In this post I will share with you my journey of learning Spanish, how I started, how it went, what tools I recommend and how I made it sustainable, so it didn't end up being another failed language learning project.

Why I Decided to Learn Spanish

Up until recently, I was living in Ireland, and like many others trying to survive the gloomy winters, I’d often escape to Spain.

Whether it was for climbing trips or just chasing the sun, I ended up visiting Spain around eight times. Over time, I started feeling embarrassed that I still couldn’t hold a proper conversation. I was always a beginner.

That’s when I decided: it was time to learn Spanish. Ironically, I wasn’t particularly interested in the culture at first—that came later. But I knew the language would make my frequent visits more meaningful.

My Previous Experiences with Learning Languages

Spanish wasn’t my first foreign language.

I learned English starting at age 7 with tutors and school lessons, then lived in London and Dublin, which really solidified my fluency. I studied German for five years (high school + college), reaching around B1, but gave up after seeing how quickly Germans switched to English when they realized that my English was more solid.

When I had to take language classes in college, I thought that English would be boring, so I decided to try Russian. Russian came easily for me as a Polish speaker — I did two semesters in college. It turned out to be pretty handy while traveling to places like Georgia or even Thailand, and now my home country has lots of Russian speaking immigrants, so it's proving useful again.

I also spent two years in high school learning Japanese using Genki textbooks and Anki for 1,000 kanji; I could hold simple conversations.

One summer I even taught myself Italian, inspired by a summer camp crush. I bought a couple of textbooks and toiled over them. But without consistent exposure, I lost it.

All of this made one thing very clear: retention matters more than raw study time. It's awesome to make progress, but all your hard work is for nothing if youu don't maintain it.

Because of this, I was more careful taking up another language learning project.

Phases of My Spanish Learning Journey

I started in October 2019, just before the pandemic. I took a beginner course (A1.1) at Instituto Cervantes, then advanced to A1.2, A2.4, and later B1.1 through placement tests.

I enjoyed the in-person classes. It was fun to learn in the social setting. But when COVID hit, the lessons moved online and I felt less engaged.

I didn't stop at the lessons with the language school, I was always an eager an independent learner and I had a lot of experience with learning languages on my own.

To accelerate progress, I supplemented classes with Duolingo for a quick and easy language practice and I would add newly learned words to Anki.

Over time, I shifted from classroom learning to self-driven methods: graded readers, youtube and netflix native shows like Elite and House of Flowers. I really wanted the majority of my language exposure to come from enterntainment.

I also found about the service eventually Italki where I could cheaply hire a language tutor to practice conversation. I avoided actual teachers and just tried to find people I would resonate with to have interesting conversations. Those people had a lot of patience. I ended up doing 100+ hours of Italki conversations with native speakers. At first I was aiming at 2 times a week, then later 1 a week, and then I fell off the wagon, but at that point I was very comfortable with conversations in Spanish already.

My Favorite Tools & Resources

I experimented with many apps. I enjoyed Duolingo for the convenience, it was a nice way to have daily exposure to the language. I also used Mondly and Busuu. I enjoyed Mondly for learning new vocab. My favorite feature of Busuu was writing exercises with peer feedback.

But Anki was my most important tool. I used this 5,000 most common words deck with audio and images, learning ~20 new words per day. I also made my own deck for words I encountered.

I read graded readers, then tackled full novels like Harry Potter.

I bought and read several graded readers, starting with A2 and B1, I purchased them on Amazon, the selection wasn't great, but I was just happy to be reading. I heard an advice to read something that I already knew before - a classic example is Harry Potter. And I did, I was a big fan of the series as a kid and I had a lot of fun reading it again in Spanish. I used kindle that has a built in dictionary. It was helfpul when I wasn't familiar with the word.

I pushed myself to watch native shows on Netflix - in the beginning I would just pause all the time, look up the words and later add them to Anki. I even switched anime subtitles to Spanish. I've always enjoyed podcasts, so I added some in Spanish. I started with language learning podcasts such as Duolingo Spanish Podcast and gradually I shifted to listening to podcasts on topics that would interest me. One that I particularly liked was Fitness Revolucionario.

How to Learn Effectively

What really helped me was compounding my learning. Anki let me retain vocabulary so I could actually use it when I encountered it again in shows or books.

It helped me bridge the gap to native content.

Classes were good at the start, but I quickly outpaced them because I was using more effective tools. I would recommend: if you're motivated, lean into flashcards early on. Build that foundation.

It's a great foundation, but it also has limitations - for example the cards can be quite limited. They won't teach you about all the ways the words are used. For that you need a lot of exposure to the language. And you can do that with comprehensible input.

Once you have enough of a vocabulary foundation, you can switch as much of your entertainment to the language as you can — shows, books, podcasts, conversations. Italki was a goldmine: affordable, personal, and great for learning about culture.

How to Make Learning Sustainable

The biggest threat to language learning is stopping. Consistency is a must - you need to have regular exposure to the language otherwise you will forget it. And to keep doing it it cannot be just a chore.

Because of that I think that using comprehensible input methods is so important in the learning process. You need to have fun while learning for a long time.

I kept learning fun by forming friendly bonds with my Italki tutors and looking forward to reading Spanish every evening. I work hard during the day, so unwinding with a book in Spanish became a pleasure, not a chore.

Having a Spanish trip planned also reignited my motivation.

My tips for Anki

Anki is super effective, but it's not fun, so don't make it your only learning method.

• If you miss a few days, the review pile gets scary fast. So aim at the regular practice.

I aim to do at least 10 minutes of Anki with my morning coffee. I would also just set a timer any time and do some ankis and strech (that is another thing I need to do more).

• Goals are helpful to maintain motivation

I found it helpful to have a goal like "I want to finish this epic deck" or "I want to learn as much as I can before a trip".

• Some is better than none.

Can you do 40 cards? Do it, you can dig yourself out gradually. The good thing is that if you have too many reviews they cap at 200 per deck.

• Avoid learning too many cards at once.

The future reviews could overwhelm you. This is particularly dangerous for new decks, when you don't have old reviews yet. It will catch up to you if you try to learn too much too fast.

• It's okay to delete decks if they overwhelm you

Okay, confession time. I have deleted decks before. I tried the 'sentence mining' approach, when you learn entire sentences. It was interesting, but I was just not keeping up with it, and it was looming over me causing me stress. So I deleted it. I decided that

How I Maintain My Spanish Today

These days, I keep Spanish in active maintenance mode, I am mostly up to date with my anki reviews and I read my fiction in Spanish.

I read every night — 15 to 30 minutes of fantasy or sci-fi. Right now I’m reading the Stormlight Archive in Spanish.

I still watch Spanish shows—Valeria and Machos Alpha were recent favorites. I chat with Mexican friends in Spanish and speak it exclusively when I travel to Spain (I even went on a few all-Spanish dates in Malaga!).

My Recommendations for Learners

Have fun and use anki. Use a deck like 5k most common words deck and build your own Anki deck with words you find interesting.

Retention and consistent exposure are everything.

If I had prioritized it earlier, I might speak 8 languages by now. Once you have a base, switch to comprehensible input: graded readers, Netflix with subtitles, apps like Language Reactor or Lingopie. That’s where the fun (and the real learning) begins.