Best Online Spanish Courses and Resources For English Speakers (2024)
Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world.
Learning it can help you advance your professional career or open up new job opportunities and it can be very helpful if you’re planning a Spanish travel or you want to engage in a conversation in Spanish.
Fortunately, there are a lot of Spanish courses and resources to learn Spanish online.
Moreover, many online courses and resources are affordable.
Read on to learn more about them!
If you want to jump immediately to a specific Online Spanish Course, check out this table and click on one of the tools!
All-in-one Online Spanish Course Table
Online Spanish Course Tool | Description |
---|---|
Brainscape | Flashcards To Memorize Vocabulary |
Todo Claro | Get All The Resources For Your Level |
Spring Spanish | Learn Spanish With Chunks |
SpanishPod101 | Improve Your Listening and Speaking Skills With Audio And Video Lessons |
Youtube | The Best Option To Learn Spanish For Free? |
Lingoda | Live Classes With Native-level Teachers |
HelloTalk | Practice Your Conversational Skills With Native Speakers |
Lengalia | Online Language Courses For All Levels (CEFR) |
LingQ | A Natural Language Acquisition Approach |
Coursera | Specializations By Universities And Companies |
1. Best Online Spanish Courses With Adaptive Learning And Gamification
Brainscape: Flashcards To Memorize Vocabulary
Brainscape is a learning platform that is based on online flashcards.
These flashcards allow you to memorize vocabulary and grammar rules more effectively through repetition and active recall methods.
Brainscape has several Spanish language flashcard sets created by linguists. They cover different aspects of the language, such as grammar, vocabulary, and verb conjugation.
Then, the platform uses an algorithm to adapt the learning experience to your needs, based on your learning progress and feedback.
Brainscape has a website and an app with both free and paid features.
Brainscape Pros & Cons
- Confidence-based system
- User-friendly interface
- Huge lists of subjects
- Pricey
- Limited customization
Todo Claro: Get All The Resources For Your Level
Todo Claro introduces itself as a complementary resource for people who are studying or teaching Spanish.
This platform doesn’t offer Spanish courses per se, but it provides resources to practice and test the Spanish knowledge that you’ve acquired somewhere else.
Todo Claro mainly provides exercises, such as gap filling worksheets, which are divided into four categories: Spanish grammar, Spanish vocabulary, culture and interculturality, and interactive situations.
These exercises can also be divided into categories related to your Spanish skill level: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced (following the CEFR guideline).
Todo Claro also has useful tools for learners, such as the verb conjugator and a list of Spanish characters.
Todo Claro Pros & Cons
- Interactive exercises
- Fun and varied activities
- Limited audio and visual support
- No social interaction with learners/teachers
2. Audio And Video Lessons For Spanish Online Courses
Spring Spanish: Learn Spanish With Chunks
Spring Spanish is part of the Spring Languages Academy (a platform I’m a co-founder) and helps students learn the language with the help of Conversation Based Chunking.
Spring Spanish offers a wide variety of free video lessons on YouTube but also has a premium story-based course.
Beside that, it also has a membership program with flashcards, transcripts, speaking rooms, and even live calls!
Spring Spanish also offers full free Spanish lessons and mini-courses that are just a few hours long, such as the one below for beginners.
Spring Spanish Pros & Cons
- Conversation Based Chunking method
- Youtube channel with free lessons
- Flagship story-based Spanish course
- You need the paid version for more interaction
SpanishPod101: Improve Your Listening and Speaking Skills With Audio And Video Lessons
SpanishPod101 is a freemium language learning platform mainly for improving your Spanish listening and speaking skills. It offers short Spanish audio lessons and video lessons and study tools such as word lists, slideshows, and flashcards.
Moreover, it lets you practice your pronunciation skills with voice-recording tools. With its paid version, you can even have a personal teacher who will help you with your Spanish speaking depending on your level of Spanish knowledge.
SpanishPod101 also has +1000 podcast episodes on external platforms (such as Spotify). These podcasts are Spanish lessons that involve Spanish speakers from several countries (this is important if you want to listen to different accents).
There’s also a transcript of each episode so that you can read what you are hearing and test your listening skills.
SpanishPod101 Pros & Cons
- Massive content library for every level: basically unlimited Spanish input
- Audio and bilingual transcripts (even offline if you use the Android or iPhone app)
- Learning Paths for structured learning
- Chaotic website: it can be hard to know where to start
- Too many ads or promotions
I recently wrote an in-depth SpanishPod101 review article and you can also claim a discount if you use this link!
I also made a video about how you could use SpanishPod101 and the Conversation Based Chunking TOGETHER! Check it out by clicking the button below!
YouTube: The Best Option To Learn Spanish For Free?
Surprised that this popular free video-sharing website and app is listed here?
You shouldn’t.
YouTube is, in fact, one of the best options to learn Spanish for free.
The site has lots of courses and resources split into individual videos from thousands of content creators. Some channels offer structured courses with multiple videos to watch in a certain order.
Other channels share more casual Spanish-related content, such as explanations of Spanish sayings and expressions, how to conjugate verbs in Spanish, Spanish vocabulary specifically for business or travel, etc.
Have you already decided which online course to choose? If not, no problem! Check out this video from Spring Spanish on 5 free online resources!
Youtube For Spanish Language Learning Pros & Cons
- Variety of channels and videos
- Free and accessible content
- Visual and audio support
- No structure
- Little or no interaction
- Distractions and ands
3. Language Exchange Apps To Speak Spanish With Native Speakers
Lingoda: Live Classes With Native-level Teachers
Lingoda is a paid option that allows you to take online Spanish classes with a professional Spanish tutor, who is always a verified native speaker.
You can find teachers from Spain and from other Spanish-speaking countries to get familiar with different accents and cultural aspects that have shaped modern Spanish.
Lingoda may offer the best way to learn Spanish online – if you are looking for a more traditional approach with the added benefits of online teaching methods, such as flexible and personalized learning in 5 different levels.
Lingoda Pros & Cons
- Live and online classes
- Flexible and convenient schedules
- Expertly-designed curriculums
- Strict cancellation policies
- More expensive than other online courses
HelloTalk : Practice Your Conversational Skills With Native Speakers
HelloTalk is a free language exchange app that allows you to practice your conversational skills with native speakers and learn more about the Spanish-speaking world.
This app is perfect for you if you would like to meet new people and improve your language skills at the same time.
If you identify yourself as a native English speaker who wants to learn Spanish, the app will automatically connect you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English. You can communicate with them through text and voice messages (or even video calls) in an interface that also involves translation and language correction tools, so that you can learn from each other more easily.
The app can also connect you with other Spanish learners and lets you attend live broadcasts hosted by Spanish-speaking teachers and creators.
HelloTalk Pros & Cons
- Large and diverse community
- Various communication modes
- Intuitive language tools
- Not very structured or organized
- Quality and safety issues
- VIP membership is needed to access features and content
4. Popular Spanish Resources with Structured Curriculum for Spanish Classes
Lengalia: Online Language Courses For All Levels (CEFR)
Lengalia offers 24 paid online Spanish courses for learners of all levels, using the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) language levels as reference.
It has Spanish vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation courses from A0 (beginner) to C2 (advanced) led by Spanish-speaking tutors, who deliver personalized feedback.
This web platform also provides multimedia tools to improve your Spanish reading and listening skills (videos, podcasts), and offers a certificate at the end of the course.
Lengalia Pros & Cons
- Self-paced Spanish courses
- Effective learning tools
- CEFR-aligned curriculums and certificates
- Not very interactive
- Little opportunity for practice or feedback
LingQ: A Natural Language Acquisition Approach
LingQ is a freemium language learning platform that puts together a wide range of online resources to help you learn Spanish through a natural language acquisition approach.
This language learning method is about acquiring your second language in the same way that you acquired your first language —by exposing yourself to it, and not by studying its grammar rules consciously.
LingQ offers podcasts, books, songs, news articles, and other content in Spanish to help you practice your reading and listening skills and improve your Spanish vocabulary and phrasing naturally. (Don’t worry, it also has tools to help you if you’re stuck, too.)
LingQ Pros & Cons
- Wealth of audio and written content
- Import feature
- Community of language learners
- Not very structured or organized
- Difficult to navigate
Coursera: Specializations By Universities And Companies
Coursera is an online web and app course provider that offers Spanish courses online in multiple areas of expertise, including Spanish vocabulary online courses by the University of California (Davis) and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
These courses offer a lot. Some are paid if you want to fully take part in them and obtain a certificate after you finish them, but if you have a tight budget, then you can apply for a scholarship to cover the cost of each course. Or, if you don’t mind about the certificate, you can attend them as a spectator for free courses.
Coursera Pros & Cons
- Spanish courses from top universities
- Flexible and convenient schedules
- Certificates and degrees
- No free certificate
- Not very diverse
5. Learn Spanish With Free Online Spanish Courses And Conversation Based Chunking
Regardless of the Spanish course or resource that you choose to improve your Spanish skills, take into account that you can always speed up your Spanish learning process with our Conversation Based Chunking method.
Instead of memorizing lists of words and grammar rules, our Conversation Based Chunking method focuses on word combinations that native Spanish speakers use all the time in real life.
With this dialogue-based approach, you can learn how to become fluent in Spanish through natural-sounding phrases, as native speakers do.
Get our free Conversation Based Chunking Starter Packs to learn more about Spanish chunks and how to incorporate them in your language learning process.