Sigrid seeks to answer the question "What's a borough?" In doing so, she talks about how New York City got its start, and also about the surrounding counties that played an important role in its development. In this video, you'll see 18th- and 19th-century maps of the area.

Maria’s mother has a surprise... she’s found a nice young man that she’d like Maria to meet! Maria really doesn’t know what to do.

Sigrid describes the first part of her trip from Long Island to New Jersey, taking a moment to tell us about the famous Verrazzano Narrows Bridge.

Julia will take you through the basic functions of Yabla, including video playback, captions, and games. Enjoy!

Sigrid traveled back to the U.S. recently to visit her family. She talks about her trip and takes some "detours" to share what she learned about some of the places she visited. She also happened to go to Mexico, where she shot this introductory segment.

What happens when an important river like the Mississippi starts drying up because of lack of rain? We find out in this segment.

Annette explains what colloquial contractions are, and shows us three popular ones: "kinda," "wanna," and "gonna." She tells us where these words come from and how they're used in context.

The Mississippi River is one of the most important rivers in the world, but because of climate change, it is drying up at the moment, and that means trouble.

In Central Park, John finds himself next to a sculpture of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, author of some of the world’s best loved stories, including "The Ugly Duckling."

Maria arrives at the café covered in mud, but her mother is unsympathetic about her bad luck. As it turns out, she has a surprise in store for Maria!

Maria’s mother waits all morning in the café. She will certainly have some questions for Maria, if and when she arrives!

Maria is going out for lunch, but first she must choose which clothes to wear. She’d better hurry, or she will be late!

Maria and Oscar have fun in the park, and we learn more of the most common words in the English language.

In this episode, we learn about the strong bond between Maria and her pet dog, Oscar. It takes only simple, but very important vocabulary to say, “I love you!”

More simple, but very common words are used in context in part three of this series for beginners. We learn more of the most common prepositions and new conjugations of the verb "to be."