Learn Spanish (Resources + Tips)

If you are planning to learn Spanish, then you are in the right place. I’m going to share with you the ultimate Spanish learning guide (resources + tips).

There are a lot of resources and tips for learning Spanish online. If you’re not sure where to start, this post will point you in the right direction.

Table Content:

  1. How to learn Spanish?
  2. Choose a dialect and an accent.
  3. Prioritise speaking over any other skill.
  4. Best Way to Learn Spanish.
  5. 10 study methods and tips to learn Spanish.
  6. How to incorporate Spanish into your everyday life.
  7. Resources to Learn Spanish.

How to learn Spanish?

A lot of people always ask specifically how I study Spanish. And I feel like I have so many tips for this language because I’ve been studying it for a long time.

And this is the language that I speak the most fluently that I learned from scratch without naturally having to learn it.

I have so many resources. I’m going to tell you different podcasts you can listen to, shows to watch, singers to listen to, YouTubers to watch.

I’ll tell you different tips and specific mindsets that you need to have in order to succeed in Spanish.

Let’s start…

Chooses a dialect in an accent that you’re going to be learning

So the first thing you need to do if you have not done yet chooses a dialect in an accent that you’re going to be learning.

With Spanish, I swear to God, most people will think I don’t need to choose one like Spanish is all the same. It’s not. There are so many different variations of Spanish and you’re going to have to choose one. But let me explain to you real quick why it’s so important to choose an accent and a dialect.

Let’s take the word bus, for example. Depending on which Spanish-speaking country you’re in, this word will change so much. It’s like it’s not even related.

So if you’re in Spain, you’re going to say “el autobús”. If you’re in Mexico, you’re going to say “el Camiones”. If you’re in Argentina, you’re going to say “el Colectivo”. And if you’re in Gran Canaria or Puerto Rico, you’re going to say “la guagua” (usually pronounced wa-wa).

So as we can see, those words are not connected at all. It just fully depends on the dialect you learn. I fully only said “wa-wa” for my whole time of learning Spanish because I was in the Canary Islands and if you said “autobús” to them, they’ll understand you, but they’re going to be like, OK.

It’s not the end of the world. If you speak the wrong dialect in the wrong country, they’ll still understand you. But if you want to be more of an actual speaker, you got to accept the dialect.

Also, let me touch on the accent for a second. Let’s take Argentinian-Spanish, for example. Most Spanish-speaking countries will pronounce double L as ya. So the word “yo me llamo” pronounced as”yo me yamo”, but if you’re in Argentina, you’re going to say “sho me shamo”.

I know. I know. And there’s a lot of little things like that that just differ from each Spanish, from different countries. So make sure you know about the accent and the dialect that you’re learning. This is so important. Like, it’s just you need to know this.

Prioritise Speaking Skill Over Any Other Skill

So the next little reminder in language learning is to remember, to prioritise speaking skills over any other skill. At the end of the day, you learn a language to speak.

You know, a lot of us, learn languages in school and we focus on reading, writing and listening in school. Like that’s what we focus on.

And that’s why most of us cannot speak any of the languages we learn in school. Speak as much as you possibly can. There’s just a little reminder that you know, if you’re like, oh, I want to buy 20 grammar books. Yes, grammar is important. Grammar is very important.

But it’d probably be better if you focus a little bit more on speaking because, at the end of the day, you can learn all the grammar and still not be able to use it in real conversation. So at the end of the day, is it really helpful.

 

Best Way to Learn Spanish

So now we’re going to get into the actual methods of learning Spanish. And before we get into the different things you need to do, I want you to remember that there are four aspects of learning a language there is reading, listening, speaking, and writing.

And when I say writing, I basically mean like get a new vocab and practicing grammar. You need to try to incorporate all of these four aspects into every method you use.

Obviously, with some methods, you’re just not going to be able to do all of the four things. But with a lot of the common methods that you hear all the time on YouTube, you never realize. But you can really practice all four aspects just without one little simple tip.

10 study methods and tips to Learn Spanish

If you want to learn Spanish, here are ten study methods and tips to get started.

  1. Watch a TV show while writing down vocabulary.
  2. Reading News Articles.
  3. Practice Speaking to a Camera.
  4. Send Voice Messages on Hello Talk.
  5. Learn Grammar with a Book.
  6. Read books or Wattpad Stories.
  7. Learn The Lyrics Of Songs.
  8. Listen to Podcasts in Spanish.
  9. Journal About Your Day and Substitute Words in that you don’t know.
  10. Spanish People Speaking.

 

  1. Watch a TV show while writing down vocabulary.

    • Watch a TV show while writing down vocabulary, that’s a super simple tip. And most people have probably already heard it. And that one, you’re practicing your listening because you are listening to the speaker and you’re also practicing your writing because you’re writing down new vocabulary, you’re seeing new grammar structures and you’re just seeing a person speak naturally.
    • But how can you practice your speaking and reading? So if we’re speaking, you can just fully repeat after everything you hear, it doesn’t have to be everything, but maybe like every, like, the second sentence, just fully repeat it after them.
    • And that’s already incorporating another aspect of language learning into that method, which will just, in general, make your progress go a lot quicker.
    • And then for reading, you can just follow along with subtitles and try to read as fast as possible without pausing.
    • So, yeah, that’s like a simple tip that you’ve heard before. But now we have all four aspects of language learning and this little tip and it doesn’t even feel like you’re studying almost like it’s just like you’re watching a show. But you know what I mean? I don’t know.

  2. Reading News Articles.

    • The next tip is reading news articles, which already practices your reading and your writing, but you also need to practice your listening and you’re speaking. So if you’re speaking, you’re just going to read the news article out loud.A lot of people might think this is correct because you might be saying something wrong and there’s no one there to correct you.But you’re still getting more comfortable with speaking because a lot of the time say, for example, Spanish has some sounds that just don’t occur in the English language.It might not help your pronunciation because there’s no one there to correct you, but it’ll improve your flow of speaking.And then for listening, you obviously can’t listen to a piece of text, but you can always get like news on YouTube or news on the radio or news on the TV and just listen to them.If you find some news on YouTube it also has subtitles that you’re listening to, reading, and learning new vocab. And it’s just everything at once.

  3. Practice Speaking to a Camera.

    • The next tip is to practice speaking to a camera. In this one, I tried my best to think of the prospects for this. But honestly, in this, all I could think about is speaking. Just turn on the camera, speak about how your day went, speak about the book you’re reading about right now.Speak about what you had for lunch. I don’t know. Talk about anything. Nobody will see it. You can just look back at it.You can just see, like, what words maybe were missing from your vocabulary or you can see which words you were using too much. And in general, that’s just like a quick way for you to improve.

  4. Send Voice Messages on Hello Talk.

    • The next step is to send voice messages on Hello Talk. HelloTalk is a very like a lot of people love using it. I just don’t click so quickly with strangers.But you need to remember that you don’t need to have a full-on friendship with these people. At the end of the day, you’re there for a language exchange.So honestly, like what I do whenever I do go on. Hello talk is I’ll literally just like text someone. I’ll be like, hi, hi. And then I’ll just start sending them voice messages like maybe they don’t even want to listen to my voice but like 80% of the time.And they’ll reply back with a voice message is being like, oh my God. Like your, Spanish is so good. But you could say this better or a lot and I don’t know, a lot of time we feel awkward.We’re like, I don’t want to send a voice message like this is too weird. Like this person doesn’t know me. I swear, at about 95% of the time the people are so nice.Actually, with Spain, it’s like 99% of the time. Spanish people are like the nicest people I’ve ever met.

  5. Learn Grammar with a Book.

    • So the next tip is kind of to learn grammar with the book, but not really because my tip is what to do with it.Because I wanted to say, like learning grammar out of a book is really helpful, like we all need it, but it shouldn’t be your only source.So practicing grammar with a book is only practicing your writing skills. So if you want to practice your speaking as well.Then any time you learn something out of that grammar book straight away, like the day you learn to try to use it in speech, talk to yourself and use that conjugation or use that expression or I don’t know what you’re learning in grammar but try to use it straight away.Try to see how people use that phrase naturally. Don’t be like, OK, this phrase means that’s cool. But if you don’t know how to use it, what’s the point of learning it?So make sure you understand how to use it and speak straight away. Like just use it in speech, go to hell or talk, make a voice message and try to incorporate that grammar point into your speech straight away.If you do it wrong, the person will correct you and boom like that is so much more valuable than a grammar lesson. Because yes, the grammar book taught you something, but you learned from, naturally speaking how to actually use it also.And then if you’re doing the grammar lesson and you want to practice listening, look up YouTube videos on that topic. There are so many Spanish teachers on YouTube.And if you’re doing, for example, the imperfect tense, just look up and perfect on YouTube. And sometimes there are videos where it’s just like a two-minute video of a conversation where they just use the imperfect tense a lot.

      So that can be really helpful as well because you’re hearing it being used naturally instead of just like written down in the book.

      And then to practice the reading skill, I would use the Reverso App. Because Reverso is basically like an app where you can kind of understand a word through context to say.

      For example, if you learned the phrase “Muy Bien”, but you don’t really know how to use it, you just go to Reverso, look up “Muy Bien” and there’s going to be like thousands of sentences using that.

      And then you could just read through the sentences. You’ll get more vocab, you’ll get some grammar context because you’ll see how it used naturally.

      And all of that combined. Yes, it will take a little bit more time than just doing one page of grammar. But which one do you think is more beneficial to you?

  6. Read books or Wattpad Stories.

    • The next point is to read books or Wattpad stories. Wattpad is very underrated for language learning. There are so many books on Wattpad in Spanish.I agree. Some of them, they can be written by someone who’s 13 years old. Maybe their grammar is not the best, but at the end of the day, it’s still coming from a natural speaker.So if you don’t want to buy books on Kindle, go to Wattpad. There’s a lot of stories in different languages. So reading books practices your writing skills because of vocab and reading skills, because you’re reading.But if you want to practice your speaking skills, read your book out loud. And if you want to practice your listening skills, try to find an audiobook of that book.If you’re reading Wattpad, you will probably not find an audiobook, but if you’re reading a Kindle book, you most likely would find an audiobook on Audible or something.

  7. Learn The Lyrics Of Songs.

    • These practices, your writing, speaking, and listening. Because in writing you’re learning a lot of new vocab through that song. Grammar I would not relate on grammar in a song because they kind of change it around a little bit to fit the rhyming scheme sometimes. So I wouldn’t depend on the grammar and a song, but vocab for sure. Speaking at practice, you’re speaking when you sing along to the songs, you’re practicing your accent and you’re practicing how quickly you can sing because in Spanish they speak extremely quickly. And you’re also practicing your listening because you can hear the way they pronounce that. Also with some songs, I would still maybe double-check with the word because they still sometimes pronounce it wrong to kind of the rhyme. But still, most of the time everything is pronounced normally. And then if you want to practice reading, go look up the song on Google and actually just read through the whole song as if it’s a story.

  8. Listen to Podcasts in Spanish.

    • This is a little bit more like an intermediate-advanced level. Like if you’re a beginner, maybe this isn’t really helpful because you’re not really hearing much. But I still think it would be helpful because immersion is extremely important when you’re learning a language. But with podcasts, you’re mainly only practicing listening. But you can also practice speaking by imitating the words that they say so trying to pronounce them the same way. And then you can also practice writing by just like writing down any word that they said and you don’t understand. Reading I honestly don’t think there’s any way to practice reading in podcasts. If you think of one, let me know. I don’t know. Maybe there are podcasts that are also a blog at the same time. That would be I don’t know. I’ve never seen that.

  9. Journal About Your Day and Substitute Words in that you don’t know.

    • Do not worry. Just write as much as you can. And I don’t mean like make your sentences shorter. I mean literally just write a sentence in Spanish. And if you don’t know one word, just write that word in English and circle it. And then at the end of the day, when you finish your journal entry, you could just look back at all the words that you circled that you didn’t know. This could be 50 words. This could be five words. It does not matter. And just write the vocab in at the bottom. And then the next day, when you have to talk about the same thing, you’ll already know how to speak about it because you learned the word yesterday.So journalling that practices your writing, but you can also practice your speaking by reading out everything you’ve written. And honestly, I think journaling is my favorite method out of all these because it’s the most natural one. And then for reading skills, read over it and look up synonyms for words you use a lot for. So if you really want to grow from an intermediate to advanced, you need to start growing your synonym lists.

  10. Spanish People Speaking.

    • I don’t mean in real life, that would probably be a little rude in your life, but I would really recommend watching those like live street interviews.You know when people go out on the streets and they just like come up to people and they ask them about something, watch them, and analyze them.Because in those videos there’s so much slang, which is extremely important. Also just like natural position, because sometimes if you’re watching like a YouTube who teaches Spanish, they’ll give you the extremely clear perfect pronunciation which is important to learn.

How you can incorporate Spanish into your everyday life?

Now we’re going to quickly talk about how you can incorporate more Spanish into your everyday life, because immersion is extremely, extremely, extremely important.

So these are going to be really quick little things like you probably know. 

  1. Follow Spanish influencers and YouTubers. If the post on the Instagram story, you’re seeing natural spoken Spanish, you’re hearing natural Spanish.
  2. Set your phone to Spanish.
  3. Listen to more Spanish music. Music is really important to Spanish people and I fully understand it like I love their music. And you can learn a lot just by listening to their music.
  4. Speak to yourself as you do daily tasks like literally if you’re like, I’m going to go eat food, not like just say that to yourself in your head, like just speak to yourself daily. You’ll see a lot of the words that you’re missing and you’ll also like to practice speaking quicker.
  5. Search things up on Google in Spanish instead of looking up something in English, just look it up in Spanish and you’re immersing yourself more.

Yeah, those are the little tips. They’re just like quick little things that you could do daily.

Resources to Learn Spanish

We’re going to quickly talk about resources. So we’re going to talk about apps, podcasts, YouTube channels, Spanish singers, and TV shows.

I’m just listing my favorite ones, so please recommend your favorite ones and the comments down below because you’re going to be helping everybody out.

Apps

Here are the best apps you can use to learn Spanish.

  • SpanishDict Translator.
    • I think this is the best Spanish dictionary you will find. That’s down for debate, but from personal use, it is just the best one.
  • Reverso Translate and Learn
    • Reverso is the app I mentioned earlier. Any time you look up a word, it will give you context for that word. And you. You kind of see it being used.
  • Duolingo, Memrise, and  Babbel 
    • They’re very common. Everybody knows them and everybody loves them. But to be honest, if you use it consistently, it can help you as it should never be your only resource ever.
      But I cannot explain to you how much Memrise has helped me with my Spanish. Memrise is the app that started my Spanish journey. And that’s the app that likes single-handedly on its own, got me halfway to where I’m not like now where I’m memorized and get me here. But Memrise has definitely helped me cross half the way.
  • HelloTalk
    • That’s just like the language exchange app that I mentioned earlier.
  • FluentU
    • I think they basically have videos and quizzes and just like a lot of different little activities. The only thing is it’s not always free. But I’ve heard amazing reviews about it.
  • AnkiDroid Flashcards and Quizlet.
    • which are both flashcards apps. I mainly only use Anki, but Quizlet is amazing. It is 100 percent amazing and Anki amazing. Both of them are amazing.

Podcasts

I only know three podcasts so the little ones I’m going to recommend. So please, if you know some good Spanish-speaking podcasts let me know because I like to listen to more.

  1. ¡Con amor, carajo!.
  2. Entiende tu Mente.
  3. Hay Que Hacernos Millonarios.

They motivate me a lot and they make me feel productive. So I really like them.

YouTube Channels

Three or four of these, I actually like to watch on a regular basis. And three or four of these I only discovered recently when I was actually just doing research for this article because I wanted to recommend more channels, but I really like it and I subscribe to all of them.

  1. beyond words:
    So the first channel is beyond words and her channel is kind of based on personal development and health and productivity. You’re going to see a lot of these channels are based on productivity. It’s just like the topic I like. 
  2. Iris Roig:
    She basically has videos about self-care, habits, productivity, finance, like everything. I love her. I think on this list she has to be my favorite.
  3. Viole Franco: 
    She basically has a comedy channel kind of she just makes random videos. But I really love her. And she also has an Argentinean accent, which I just love Argentinean accent. Like, I’m not learning the Argentinean accent, but I love it. And she has it. And I just love listening to her.
  4. Euge Oller:
    Love is this channel. It’s about entrepreneurship, business, finance, productivity.
  5. Isadora Vera:
    She has a lot of productivity Vlogs, which I love. 
  6. Cristina Asai:
     She has a lot of videos on lifestyle, fitness, and organization.

I would highly recommend all those YouTubers. Also, once again, if you have any recommendations, let us know because I would like to follow more.

Honestly, I would love to get to the point where I follow more Spanish people than I do English people because my Spanish would just grow like crazy.

This is the thing with YouTube. The more Spanish people you watch, the more Spanish people the YouTube algorithm will recommend to you.

So even if you find a bunch of Spanish people that you don’t really like, go on their videos, like their video, like comments, or something like just comments heart, and the YouTube algorithm will bring you the Spanish YouTubers. They will come to you.

Spanish Singers

I don’t really think I need to recommend Spanish singers, but I’m just going to let you know I have a very basic taste in Spanish music. But, you know.

  1. Bad Bunny.
  2. Danna Paola. 
  3. Ozuna. 
  4. Becky G.
  5. ROSALÍA.
  6. MAIKEL DELACALLE.

Those are some of my favorite Spanish singers, and they are very random. They will help you to learn Spanish.

 TV Shows

  1. Elite.
  2. Money Heist.
  3. Vis a vis.
  4. Cable Girls (Las chicas del cable).
  5. Valeria.
  6. Control Z.
  7. Dark Desire (Oscuro deseo).

Those are some of my favorite Spanish  TV Shows that I wish will help you to learn Spanish.

I think I am done with the ultimate Spanish learning guide (resources + tips). I really hope that you have found it very helpful. I wish it will help you to learn Spanish. This was my own experiment learning Spanish, please share yours in the comments below.

Have a good time!!!