¡Feliz año nuevo! Learning a language is one of the commonest New Year’s resolutions, and one of the most commonly abandoned by February. Both facts have the same cause: the resolution is easy to make and, without a plan, hard to keep. This guide is for anyone who has just resolved to learn Spanish, or to pick it up again. It sets out why Spanish is the right choice, why language resolutions fail, and a plan for the year that ends with you holding a conversation.
Why Spanish is the right resolution
Spanish is the second most spoken native language in the world, with around 500 million native speakers in more than twenty countries, and it is the language British people most want to learn. The British Council has ranked it first among the languages that matter most to the UK’s future, and in schools it has become the most popular language outright: Spanish has led at A-level since 2019, and in 2025 it overtook French at GCSE for the first time. Whatever you take it up for, work, travel, family or the pleasure of it, you are choosing the language with the most doors behind it.
It is also the kindest of the major languages to an English speaker. The spelling is regular, the pronunciation is consistent, and thousands of words are near enough to English to be recognised on sight, which is why Spanish is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. And the Spanish-speaking world is generous with learners. Nobody in Madrid or Mexico City expects a foreigner to speak perfectly; most people are pleased that you are trying, help you along, and think better of you for the effort. The fear of sounding silly, which stops so many adults from opening their mouths, has less to feed on in Spanish than in almost any other language.
Why language resolutions fail
They fail in predictable ways, and each one has a remedy.
The goal is vague. “Learn Spanish” cannot be finished, so it is never started properly. A goal with an edge to it can: hold a ten-minute conversation by Easter, order dinner and argue about the bill in June, run a meeting by the autumn. Decide what you want to be able to do and by when, and the year organises itself around it.
There is no fixed time. A resolution kept “when I have a moment” is kept until the second week of January. A lesson at the same hour every week is the single most reliable device we know for making a language stick, because the appointment does the deciding for you; our comparison of apps, classes and a private tutor explains why the format matters as much as the hours.
The streak replaces the speaking. An app is a good way to start and a poor way to finish. Ten minutes of vocabulary a day is worth having, but a 100-day streak is not a conversation, and the learners who feel they have failed by spring are often the ones who did the app faithfully and never spoke to anyone. Why apps stop short of fluency sets out the gap, and what fills it is a person.
There is nothing to aim at. Book the trip. A weekend in Seville in April or a week in Mexico in the summer turns a vague resolution into a deadline, and a deadline is what gets the lessons attended.
The plan is too big. An hour a day is a plan for the first fortnight. Twenty minutes a day, plus the weekly lesson, is a plan for the year, and the year is what counts.
A realistic plan for the year
January to March: foundations. A weekly lesson, the sounds of the language first, since Spanish pronunciation is easier than English and worth getting right from the start, then the present tense, the essential verbs and the two words for “to be”, ser and estar. By March you introduce yourself, order, ask directions and understand the answer.
April to June: conversation. The past tenses arrive and with them the ability to tell someone what you did at the weekend, which is where conversation begins. This is the quarter for the first trip, and for the first exchange evening or Colombian café from our guide to practising Spanish in London.
July to September: consolidation. Summer is when resolutions quietly lapse, so this is the quarter to change the format rather than stop: a Spanish series with Spanish subtitles, a novel for learners, and, for anyone with a deadline or a posting in the autumn, an intensive Spanish course that does three months’ work in a week.
October to December: the Spanish you actually need. By now the language is yours to shape. For professionals that means business Spanish, the meetings, calls and emails of your own job; for everyone it means the subjunctive, which sounds alarming in January and is simply the next step in November. By December, a beginner who has kept the weekly lesson is holding real conversations, which matches what how long it takes to learn Spanish predicts for a year of steady work.
What you get besides the language
The practical returns are the obvious ones: a language spoken by half a billion people, a market from Madrid to Buenos Aires, a holiday that becomes a conversation rather than a transaction, and, for the many people who learn Spanish for a partner, the family dinner understood at last. There is a less obvious one. Studies of people who use two languages have repeatedly found that they show the symptoms of dementia several years later, on average, than people who use one; whatever the mechanism, a second language is the one hobby that exercises the brain, the diary and the palate at once.
Questions people ask in January
Is it too late to start if I missed the first week? No. The calendar is the excuse, not the reason. A resolution started in February, or in June, with a weekly lesson attached, beats one started on 1 January without.
How much time do I need each week? One lesson, and twenty minutes a day between lessons: listening on the commute, a page of a reader, the homework. That routine takes a beginner to conversation within a few months.
I have started and stopped before. What is different this time? The fixed appointment and the specific goal. Most abandoned attempts were app-only or class-only, with no one to speak to and nothing to aim at. A tutor who plans the lessons around your goal and corrects you as you go removes both reasons for stopping.
What if my resolution is a different language? The plan is the same whatever the language: a fixed hour, a specific goal and a native speaker to correct you. For German, German Language Coach offers one-to-one German lessons in London on the same basis.
Online or in person? Either, and for many of our students both: lessons at home or in the office in London, and online Spanish lessons with the same tutor when travel or the diary gets in the way. The resolution survives the week you are in New York.
Make it the one that sticks
A resolution becomes a habit at the moment it acquires a time, a place and a person. Private Spanish lessons supply all three: a fixed hour each week, at your home or your office, with a native speaker who has taken a great many people from ¡feliz año nuevo! to their first real conversation. Book the first lesson before the resolution cools, and let the year do the rest.
Make it a resolution that sticks: learning Spanish online fits around a working week, wherever you are.
Read next: How long does it take to learn Spanish? · Apps, classes or a private tutor: what works best? · Why learn Spanish?