Beginning this year (2025), we did a family trip to Valencia, Spain. By this occasion both me and Saša (my wife) started to learn Spanish Language.

We both started the obvious track: Duolingo. I wasn’t starting from scratch, I had already studied Spanish for some years and achieved good enough level for practical communication covering the basic travelling needs. But it was about 14 years ago, so I needed a little refresher. It soon became clear that Duolingo is not enough. The app is great when you’re beginning a new language from scratch (e.g. it bootstrapped me quite fast into basic Greek or Ukrainian), it keeps you well motivated through gamification and streaks and all, but when you’re a bit more advanced, it’s starts to feel just like a feel good game, that doesn’t bring you any further progress in your study.

In the first Easy German Podcast episode, they mention this TED Talk: How to learn any language in six months – which contains a valuable input for the learner of any language. My two main takeaways from it

• Language immersion – I should continue and do more of what I was already doing – listening to Spanish podcasts or TV Series – ideally the native Spanish ones (but sometimes dubbing is inevitable and acceptable)

• Language production – Find someone (patient enough) to talk to in Spanish (In the video Chris Lonsdale calls this “Get a language parent”). Listening, watching and reading are important and fun, but even if Spanish was the only thing I listened to for the next few months and I’d understand everything, I still wouldn’t be able to speak.

Language immersion resources

• Easy Spanish Podcast – sibling of Easy German Podcast – a very high quality language learning podcast, part of Easy Languages network. The Spanish version is also quite alright, I just had to skip some episodes, because I didn’t find all the topics that interesting. I found both German and Spanish version on Spotify, but later moved to Pocket Casts app recommended by them. This was probably unnecessary, if you don’t need the vocabulary helper feature available to their supporters, but the app is OK so I stayed on it.
• RTVE Play – streaming app of RTVE – Spanish national broadcaster – you can watch Spanish news, documentaries + spanish subtitles are available for almost everything. Some content is geographically blocked, I wasn’t that interested to try out via VPN, but when we moved to Spain all was accessible, and there’s quite a lot of it.
• RNE Audio – audio app of the same network – listened few times some political discussions.
• Atresplayer – watched the laSexta explica – discussions about Spanish politics, also the series “Aqui no hay quien viva” recommended by Jose from Easy Spanish (ep75) is available there, so I tried it, but it didn’t click.
• El País – one of the main Spanish newspapers
• Instituto Cervantes – Biblioteca electrónica – access to lot of books, newspapers and magazines for 14 EUR / Year, tried it, worth it if you’re looking for some classics to read. They also had El País that you can “borrow” in the library as a PDF. Which is a good alternative to El País subscription – good way to use the service is via their app on tablet.
• Machos Alfa – popular Spanish TV Series (Alpha Males), this is of course subjective but I really liked it. The characters talk contemporary stuff in contemporary language
• In Valencia there’s quite a lot of old books for sale in the Sunday Flea Market, but if you’re allergic to old paper like me you can also buy a new one at nearest Casa del Libro store

Language production tips

Conversations on-line – If you’re like me you want first to know the language intimately as a professional Nobel Price laureate linguist, before you dare to order a baguette in a bakery. To find a compromise, I wanted to find someone patient enough to allow me to talk to him in Spanish. There are actually great online services for this I found out. I picked Preply (Italki could be a good alternative, they heavily advertise it in the Easy Spanish Podcast).

It could have been also a bit of luck, but I found a great tutor – Joan from Valencia, and the conversations were really great. I’m generally interested in politics and society so I interrogated him a lot with genuine interest about Spanish politics, topics that divide Spanish society and also some travel tips for our upcoming trip.

When I was out of questions, then Joan simply asked about situation in our country, or other nearby countries, which I really enjoyed explaining. It was a real natural flow, and a bar is set really high for my next tutor.

Reading out loud – I’m not sure whether from neurolinguistic point of view this is the same as regular communication – you’re probably missing out the part where you’re doing the “word recall”, but still you’re using much more brain circuitry than compared to plain (silent) reading.

I simply picked an article e.g. form El País, that seemed interesting (they have a nice science section) opened it on my tablet, closed myself in a room (initially to prevent embarrassment, later to not bother others) and narrated away … if you like to get slightly theatrical from time to time, like me, you’ll actually enjoy it.

This is related to another good tip for foreign language reading / listening – whenever you have to look up a word or a phrase in a dictionary – use one with speech recognition, like google translate – and pronounce the thing by yourself to the app. Apart from being able to return to the book or movie flow faster – another thing you get is deeper learning – from my experience the word or phrase simply integrates better into my brain when I have to speak it to the mic.