10 Best Books to Learn Spanish UK 2024 | Collins, Paul Noble and More

Those who are looking to become fluent in Spanish may want to consider buying a couple of these varieties, as although the complete learning books will teach you a bit of everything, to truly master the language you’ll probably want to go a little deeper.

Books will be clearly labelled for beginners, intermediates or above (with the exception of grammar or verb titles that are designed to supplement learning through most stages) so just select appropriately.

If you had some Spanish lessons at school or are looking to pick it up again after some time off, we would recommend starting with beginner books. This way you will have the option of refreshing your knowledge of the basics, or at least having a skim through before you get to some topics you haven’t yet learnt.

Therefore you may want to ascertain if a book has some tests or exercises for writing down what you have learnt in each section, or puzzles and games throughout the book to keep you on your toes. If you want to use the book again you could always use a separate exercise book for scribbling the answers in.

This feature will also help you develop your reading and writing skills in Spanish. Even if you’re only learning for conversational purposes, seeing and constructing the sentences yourself will give you a better overall grasp not only of your listening and speaking skills, but of the language in general.

Similarly, layouts with different fonts, text boxes and colours can help keep you engaged by adding an element of interest and will catch the eye of creatively-minded learners.

Books with additional audio CD’s or online resources are a great way to help with this, and will have you chatting away like a native without any potentially embarrassing mispronunciations. Some may also include audio in a question-and-answer style, so you can hone your conversation before you speak to a real life Spaniard!

They can also assist in refining your listening skills, and will allow you to imagine the words being spoken as you are reading or writing them so they become even more familiar.

It’s also a useful feature to have on hand if you just don’t fancy carrying around two books when heading to a library or cafe to study, or if you’re bringing your learning book abroad with you.

Although not wildly dissimilar, there are some written and spoken differences within each regional dialect that could cause confusion if used incorrectly.

Latin American Spanish also excludes an entire category of personal pronouns, so if in doubt European Spanish is probably the safest bet for most learners, whether heading backpacking in Chile or just wanting to learn to order some tortilla y vino in Granada.