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Study guide · English speakers learning Spanish

How to learn Spanish: a step-by-step plan for English speakers

Sounds and spelling in a week, then the present tense, ser and estar, then the two past tenses and your first 1,500 words, then lots of listening. What to drill at each stage, what to pick up from input, and how long it honestly takes.

11 min readUpdated 30 Oct 2026Level: beginner to intermediate

On this page · The plan
  1. The plan
  2. 1. Sounds
  3. 2. Present tense
  4. 3. Past and words
  5. 4. Graded input
  6. 5. Native media
  7. Easy and hard for English speakers
  8. Your study stack
  9. References

Spanish is one of the quickest languages for an English speaker. The US Foreign Service Institute puts it in its easiest group, estimating about 30 weeks (750 class hours) for its students to reach professional working proficiency (FSI). Spelling is regular and thousands of words are shared with English. The work is in the verbs: many forms per verb, two past tenses, and a subjunctive that English mostly lost. And in listening, because native speech is fast.

The planIf you study about 45 minutes a day
  1. 1
    Sounds, spelling and survival phrases

    Five vowels, the tapped and rolled r, where the stress goes, greetings and numbers.

    Weeks 1–2 · mostly drill

  2. 2
    The present tense, gender and ser vs estar

    Regular -ar, -er, -ir verbs, stem changes, el and la, ser, estar and hay.

    Weeks 2–8 · mostly drill

  3. 3
    The past tenses and the first 1,500 words

    Preterite and imperfect, ir a for the future, everyday vocabulary with daily reviews.

    Months 2–5 · half and half

  4. 4
    Graded readers, learner podcasts and the subjunctive

    Easy reading and slow audio, most of your time. Drill the subjunctive forms; absorb when to use it.

    Months 4–9 · mostly input

  5. 5
    Real shows, podcasts and books

    Series with Spanish subtitles, native podcasts, novels. Drill only what you mine.

    Month 9 on · mostly input

Times are rough ranges for a beginner studying most days, not a schedule. Less time a day stretches them; that's fine.

  1. SoundsWeeks 1–2
  2. Present tenseWeeks 2–8
  3. Past and wordsMonths 2–5
  4. Graded inputMonths 4–9
  5. Native mediaMonth 9 on
Red is drill, grey is input. Roughly how your study time splits between drill and input at each stage. Illustration: Open Lingo.

The thing to get right first: listen from day one. Reading Spanish is quick for English speakers, and it's easy to reach the point where you understand a page but not a person. Put audio next to everything you read.

The split this guide uses: deliberate practice speeds up the parts of a language that are regular and countable (letters, endings, high-frequency words). Studies of classroom teaching find that explicit instruction in forms and rules produces large gains that last (Norris & Ortega (2000)). The feel for nuance, register and natural phrasing comes mostly from large amounts of meaningful listening and reading. So each stage below says what to drill and what to leave to input. Early on most of your Spanish time is drill; by the end most of it is input.

Sounds, spelling and survival phrases

Weeks 1–2 · mostly drill

Spanish spelling maps to sound almost one to one, so a week of pronunciation work pays off for good. The vowels are short and pure: a e i o u, never the gliding vowels of English "day" or "go". A written accent tells you where the stress goes when the usual rule doesn't.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Pure vowels. Especially unstressed ones, which English turns into "uh": casa is ka-sa, not ka-suh.
  • r and rr. pero (but) has one tap; perro (dog) is rolled.
  • Letters that differ from English. j and g before e/i, ll, ñ, silent h, and b/v sounding the same.
  • Stress and accents. papa (potato) vs papá (dad).

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Accent and regional sound. Spain, Mexico and Argentina sound different. Pick one to imitate and listen to all of them.
  • Linking. Words run together in speech. Hours of listening untangle them.

On this site for this stage

The present tense, gender and ser vs estar

Weeks 2–8 · mostly drill

Spanish verbs change for each person: hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, habláis, hablan. The endings are regular and worth drilling until automatic. Nouns have gender, so learn every noun with its article. Start a spaced-repetition habit now with a few new words a day.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Present-tense endings. All three verb groups, all persons.
  • Stem changes and yo-go verbs. quiero, puedo, pido; tengo, hago, salgo.
  • Gender with every noun. Learn la mano, not mano.
  • Gustar. me gusta el café is literally "coffee pleases me": the thing liked is the subject.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Ser vs estar, beyond the basics. The core rule takes an afternoon; cases like es aburrido vs está aburrido settle with exposure.
  • Dropping the subject. hablo already means "I speak"; yo is for emphasis.

On this site for this stage

The past tenses and the first 1,500 words

Months 2–5 · half and half

Spanish has two simple past tenses. The preterite is for events (llegó, she arrived); the imperfect is for the background and habits (llovía, it was raining). Learn the forms by drill and the choice between them mostly by reading stories. The easy future, voy a + infinitive, covers most of what you need to say about plans.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Preterite forms. Regular endings and the common irregulars: fui, tuve, hice, estuve, dije.
  • Imperfect forms. Very regular; only ser, ir, ver are irregular.
  • ir a + infinitive. voy a comer: the future you'll actually use.
  • Everyday vocabulary. Ten to twenty words a day, reviews every day. Cognates make this faster than you'd expect.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Preterite vs imperfect. Learn the scene-and-event idea, then let stories show you the edges.
  • Por vs para. A few rules get you most of the way; the rest is exposure.

On this site for this stage

Graded readers, learner podcasts and the subjunctive

Months 4–9 · mostly input

Reading lots of easy material you mostly understand improves reading ability (Nakanishi (2015)). Do the same with audio. Graded readers and podcasts for learners are plentiful in Spanish. This is also when the present subjunctive arrives: quiero que vengas, "I want you to come".

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Subjunctive forms. Present subjunctive endings are the 'opposite vowel' of the indicative: a closed set.
  • Words that keep coming back. If you've looked a word up twice, it goes in your deck with its sentence.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • When the subjunctive is used. Wishes, doubt, emotion and more. You'll feel it long before you can list the triggers.
  • Object pronouns. se lo di, "I gave it to him": speed comes from hearing it, not parsing it.

On this site for this stage

Real shows, podcasts and books

Month 9 on · mostly input

Spanish has more native media than you could ever finish, from many countries. Start with Spanish subtitles on shows you'd enjoy anyway, and expect regional slang and speed to be the last things that settle.

Drill this

Small, regular, testable. Flashcards and short exercises work.

  • Sentence mining. One new word per card, in its original line.

Pick this up from input

Fuzzy and contextual. Learn the basic rule, then notice it in use.

  • Speed and slang. Only hours of listening fix this.
  • Regional variety. vosotros in Spain, vos in Argentina and parts of Central America.

What English speakers find easy and hard in Spanish

Easier than you'd think

  • Cognates. Thousands of shared words: nación, posible, hospital, chocolate (Lubiner & Hiebert (2011)).
  • Spelling. You can pronounce almost any word you can read, and spell most words you hear.
  • Word order. Subject, verb, object, as in English, most of the time.
  • The alphabet. The same letters plus ñ and a few accents.

Harder than it looks

  • Verb forms. Six persons, several tenses and moods: far more endings than English.
  • Two verbs for 'to be', two past tenses. Each pair has a clear core and fuzzy edges.
  • The subjunctive. English barely uses one, so there's no instinct to lean on.
  • Fast native speech. Spanish speakers say more syllables per second than English speakers (Pellegrino et al. (2011)), and words run together.
  • False friends. embarazada is pregnant, not embarrassed; actual means current.

Your study stack

You don't need many tools. Three cover the whole plan, and each has a job it is bad at. Spaced review, whichever app does it, rests on one of the best-supported findings in memory research: reviews spread out over time are remembered far longer than the same reviews crammed together (Cepeda et al. (2006)).

Open Lingo

Stages 1–3 · free

Use it for: A structured Spanish course from zero, with listening and reviews that adapt to what you forget.

Don't expect: The all-in-one app with your own shows and books built in. We're working on it; see the roadmap.

Anki

Stages 3–5 · free on desktop

Use it for: Verb forms you keep missing, and sentences from what you read and watch. Very good at keeping a large deck alive.

Don't expect: Teaching. It only reviews what you put in, and the queue grows quickly if you skip days or add too many cards at once.

Language Reactor

Stages 4–5 · browser extension

Use it for: Spanish shows on Netflix and YouTube with two subtitle tracks, click-to-look-up and saving lines for later.

Don't expect: Accurate translations or a course. The second subtitle track is machine-made and often loose, and it is easy to end up reading English instead of listening.

Try an Open Lingo lesson with no sign-up. The Spanish course starts from zero.

Sources

  1. (US Foreign Service Institute: Foreign language training (language categories and class hours))
  2. (Norris & Ortega (2000): Effectiveness of L2 instruction, a meta-analysis. Language Learning 50(3))
  3. (Nakanishi (2015): A meta-analysis of extensive reading research. TESOL Quarterly 49(1))
  4. (Cepeda et al. (2006): Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. Psychological Bulletin 132(3))
  5. (Lubiner & Hiebert (2011): An analysis of English–Spanish cognates. Bilingual Research Journal 34(1))
  6. (Pellegrino, Coupé & Marsico (2011): A cross-language perspective on speech information rate. Language 87(3))

Related

Study stack

  • Anki

    Verb forms and mined sentences, from stage 3.

  • Language Reactor

    Spanish subtitles on YouTube and Netflix, from stage 4.

  • Open Lingo

    A structured course for stages 1–3.

We're building this

One app for the whole plan: lessons, reviews, and the Spanish stories and shows you read and watch, in one place. We're working on it.

In progress · Roadmap →