14 effective ways to learn Spanish for adults: Learn a language from home

I can’t argue, by far the best way to learn Spanish for adults is to throw yourself into a country that speaks it. However, that’s just not possible for many Spanish-learners around the globe, and as parts of the world head into recession, lots of us can’t even throw ourselves into a shopping centre.

And while you could wait until the time is right and the flights feel affordable to immerse yourself in a foreign land, I’d highly recommend you begin your language learning at home, long before you get on your flight.

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Spanish is the most widely spoken language in Latin America, and although some countries cater well to English-speakers, most are difficult to get by without a single word learnt.

Entonces, vamos!

How I tried to learn Spanish before travelling to Latin America

Well, I spent around a year getting through all the best ways to learn Spanish for adults that I’ll list later in this post, as well as trying my best to speak with Andy for all of 3 minutes before breaking back into English to ask what the hell he’d said, and going to a one-week intensive Spanish course in Madrid – twice. 

I won’t lie, I put in a lot of work to be prepared to travel around Spanish-speaking countries and felt proud of the level if Spanish-learning I got to, but when I finally arrived in South America, my confidence was shattered as I realised the reality of trying to converse with natives, especially natives with a Uruguayan accent.

I’m not language-brained, and that plus my fear of saying something stupid meant it took probably 9 months of immersion in South America for things to start clicking, and over a year for me to have the confidence to have a conversation with a group of natives on my own without soiling myself.

After 2 years in Latin America, I’d say I was up to a CEFR level B2 in Spanish (though at least a C1 in reading comprehension, as is often the way) and could read and listen to Portuguese with decent understanding. When I then went to Valencia in 2021 to do a one-week brush-up Spanish school, they placed me comfortably in a C1 class.

That might not sound like a lot after 26 months of immersion, but as someone who sometimes struggles to get her tongue around her native language, I was pretty chuffed with myself.

Is it really necessary to learn Spanish before you travel?

So if it took that long to really pick up, was the language learning prep at home even worth it? Believe it or not, yes. I know that if I had arrived in Uruguay with zero Spanish language skills, absolutely everything would have gone over my head, and I would have given up (let’s call it gifted child syndrome).

You will not absorb a language just by existing in a country, especially when you’re surrounded by English-speakers and English-learners wherever you travel. Language-learning takes conscious effort.

Watch out for people over-promising success and fluency under the influence of that dastardly Dunning-Kruger Effect!

Basically, languages are damn hard, and you don’t have the sponge-brain of a child anymore, so you’ll do yourself a massive favour if you kick-start your studies at home with some of the below ways to learn Spanish for adults and rock up with at least a basic understanding and some survival phrases in the language.

That base level will be so much easier to build on than starting from a blank page.

If you’re hoping to eventually get to a Spanish language school in Latin America, I think you’ll get more out of a course if you’re up to level A2 so can do conversational exercises than if you’re using a school to teach you the very basics, like ‘I am 24 years old’ by rote. That’s certainly been my experience in learning Spanish as an adult, anyway.

How much time is needed to learn Spanish for adults?

Try not to rush how fast you think you should be learning. Obviously, the more time you can dedicate to this the better, but even just 10 minutes a day to reinforce a longer study sesh at the weekend can make the difference.

It’s more important that you work out the ways to learn Spanish for adults that you enjoy most, and that you keep the language in your mind beyond your study time instead of switching off until your next session.

And as for how far in advance of your travels you should start learning Spanish at home, that’s irrelevant; start today!

14 best ways to learn Spanish for adults

So what can you do to trigger your Spanish learning from home before you travel? I’ve put together this list of the best ways to learn Spanish: methods, apps and platforms you can use to get you on your merry way…

1. Dive into the Duolingo app

Everyone knows this one! While I’ve tried a few apps to learn Spanish for adults, like Babbel and Busuu, it’s Duolingo that managed to keep me engaged.

This language app is free, and it’s fantastic for reinforcing the very basics.

It doesn’t give you everything you need grammatically, though, and some of the (Mexican) vocab it teaches isn’t known elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, so so for best results Duolingo shouldn’t be used on its own – but that’s why I’ve got this whole list of best ways to learn Spanish at home!

2. Go back to class with high school Spanish books

Once Duolingo had reeled me into learning Spanish at home, I realised that while it taught me common phrases and good vocabulary, it didn’t really fully explain the grammar (and boyyy, do I love grammar).

I never studied Spanish at school, but I realised that the school curriculum still provides great structure for learning Spanish for adults.

So I went on eBay and bought the high school equivalent textbooks and a revision workbook (GCSE for the UK) and took some time each day to study through them and make notes.

BBC Bitesize is a revision site made for GCSE-level students who work from the books I bought, and is a fantastic resource for learning and reinforcing Spanish at home.

3. Get childish on YouTube

You can’t just rely on reading and writing, listening is really important, too. At the beginning of learning Spanish as an adult, you will have no chance of being able to pick up full-speed adult conversations, so I highly recommend using kids’ shows instead.

Before you say it, Dora the Explorer speaks faster than some adults, and her stories are actually quite grammatically advanced.

A much slower, easier show to watch is Pocoyó. Since it’s aimed at very young kids, it has simple but interesting stories to make sense of, and basic vocab and grammar structure.

I don’t expect you’ll be able to understand much straight away, so use subtitles (in English, or Spanish if you’re feeling up to it!). Also, the elephant is like, really cute.

4. Rope in a housemate

If you have difficulty in motivating yourself or keeping accountable, one of the best ways to learn spanish is to embark on a little language-learning project with a partner, housemate or family member.

Having someone there at the same level as you can be great for pooling resources, practicing what you’ve learnt, and hyping each other up to study.

5. Create Spanish flashcards

Every time you learn a new word that you just can’t seem to commit to memory, or a verb that doesn’t conjugate in the same way as all the others, write yourself a flashcard. These can either be put up somewhere you’ll see them a lot throughout the day, or used as a quiz pack to test yourself.

This one of the best ways to learn Spanish as an adult if you’re not only learning from home, but also have time on your commute or space at your work desk to hang a pinboard up.

If you’d like someone else to do the graft of creating cards for you, you can get full packs of flashcards designed to help adults learn Spanish. The great thing about these ones is that they guide you on how to pronounce the vocab, too.

6. Get into a podcast made for adults learning Spanish

For all you audio learners out there, podcasts are a fantastic way to learn Spanish for adults. Podcasts are something you can have on in the background while you do other stuff, therefore there’s really very little excuse for not having the time to study Spanish at home with these!

There are two key podcasts for Spanish learning for adults that I recommend: the first is Notes in Spanish, a podcast run by Ben, an English man and his Spanish wife, Marina, who live in Spain.

Ben’s Spanish can be a little useless at times in the beginner episodes, but that’s sort of the beauty of it. Marina is there to correct him where necessary.

In the beginner episodes, they speak about key topics and cultural points in Spain, then learn some vocab, then have a conversation in Spanish about that subject. In the intermediate and advanced episodes, everything is done in Spanish.

Ben and Marina also provide lots of resources such as worksheets, transcripts, YouTube videos and forums to help boost your Spanish learning at home.

The second podcast I recommend is News in Slow, which that discusses the day’s news headlines from around the world.

The reason this makes it into the list of best ways to learn spanish is because you have options to listen to the podcast at 0.5x, 1x or 1.5x speed. You can therefore learn at your own pace, and also keep up with contemporary events and vocab.

There are versions of this for both Spain and Latin America to account for the differences in accents and vocabulary.

7. Find a native-speaking tutor on iTalki

Can’t make it to a real-life class? iTalki is the next best way to learn Spanish with a real tutor. On this platform, you can find language teachers or just conversation partners for any skill level. Tutors log in from all over the world, and they set their own pricing.

Being a relatively inexpensive part of the world to live, 1-on-1 Spanish tutors in Latin America tend to go for extremely low rates (some as low as $1, but I’ve always felt it would be too exploitative to hire someone for that amount).

You get discounts on your trial classes, so you can try out several different Spanish tutors to find which one is the best match for you.

Even now, I have a weekly session (ok, ok, I’ve been lazy recently) with John in Bogotá, who keeps my conversation levels from falling too low. We don’t have structured lessons, but we read news articles we’re both interested in and then have a casual debate about what we just read. For me, it’s solidly one of the best ways to learn Spanish for adults.

There are other Spanish tutors on there who offer stricter language school-style curricula; you’ve just got to watch their profile videos to see who would suit your style of Spanish learning from home best! Click here to get $10 credit for classes when you spend $20 on iTalki. 

8. Talk to yourself (or your pet!) in Spanish

Learning Spanish at home is no good at all if you’re not doing anything to reinforce it outside of your study sessions. It’s one thing reading and writing in another language, but using what you’ve taught yourself to form your own sentences is a big part of learning a language. So to do this… talk to yourself. Or talk to a pet. Or talk to your refrigerator for all I care, just talk.

It doesn’t matter if you’re slow, if you stutter, if you say it out loud or just in your head. Have a conversation about what you’re doing, how you feel or what your future plans are. There’s no judgement, which is exactly what you need to get over the initial inhibitions of speaking in a foreign language.

For someone like me who used to get embarrassed or shy and still often stumbles over words that make sense in my head but don’t come out of my mouth quite the same, this really is one of the best ways to learn Spanish as an adult.

I got into a weird habit in Latin America of always talking to dogs in Spanish – to be honest, in the first 6 months of travel there’s a fair chance I did more Spanish language practice with animals than humans.

9. Make native-speaking amigos on Tandem

Unlike the paid tutors of iTalki, Tandem is a platform for regular folk who are learning languages to find partners for free online intercambios. The app matches you with people who speak the language you’re learning and are also learning your language, so you can do a language exchange through text and voice-notes without ever leaving your house.

English-speakers are never short of people who want to talk to them!

As a female existing on the internet, it can get annoying with men trying to proposition you sometimes, but you can change the app settings to only show language partners of the same sex.

10. Learn a Spanish song

One of the best ways to learn Spanish from home for audio learners! For this exercise, pick a song in Spanish that you really like, find the lyrics and work your way through learning them, line by line. Try and translate each line’s meaning as you go, then use a translator to see how close you got.

Singing will improve your pronunciation and understanding (since lyrics tend to be written in a lot more poetic way than regular speech). You’ll find that words and phrases stick more easily in your head once you’ve learnt them in a song, too.

Reggaeton might be a bit too difficult at first because it contains a lot of slurred words and slang, but a more poppy artist like Jesse y Joy (a Mexican sibling duo) would be perfect.

11. Keep a journal

To put your new grammar and vocab into action, keep a short diary of what you did every day. At first, this will probably be in the present tense, but as your Spanish learning progresses you’ll be able to incorporate past tenses and even the future.

Don’t restrict yourself only to the words you already know, feel free to use a translator to find out the word you’re searching for to describe your day. Just make sure you highlight them again at the bottom of your diary entry to make them more sticky in your brain.

12. Cook up a tormenta

This is a slightly more experimental way to learn Spanish for adults, but bear with me. Select your favourite Latino recipe (or pick from this list of South America’s tastiest street foods if you’re not sure), and get to work creating a masterpiece in the kitchen.

Make sure you’re saying each ingredient out loud, and if you can, translate the recipe instructions into sentences as you go.

This is not only learning Spanish by doing, but your tastebuds will be rewarded at the end. A great day for your tongue!

13. Follow Instagram meme accounts & Reddit subs

To this day – even though I can read 500-page books like Sapiens in Spanish with ease – what I find the most difficult to comprehend quickly are internet memes.

Things are worded differently for comic effect and poetic license, and they include slang from all over Latin America, Spain and the Hispanic communities in the USA. It can be a minefield, but once you have stared long enough for the joke to click, it’s really bloody satisfying, plus the funnies will keep you engaged.

Here are some of my faves around learning Spanish for adults:

14. Binge on Spanish Netflix

This one is a way of learning Spanish for adults who are heading towards a more advanced level, but is a very useful resource nonetheless. Over the last couple of years, Netflix has hugely expanded their international offering, and you can now find titles from almost every Spanish-speaking country in the world.

It’s important to start watching with English subtitles, then once you can hear which words are relating to which meanings switch to Spanish subtitles, then when you’re feeling really confident, none at all.

Netflix has also recently brought out a cool new feature that allows you to slow down playback (bottom right of the play bar).

Check out the best Colombian films, documentaries and TV series here to get you started.

The most important thing when learning Spanish as an adult is…

Build your confidence! I feel like I lost a huge amount of time lamenting my poor Spanish skills in Latin America and being too scared to practice with real people, when actually I had a far better understanding than most backpackers even from day one. I just needed to be confident enough to dive right in and not worry about getting stuff wrong.

The people I met who babbled on as if they were great at Spanish despite the fact that I could hear SO MANY THINGS WRONG IN THEIR GRAMMAR were the people who launched themselves into it and ended up getting to a genuinely advanced level the fastest.

On the other hand, I got myself to a very good level by learning Spanish at home, and then stunted myself for a year or so.

Be confident, be brave and be unafraid to be wrong!

Now you’ve reached the end of this post on the best ways to learn Spanish for adults, check out:

• Spanish pronunciation: learn how to say South American place names
• 8 easy words and phrases to level up your Spanish
• Things to keep you entertained when you can’t travel

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Last Updated on 1 April 2023 by Cuppa to Copa Travels