6 Best + Free Spanish Courses & Classes Online [2021 APRIL]
Spanish is a Romance language that originated in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a global language with nearly 500 million native speakers, mainly in Spain and the Americas. It is the world’s second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese, and the world’s fourth-most spoken language overall after English, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages of the Indo-European language family, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. As a Romance language, Spanish is a descendant of Latin and has one of the smaller degrees of difference from it (about 20%) alongside Sardinian and Italian. Around 75% of modern Spanish vocabulary is derived from Latin, including Latin borrowings from Ancient Greek. Spanish is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, and it is also used as an official language by the European Union, the Organization of American States, the Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, the African Union and many other international organizations. Alongside English and French, it is also one of the most taught foreign languages throughout the world. Despite its large number of speakers, Spanish does not feature prominently in scientific writing and technology, though it is better represented in the humanities and social sciences. Spanish is the third most used language on internet websites after English and Russian. Apart from this, with the inclusion of the United States, Spanish is an official, a national, or a widely spoken language in 44 countries.
6 Best online Spanish courses of 2021
Preply
Preply is a great option for learning Spanish, offering a huge database of online tutors in dozens of languages that can be filtered to find that perfect Spanish language mentor, charges and the timings that work for you — including when they’re available to teach. The 1-on-1 speaking based lessons start from around $5 per hour and encourage students to speak comfortably with a Spanish tutor in a private video chat. Preply by far us the best place to start practising aloud, and, is, a fast way to get to a conversational level., with its flexible curriculum. You and your tutor get to decide what lessons you want to focus on, how much homework to set, and how often to meet.
Cervantes Escuela International Intensive Course
The Cervantes International School is recognized by the prestigious Cervantes Institute, the Spanish government’s official body for offering intensive study of the Spanish language to aspiring learners. It offers courses at several levels: A0, A2-B1, A1-B2 and C1+. Cervantes assesses you over a ‘phone test’ to ensure you’ve chosen the correct course for your abilities. Students need to attend 10 hours of group classes on skype and fit 40 hours of study in around that. The study has a certificate of achievement attached to the course completion. Courses are priced at 440€ for four weeks, which is on the expensive side.
Baselang
Base lang is a great option for learners who are short of time university students on their holidays, people having a career break or retirees. It offers unlimited Spanish lessons over video chat for $149 per month. Baselang also offers a “grammarless” study option, where you can learn Spanish as a child, without having to memorize conjugation charts.
Coffeebreak Spanish
Coffeebreak Spanish is designed for people who want to learn Spanish in a ‘coffee break’ kind of time each day. Lessons are categorized in 15-20 minute podcasts, with each further divided into beginner, intermediate, upper-intermediate and advanced levels. You can listen to the podcasts, for free, however, a full interactive course can be purchased for around $100 per season available to learners for a lifetime. Each level offers 40 bonus audio lessons to supplement the podcasts, 40 video lessons, and 40 files of lesson notes. Supplement your Coffeebreak Spanish lessons with flashcards, Italki to make the most out of it.
The News in Slow Spanish
The News in Slow Spanish is a podcast-based course that teaches you Spanish while keeping you abreast of world news, in slow-paced, intermediate Spanish. It’s great for those who hate structured textbook kind of study. Learning is easy as half the time you know what kind of topics are currently making headlines and will be able to understand them better. New podcasts are added almost every day. It’s reasonably priced, at $22.90 USD per month. The first seven days are free, so you can test it before joining. Supplement your Spanish lessons with flashcards, Italki to make the most out of it.
Coursera
Coursera is a database of online courses created by top universities around the world, also known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). Coursera, offers video lectures, complete assignments and quizzes with varying prices. However, you’ll need to pay only if you want feedback on your work from a professor or an official certification. It also offers fee-waiver scholarships available to those who can’t afford to pay. A great advantage with Coursera courses is that they often specialise in niche areas such as medical, travel etcetera. So you have a dedicated course for learning medical Spanish, tourism Spanish and many more.
Finally,
An expert Spanish speaker has essentially mastered the language. They can express themselves in a wide variety of nuanced ways, and they can read and consider detailed texts, can use language in a more flexible way, depending on social or professional contexts, and above all, can understand almost everything they see and hear. You too can do this by joining language exchange groups (online or in-person), signing up for Spanish lessons or making sure you spend quality time with Spanish speakers on a regular basis. You’d be surprised at how helpful native speakers can be online if you tell them you want to practice your Spanish! What’s going to truly make a difference on how long it takes you to speak Spanish is the amount of time you dedicate to usage, not just exposure.
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