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When you’re teaching Spanish to beginners it can be difficult to know where to start. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a bilingual parent wanting to teach your own children or an established teacher starting out with adults for the first time; knowing how to teach Spanish to beginners is essential to starting off on the right foot and making learning stick from lesson one.
Though approaches might be different for children and adults, Spanish teachers often wonder what to start with. Do you go with the alphabet? Greetings? Basic vocabulary?
Thankfully, we’re here to help you with Spanish lesson ideas that will work no matter who’s in front of you.
1. Be enthusiastic
Above all else, a teacher who is enthusiastic will have more motivated and invested learners as a result.
The truth is, learning Spanish is challenging. Unlike picking up a recorder where you’ll be able to learn a basic tune within thirty minutes, learning a language takes much more time and practice. If your learners aren’t motivated, they won’t succeed – and your enthusiasm is key to their motivation.
2. Teach them something useful
What any language learner wants to know is something that’s meaningful to them and something they can use. For young children, the names of toys might be motivating for them. Alternatively, role-playing about food could be good fun.
With adult beginners, you can ask them directly what they want to get out of learning Spanish. Some might want to learn for traveling while others might need it for business. Provided that you know their motivations for choosing to learn Spanish, you can cater to them.
Even if you’ve got different motivations in one class, there are ways to combine language learning to suit all – travel vocabulary and ordering food are prime examples of topics that are useful to both of these learner groups.
Also read: How to Teach Spanish to Kids: 15 Effective Tips
3. Make sure each lesson is varied
It’s very easy to find something that works and stick to it for every lesson. However, if things are too similar all of the time, learners can become bored and easily distracted.
It’s perfectly fine to have a structure to lessons that works — a starting task and a finishing task, for example — but you should probably consider ensuring that each lesson format is different in some way if you want your learners to make the most progress.
As well as each lesson being different from one to the next, ensure that the activities within each individual lesson are also varied to maintain pace and interest.
4. Teach them how to adapt their existing knowledge
Learning a language is all about building upon what you already know.
This is especially true for older learners that have learnt about grammar in their own language. Find out what they know about grammar and rules and link new learning to this knowledge. If they already know what an adjective is, they’ll find the concept of learning adjectives in Spanish easier.
This works for both adult and children. Remember, though, it might be a long time since some adults learnt about grammar at school!
5. Teach them words they can use for any topic
One great way how to teach Spanish language at home for beginners is by teaching your learners key words and phrases that can be used no matter the topic. In Spanish, this might be things like:
| (no) tengo | I (don’t) have |
| (no) estoy/soy | I am (not) |
| (no) es/está | It is (not) |
| (no) quiero | I (don’t) want |
| (no) me gusta | I (don’t) like |
| (no) hago | I do (not)/I (don’t) make |
As you can see, these six key verbs can be used for so many different topics and once your learners can use a dictionary, they can create their own sentences readily. Here are some example sentences using the above verbs with one noun:
- Tengo chocolate – I have chocolate
- Me gusta chocolate – I like chocolate
- Quiero chocolate – I want chocolate
- Es chocolate – it is chocolate
- Hago chocolate – I make chocolate
Besides verbs, you can also teach them other transferable vocabulary like:
| y | and |
| pero | but |
| a veces | sometimes |
| porque | because |
| quizás | maybe |
| como | like |
| o | or |
| si | if |
| mientras | while |
| con | with |
| sin | without |
6. Teach to their interests
This can be tricky if you’re following an exam specification but if you’ve got more freedom in what you teach, find out what your learners are into. People generally love to tell you about themselves and what makes them tick – especially children. So, give them the tools to share their likes and dislikes with you in Spanish.
You can also incorporate their interests in how you present any topic. If you’re making a worksheet or presentation, add a background that will grab their attention – Minecraft is usually a winner with 7 to 10-year-olds, while Stranger Things generally appeals to teens!
Also, when you’re writing a text for reading comprehension, you can incorporate famous people’s names to add another layer of interest.
For example, when I taught a class of football-mad teenage boys, my role-play and reading comprehension questions frequently incorporated famous footballers. Some learners rolled their eyes, as teenagers often do, but they generally appreciated my efforts!
7. Use world news to make topics relevant and interesting
If you’re following a strict specification, it can be hard to think of creative ways to teach some topics. I used to really dislike teaching the environment to my exam classes, but it had to be done. I found it demotivating and frankly boring to present learners with a general text on the topic of the environment.
Teaching the topic of the environment is not like teaching food or holidays or even school, where learners (particularly young ones) have a lot to say – at least most of them. However, there’s always a way to pique their curiosity.
Things changed for me in 2018 when Greta Thunberg rose to world fame as an environmental activist. For the first time, someone young (and also with multiple diagnoses that many can relate to) was there talking about the environment. There were news reports, videos, and recordings available in Spanish that could be easily accessed by my learners.
8. It has to be fun
No matter what the topic is, it has to be fun. Remember, a lot of learners aren’t learning the language by choice. Even if they are, you learn more when you’re enjoying yourself – and there’s research to prove it.
A study in College Teaching, a journal that publishes research on learning and teaching, found that students were able to recall more information when a lecturer added jokes into a lecture compared to when they didn’t.
What’s more, neurologists like Judy Willis tell us that fun experiences increase a person’s levels of oxygen, endorphins, and dopamine, which are all things that promote learning!
9. Use music
Remember all those song lyrics you can still recall from your formative years? That’s because music helps you remember things. It’s also fun too (see point no. 8 above).
Here are some great examples of songs you can incorporate into your lessons (though playing Spanish music in the background is also good).
- AntoloĂa by Shakira – this is good for learners of the present and past tense. It’s also slow and really easy to break down and understand.
- Livin’ La Vida Loca (Spanish Version) by Ricky Martin – this is great for beginners who are already familiar with the English version of the song. It contains a lot of simple future tenses but it’s generally a great song for playing in the background too.
- Me gustas tú by Manu Chao – this is great for learning to talk about likes and dislikes. Be careful though – the original version does reference marijuana but the link I’ve shared omits this! There are also a couple of lines in French.
10. Focus on communication and not being 100% accurate
Too many learners shy away from speaking Spanish in front of others due to being afraid of making mistakes. However, if you create the right classroom culture, this should be less of an issue.
Make sure to tell learners to focus on getting their ideas across rather than worrying too much about being accurate! It’s better to say 90/100 words accurately than only say 10 words perfectly!
11. Repeat in new ways
Being taught something once doesn’t mean the learning will stick. While there are ways you can create sticky learning during initial teaching, when learning a language, we need lots of exposure before it becomes language we can use accurately and confidently.
Language needs embedding and to do that, it needs to be presented to learners in different ways on multiple occasions!
Final thoughts
We hope you’ve found these eleven Spanish lesson ideas useful! They can be adapted for use with both children and adult beginners. Above all else, make sure your learners leave your lesson with a sense of achievement that they can do something they couldn’t do when they arrived!