Best online programs for learning spanish

After each lesson, you can test yourself on what you just learned and rate how easy or difficult it was. FluentU offers a flexible option to up your Spanish game. You choose what you learn and at what pace. FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app. Through authentic video content, you can improve your Spanish regardless of your current skill level. Every word in these videos can be clicked to get a definition, associated image and multiple example sentences.

You can even see how words are used in other videos across the site for tons of context. FluentU also features an adaptive testing system. Quizzes take videos and turn them into Spanish lessons by integrating pictures, video clips and example sentences into exercises and flashcards.

LingQ offers a huge library of audio and video materials, plus it lets you import any other Spanish materials you love from around the web. The key is to relax while studying Spanish! From the very beginning, this course teaches you to speak Spanish by understanding and constructing your own sentences. This gives you the confidence to create proper Spanish sentences in any practical situation. All the material is presented in a simple, easy-to-remember way, which is hugely inspiring even for those of us with foggy memories.

But this course really needs to be supplemented with other learning material if you want to move on from beginner or intermediate level. Transparent Language offers online Spanish programs for beginner through advanced students.

These flexible programs allow you to choose your own learning path —the lessons just give you a starting point. But what makes this program more unique is that it also offers professional courses on specialized Spanish topics including business Spanish, medical Spanish, negotiating and more!

The listening, reading, speaking and writing practice will help prepare you for any situation you might encounter. Another popular class, Spanish Vocabulary: Meeting People explores Spanish grammar and pronunciation, helping you formulate a working vocabulary so you can talk about yourself and interact with native speakers.

FluentU immerses learners using real-world videos. Unlike traditional language-learning platforms that primarily use written transcripts and audio, FluentU relies heavily on video-based content, such as music videos, movie trailers, and news. The platform also offers quizzes to help you quickly master Spanish vocabulary and pronunciation.

Although most content exceeds the beginner level, FluentU provides exercises and videos for learners of all levels. You can sign up for a free day trial before purchasing a monthly or annual plan. Learn Practical Spanish Online is a digital self-paced course that centers on conversational Spanish and grammar. Learners can access practice readings, ebooks, and audio files at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Each level features different categories divided into subtopics. To accommodate each individual's learning style, the course allows students to choose from audio, video, and written exercises.

You'll be studying Latin American Spanish, with all audio files voiced by a native of Colombia. All resources are completely free to use. A fun language-learning website, The Spanish Experiment offers language lessons as well as a collection of popular children's stories and fables, including "Chicken Little" and "The Three Little Pigs. In addition to the famous fables, learners can access free introductory Spanish audio lessons.

Each lesson homes in on a different aspect of Spanish, such as question words, greetings, and plurals. The University of Texas at Austin provides a vast index of Spanish-learning resources, including videos, podcasts, and vocabulary exercises.

The school divides instructional tasks into four levels: beginning, intermediate, advanced, and superior. The beginning level contains 15 tasks, each of which is accompanied by grammar exercises and video interviews. At the superior level, learners focus on role-playing to improve their conversational skills. UT Austin also includes a dense grammar index with an emphasis on unique expressions, double negatives, and pronouns.

Learners can access each task and its available resources for free. Alison is an online language-learning platform offering two Spanish certificate courses. We recognize that no two learners are exactly alike.

Learning style, budget, skill level, and motivation all have a huge impact on what makes a resource right for you. Instead, our aim is to provide you with enough information to reliably point you in the right direction. Happy hunting! Pimsleur courses have been around for quite a while, and they make a great solution for the right type of learner. Instead of dwelling on the intricacies of proper grammar usage or spending time teaching students how to read and write, Pimsleur places a heavy emphasis on developing aural and verbal skills.

Lessons progress logically and build on each other well, and there are some extra supplemental activities that provide practice in reading and recalling word definitions. Most of the SpanishPod material is catered toward beginner learners, though there is material for learners at all levels. The model works well for presenting the language in context and getting learners used to hearing it. While exercises in PDF format may not sound overly exciting, stories can make for enjoyable engagement as well as provide plenty of examples for how the language is used in context.

Other perks of this course are clear instructions and grammar explanations that err on the side of being overly informative. Babbel covers a lot of bases. The lessons in Babbel are well structured and include lots of useful explanations. Speaking and pronunciation practice happens through a voice recognition system and an exercise in which you get to listen to and take part in a conversation happening between native speakers.

The activities might get repetitive with Babbel, and there might not be a whole lot of exciting practice to be had with the resource, but its no-nonsense approach does feel efficient.

Babbel offers some additional materials and articles on the Latin American Spanish, but the main course teaches Castilian Spanish. Baselang does an impressive job of marrying a thorough curriculum with the flexibility and personalization afforded by lessons with a teacher. This is especially noteworthy considering how easy it is to schedule lessons. This makes it quite easy to take advantage of the subscription model and take as many lessons as you can comfortably fit into your schedule.

The Rocket Spanish course teaches Latin American Spanish through audio lessons and very repetitive practice activities. The biggest drawback of this course is probably that it can get extremely boring. Then again, some people may even enjoy the lesson activities. The audio lessons provide good chances to listen to native speakers and practice listening skills, even if there is some cheesy English banter in them especially at lower levels. Following along with Coffee Break Spanish lessons is a bit like listening in on a private class.

The lessons feature Mark, the host and teacher, and a student that is learning with him. The minute lessons are ideal for convenient practice that takes about as long as a coffee break, and they build on each other nicely.

SpanishVIP offers a huge amount of value for the right learner. A subscription to the platform unlocks up to six private lessons or unlimited group lessons per week with a qualified Spanish tutor. What makes SpanishVIP different from an online tutor marketplace like italki or Verbling is that it offers personalized courses to learners.

Naturally, the value of unlimited lessons depends quite a bit on scheduling flexibility. In our experience, scheduling difficulties would likely only cause potential problems if you live in certain time zones, as SpanishVIP tutors are located in the Americas.

Mention ALR to get a free month of group classes with any private class purchase. One of the great things about Ouino is that its material may appeal to both visual and aural learners: lessons are presented in text form as well as read aloud, and important words are color-coded. In addition to this, practice activities incorporate both pictures and sound.

The lessons in the Ouino Spanish course take an academic approach to language instruction. This resource might appeal more to serious language learners that are looking to get lots of focused practice or to those that already have some experience learning Spanish.

You can jump around from one lesson to another out of order, which could be disorienting for a beginner, but is an advantage for learners past the beginner level. Live Lingua is a little bit different from other online tutor platforms in that its service is more specialized. You also have the chance to choose between several different Spanish courses, including standard lessons, exam prep, Spanish for priests, and more.

The teachers are all native speakers and receive extra support and training from Live Lingua. The majority of online courses have something in common: they fail to provide much in the way of real communication practice.

Some employ simulated role-playing activities and speech-recognition technology to get around this, but these are still inadequate substitutes for the practice you can get with a real person. Lingoda, on the other hand, addresses the communication practice problem by getting real tutors involved. This course could be a good option for learners that appreciate the structure afforded by a course but are also interested in practice with a native speaker tutor. At first glance, Fluencia may appear to have quite a bit in common with popular apps like Duolingo or Lingodeer.

Take a closer look, however, and it quickly becomes apparent that the Fluencia material was designed with remarkable care and is quite capable of providing exceptionally thorough instruction and practice. Where other language apps take a gamified, casual approach, Fluencia is a full-on course that was designed specifically with Spanish in mind. Also, keep in mind that discounted monthly prices are available for longer subscriptions.

Lingodeer could be ideal for learners that prefer gamified, bite-sized activities. The lessons are quite thorough in their use of explanations and examples, and a variety of activities make for engaging practice in multiple skills. The native speaker audio is also good with Lingodeer and helps to make the course more valuable. Busuu has got quite a bit in common with courses like Babbel, Lingodeer, Fluencia, and others: its well-structured courses offer practice in a variety of language skills and should be able to provide beginners with everything they need to advance to an intermediate level.

The Busuu Spanish course makes an attempt to cover the differences between Latin American and Castilian Spanish, though there may be a slight, negligible lean towards Castilian Spanish in terms of pronunciation.

One of the most exciting features in a Busuu course is the language-exchange function. Learners have the chance to submit their answers to questions for feedback from the Busuu community. You can either submit a written answer or a recording of yourself speaking — this is a great way to get meaningful feedback from real people, and this feature is free to use. A potential drawback is that Busuu has less thorough grammar practice than similar resources.

Our rating for this resource would be higher if it only considered the Spanish course, but the low quality of the Busuu Mandarin course forced us to lower the overall rating. Instead of drilling vocabulary and grammar rules into your head, the course places an emphasis on the relationship between English and Spanish.

By pointing out patterns, similarities and differences, the course gives learners the tools to think their way through Spanish. The format of the course is similar to a podcast in that the materials are purley audio lessons. He even urges learners to just listen and refrain from taking notes. The course gets its name for lessons centered around news stories.

The language in these lessons is level-appropriate, both in complexity and narration speed — understanding a news article even with a low level of Spanish is rewarding! In addition to interesting news stories, there are plenty of grammar-focused lessons and those that teach useful expressions.

The beginner material might not be ideal for absolute beginners, but it should quickly elevate your language skills. The intermediate level is where News in Slow Spanish really shines, expertly bridging the gap from beginner to more advanced material. The advanced level might not be as impressive as at the other two levels, but the variety of practice activities, quality materials, and great lesson flow make this a resource worth considering.

This course is totally free and makes use of videos and quizzes in the daily lessons. The courses were originally created to help diplomats quickly reach professional working proficiency in foreign languages. Similarly, courses developed by the Defense Language Institute DLI are extremely thorough but not exceptionally engaging.

They also place more of an emphasis on military terminology at higher levels. Destinos is an award-winning Spanish video course made up of fifty-two minutes episodes.

It was produced in the s, so the production value is a bit dated, but the subject matter is engaging — you get to follow a lawyer as he investigates a family secret. The video series should prove useful to a variety of learners, as videos contain accents and cultural information from Spain, Argentina, Puerto Rico, and Mexico. More experienced learners might not get a ton of useful practice out of Destinos, but it could potentially make an excellent, free introduction for beginners.

Learners in some countries may have to play the videos on YouTube or KET Education ; the relevant activities are available through the Annenberg Learner site, where the videos are also accessible in some countries.

There are hundreds of free, downloadable podcasts on the Unlimited Spanish website, all with useful transcripts. These podcast episodes provide a lot of value and serve as an introduction to the teaching method that Oscar, the founder, uses in his courses. There are four of these courses available for purchase, separate from the podcast. Instead of using a traditional textbook-esque method of teaching a language, Oscar helps his students learn to think in Spanish. Podcast episodes include short stories with accompanying exercises that you can respond to while listening.

Lesson narration happens at a slower-than-natural speed, but there is still vocabulary that would likely be new even to upper-intermediate learners. Memrise offers two main types of courses: free, community-created courses and official Memrise courses. Official courses still offer a lot of content for free, and they include bonuses like videos of native speakers, quality audio, and some grammar explanations. There are seven levels in the Spanish Spain and Spanish Mexico courses, and some advanced material is covered, but learners at lower levels will probably get the most out of the Memrise courses.

There are also a bunch of specialized courses among the community-created material covering everything from slang phrases to exam prep vocabulary.