How to Learn Spanish
Learning Spanish is like learning most things — with access to great resources and a healthy amount of time, you can teach yourself Spanish easily and on your own.
This recommended resource page introduces you to the best tools available for teaching yourself the Spanish language. If you’re not already familiar with the LanguageJot learning philosophy, please visit How to Learn Any Language and Needed Tools for more information.
Basic Textbook
The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice gives you exactly what you need in a basic textbook: grammar! And luckily, this one is better than your average grade-school issued textbook. The book includes explanations of all grammar topics with examples from everyday life along with over 400 reinforcing exercises to help you further master Spanish grammar.
Dictionary
Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary, 4e is the dictionary I brought home after an hour of browsing the dictionaries available in the bookstore and another previous hour of browsing the same dictionaries online. This new edition of the Collins Spanish Concise Dictionary is up-to-date with all of the features a self-learner of the Spanish language will need, and for a great price.
Phrase Book
The Everything Spanish Phrase Book: A Quick Reference for Any Situation is what I recommend for general language learning. It’s modern, organized by situation, fully indexed, and complete with a pronunciation guide. It has all you need (and more) to fulfill the phrase book requirement.
Newspaper / Magazine
MIT Libraries provides a well-maintained list of online newspapers and magazines here: MIT Libraries: Spanish Language News and Magazines. Pick one from a country you want to learn more about, and grab your favorite Spanish dictionary and start reading and learning.
Student Reader
First Spanish Reader: A Beginner’s Dual-Language Book
Audio Course
Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 1 is an incredible value. Not only do you get a specially designed program for Latin American Spanish speakers, you also get the excellent U.S. government produced (platinum package) FSI Programmatic Spanish Levels 1 and 2, and FSI Basic Spanish Levels 3 and 4, as well as the FSI Fast Course Spanish.
And when you’re done with level one, you can move on to Learning Spanish Like Crazy Level 2 for even more excellent Spanish learning material.
Language Exchange
My Language Exchange: Spanish, a perfect way to meet-up with Spanish speakers from all over the world, wherever there is an internet connection. Initiate and connect — become pen-pals through email, chat by voice through the internet, or even communicate with each other by video-chat (requires 3rd party software such as Skype).
LanguageJot
New to LanguageJot? Please visit How to Learn Any Language and Needed Tools. If you would like to browse a larger selection of recommended Spanish materials, visit the Spanish Resources page.
This page was last updated on Thursday, September 18th, 2008.
