Learn Spanish For Under $50

Learning Spanish can be an expensive proposition if you let it. While programs like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur are extraordinarily effective and can shorten the learning process considerably, they are also expensive, costing several hundred dollars each. Don’t get me wrong, both of these programs are worth the cost if you can afford it, but not everybody can afford to shell out that kind of dough.

So what if you only have $50 to spend? For starters, you’ll have to substitute hard work for sleek Spanish learning programs. The going will be tougher but if you’re diligent and work hard, you can absolutely achieve fluency for less than $50. Here are some tools, some free and some not, to help you reach your goal.

Spanish Grammar On A Budget

Fortunately, there are abundant quality, inexpensive grammar resources available. I recommend three in particular.

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Verb Tenses by Dorothy Richmond is, bar none, the very best Spanish verbs workbook on the market. It covers every verb tense in detail with copious amounts of exercises and plenty of space to fill in the answers. The feature that makes Spanish Verb Tenses so effective is that it requires you to formulate entire sentences, sometimes entire paragraphs, to complete the exercises. This provides a more holistic learning experience. Filling in the blank with the correct verb form is all well and good, but writing out the entire sentence requires you to put it all together. The translation exercises at the end of each unit, which require you to translate entire English sentences into their Spanish equivalents, are especially helpful at cementing what you’ve learned. Honestly, this was probably the best $9 I ever spent on a Spanish-learning product.

Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Pronouns And Prepositions is the companion piece for the verb tenses workbook above. This time, Richmond focuses on Spanish pronouns and prepositions, including a few of the notorious sticklers like “por vs para,” the passive voice, direct and indirect object pronouns, the proper use of “lo que,” and other common difficulties. Pronouns And Prepositions follows the same basic format as Verb Tenses, requiring you to write complete sentences and paragraphs in response to questions. As far as order goes, I would recommend you complete Verb Tenses first followed by this one. Since Pronouns and Prepositions assumes at least a basic understanding of the Spanish verb system, it would be confusing for beginners to complete this workbook first.

Spanish Vocabulary On A Budget

I’ve already written in detail about Spanish Vocabulary Cards, which I think are not only the least expensive but also most effective way of building your Spanish vocabulary. Check out my post on vocabulary cards for more advice.

Reading the news in Spanish, dictionary in hand, is another excellent way to both build your vocabulary and improve your reading comprehension to boot. Since the news is usually written at 9th grade level of so, there are few big words or complicated grammar structures to trip you up. Even after just a month or two of study, you should know enough to at least get the gist of most news stories. Good online resources are CNN en Español and BBC Mundo.

Spanish Audio On A Budget

Here is the biggest weakness of the Spanish-for-under-$50-plan. It is nearly impossible to purchase a high-quality Spanish Audio Program for the 20-odd dollars you have left. While far from ideal, I would say the best value in this price range is probably the Living Language All-Audio Spanish course. You get a little over 6 hours of Spanish audio instruction (which isn’t really enough) and a booklet you can use along with the CD’s at home. On the plus side, you can do this program in your car on your way to work, turning an otherwise wasted commute into valuable Spanish practice. On the other hand, this program is probably more appropriate for intermediate learners than beginners, as the speech is fairly rapid and the program advances quickly. Overall, a worthwhile purchase for the price but not nearly long enough to do the job on its own.

Since All-Audio Spanish isn’t going to be enough, we’ll need to get creative and find ways to practice Spanish for free. For starters, check out my post on places to practice Spanish conversation. There are also a few online resources with Spanish lessons for beginners, most of them incorporating audio. The BBC has an excellent beginners program on their BBC Spanish website which includes audio, video, grammar, and even a short Spanish soap-opera to help make things more interesting. I recommend you start with the Talk Spanish series to get a feel for how the language is spoken in the real world and work your way up to the Spanish Steps program. Finally, you should complete the BBC Sueños course, which is considerably more advanced than the others.

Other than the recommendations above, you should continue talking to Spanish speakers, both in real life and via email, IM, etc, as often as possible. Fluency will come with time and hard work no matter how little you have available to spend.