crosswords (you can find crucigramas and other pasatiempos at https://hola24h-origin.hola.com/pasatiempos/ ), and write the occasional email in Spanish (that’s a lot more difficult than speaking!). Fortunately, we can get TVE here on the cable, so I like watching Saber y Ganar and one or two other programmes, though I miss things like El Hormiguero and Pasapalabra. The latter is a quiz show based on words which is a great help for getting to grips with Spanish spoken quickly (especially the final round, el rosco.) It’s a Telecinco show and has its own site at https://www.telecinco.es/pasapalabra/roscos/4011299/ though sadly it is loaded with advertising.
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I find it useful to listen to the news in Spanish each morning as I’m preparing breakfast, generally using the Spanish version of ‘Euronews’ https://es.euronews.com/ which I have as an app on my iPad. Most of the spoken news reports are written as well so you can read through and check words that you didn’t pick up. You can also listen to the same news item as many times as you want, and they’re usually about topics that you’re familiar with from your own news … like lots about Coronavirus at the moment 
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I mentioned the Español con Juan series on YouTube before, but I just had to post separately for this one - 7 errores divertidos en español
If you’ve never seen a Spaniard pretending to be an English student learning Spanish before, it had me in stitches. Juan is one very funny Spanish tutor!
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I came across a website called The Spanish Experiment today and listened to one of their “children’s stories” narrated in Spanish. If you enjoyed the story of “Chicken Little” when you were a child like I did, this modern version will amuse you … you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet 
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I came across this vocab learning/practising website yesterday. It has 21 languages including Spanish, so it could be useful for building extra vocab.
https://babadum.com/
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With a few more people starting to reach the end of Level 2 and asking what they could do next, I’ll have a look at what’s available and add some suggestions to this thread.
If anyone else has suggestions, feel free to add them 
This is a little silly and exaggerated, but it’s everyday conversation:
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This listening practice is useful:
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I’ve mentioned the YouTube videos Español with Juan before, but I felt I had to give another plug for this one where he demonstrates the meaning of “estoy hecho/a polvo” and then contrasts it with “echar polvo” which has quite another meaning!
The video comes with subtitles in Spanish, but Juan’s style of acting and teaching in context mean that you’ll pick up a lot without them.
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I just found his podcast! Very good listening practicing and not beyond understanding even if you’ve only completed level one.
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Here’s another YouTube channel that looks useful - Use Your Spanish
There are conversations with explanations of everyday Spanish idioms that are used, plus stories that are spoken at different speeds, starting slowly then again at normal speed.
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This is a video by a young Japanese man after his first month of living in Valencia, Spain. He’s obviously learnt Spanish before coming but you may find it interesting to listen to what he has to say. He does make a few mistakes, but he generally corrects them. Very impressive!
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Indeed, the Español with Juan videos are very good and there are so many of them, aimed at all levels. I also like the way some of them are optionally linked to very reasonably priced books. A great way of learning and maintaining Spanish.
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