As I learn Spanish myself, I’m making notes of what online resources I find useful, or think are worth a look, and adding them here.
If you have other suggestions, email them to us. The address is in the footer of this website.
Dictionaries
WordReference.com is popular amongst translators and we’ve used it, for various other languages, on and off for many years now.
Collins has a learners’ dictionary: English/Spanish, Spanish/English.
Cambridge also does a learners’ dictionary: Spanish/English, English/Spanish
Websites
The British public broadcaster, BBC, has an old (no longer updated) learning Spanish homepage with links lots of interesting resources.
Duolingo.com is very popular. It costs nothing, and the website version is even free of ads.
Other websites you might take a look at include:
Traditional Media
We like reading the newspaper, watching TV news broadcasts and listening to the radio. So of course, these activities also form a big part of our language-learning!
That said, the world is full of Spanish-language media and broadcasters to discover.
So purely by way of example:
Spanish national radio – click ‘directos’ in the top left-hand corner to select a station to list to live. The site also has podcasts to download.
Spanish national TV – ditto!
El Pais is a famous Spanish newspaper. Check out their website. They have a nice, free app too.
Apps
If you use a smartphone or tablet to study, there’s often an app version of the most popular websites. Duolingo and El Pais, for example.
Search for ‘Spanish’ in Google Play or the Apple equivalent and see what you can turn up!
Online Lessons
Study all you like, but there’s nothing like interacting with a real person, ideally a native-speaker, ideally someone who knows how to teach! And surprisingly, online Spanish lessons – that is to say, you and the teacher, live via Skype video calling or similar, probably cost less than you think.
Below are a couple of sites to get you started. A Google search will turn up plenty of other options. We suggest trying different teachers until you find one that you enjoy learning with…
