The Complete Spanish Course for Intermediate Level

Becoming an intermediate Spanish speaker

It’s easy to know when you’re a beginner. It’s also easy to see a lot of progress in the early stages because you are comparing it to not knowing anything.

But what happens when you’ve been a beginner for a while? How do you reach the next level?

These are murky waters because as you get comfortable with a lot of the basics, it becomes increasingly harder to figure out what the next steps are to improve.

Unfortunately, it’s too common for beginners to get stuck in limbo where you're moving in and out of progress.

One week you feel like there’s a small opening or breakthrough, the next it seems impossible to mix and match things you feel you should already know instantaneously.

Most beginners are simply maintaining their current level, but can’t seem to get past it.

And you can get stuck right at the cusp of completely leaving the beginner stage behind, often for several months, and for some learners – even years.

It feels like you’ve reached a plateau where, no matter how hard you try, most weeks it’s hard to look back and see any improvement at all.

That’s exactly the point where you get stuck. You get sucked into this plateau because you don’t experience the same quantum leaps you made in the beginning.

Instead, learning Spanish becomes a grind just to maintain the level you’re at now. It stops being as fun as it was in the beginning.

It’s unfortunate because right on the other side is where the language starts to open more opportunities.

A confident mid-level (B1 to B2), is where you start to flirt with conversational fluency.

This is where you can have more meaningful engagements with Spanish that go beyond introducing yourself or ordering a cup of coffee.

What stands in your way of leaving the beginner phase behind (forever) and advancing as a mid-level Spanish speaker?

One thing that tends to get overlooked when you’re stuck is “real-world application”

When you advance through the mid-levels, there’s often a conflict between an itch to launch everything in your Spanish arsenal and not wanting it to fall flat on your face in embarrassment.

It’s a weird language conundrum because it’s hard to be immersed if you’re not constantly in a Spanish-speaking environment – and even when you have the option, it’s often scary to pursue it head-on.

It’s one of the big roadblocks but the key is finding a way to bridge this in your learning material.

When you’re pushing through study material without linking it to practical exercises, it becomes increasingly difficult to see any improvement.

You need to make connections and witness your studying come to life. You need those “Aha!” moments where something clicks, and you’re able to trace a line back to a lesson you had.

Without it, keeping up momentum becomes a huge challenge.

“Painful.” “Tedious.” “Boring.”

Feeling this way is all too common when you’ve reached a plateau.

Studying becomes more like a chore and less like an exciting new chapter.

Who could blame you?! (Or any other student, for that matter.)

It isn’t because you lost your “passion” for learning the language. It’s just that you can’t read yourself out of this situation.

Most learners don’t think about applying their Spanish in practical scenarios until they feel ready.

They feel like they need to study themselves up to a certain level before a calm feeling of confidence and certainty flows over their body and tells them – “You now have the level to go out and talk to Spanish speakers.”

That might never happen.

You’ll probably never feel ready without testing your ability at each step.

Think about it this way…

What would you think if a football team didn't play practice matches before the start of a new season?

What if they only had technical training and only prepared tactics and strategy on whiteboards the entire pre-season – and then didn’t try any of it out until their first match?

Wouldn’t you expect them to have tested things out in practice first? Of course, you would.

In sports or physical exploits, it seems obvious that you want to prepare for competition almost as if it was the real thing.

Breaking your Spanish learning plateau is not much different. It’s something you have to train and play with if you want to make those big leaps you did at the beginning of your learning.

Instead, it’s not a competition you are preparing for but a conversation in Spanish.

And just like most sports teams have a structured plan and a coach, it’s incredibly difficult to break out of your plateau without something to guide you.

Your learning material connects the missing dots you need in practice…

The clearer the structure and guidance in your lessons, the better prepared you’ll be (and the better you’ll feel) when you get room to play around with it. But getting the “right” learning material also becomes increasingly difficult when you advance from a beginner level. 

It’s easy to spend a lot of time piling up a tower of learning methods, books, apps, online tools, and classes. 

On paper, you might think you’ve gathered a solid collection that will take you closer to fluency, but in reality, you’ll waste more time sorting through where to start. 

Even worse, you might end up selecting material that’s irrelevant to the real-life interactions you’ll have.

Or something that doesn’t progress accordingly from where you are now to where you want to go – so you keep doubling back to old lessons instead of moving forward.

That reinforces the plateau where everything feels like a chore, which is the problem you had in the first place.

Ideally, your material should: 

• Match realistic scenarios

• Connect lessons with practical exercises that increase confidence every step of the way

• Command focus – too many irons in the fire make it hard to see significant progress

Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all, and you’ll have to decide what learning method and material appeals to you, but as you’re breaking away from a beginner level, you need to be more and more selective about what you focus your study around if you want to see progress. 

The beginner approach – “I can consume as much knowledge, in as many different varieties, as I want, without any specific aim” – might work for becoming a well-versed beginner, but not for advancing to the next level.

The final barrier that stands in your way is when you’re missing navigation to where you want to arrive.

No learning goal often means no learning gains

I know it’s easy to believe that the learning plateau is just a temporary phase that you’ll break through as long as you keep grinding through the same things.

The hard work of staying consistent and paying your dues will cash out at some point, right?

Don’t get me wrong, having that discipline when learning Spanish is always an incredible advantage.

The problem is when you put all your energy into studying as a beginner – and that approach doesn’t work anymore.

It used to be helpful because when you start, you need a certain base before you have something to play around with.

It’s fine to cast a wide net as a beginner and consume Spanish in any way, shape, or form.

At this point, the segment for Spanish in your brain is like an empty void, and you can pour as much knowledge into it as your appetite can handle. At some point, you don’t absorb Spanish at the same pace and start seeing diminishing returns in your efforts.

The difference is that, previously, you flooded an empty void with new knowledge – now, it contains information that has to interact with anything “new” that you add.

Isn’t it frustrating that the more we know, the more complicated everything seems?!

Without something to keep you fixed on moving forward, you risk circling your own learning plateau and feeling stuck in the same patterns over and over again.

Having a goal that filters out anything with diminishing returns helps you focus on the things that will move you forward.

Whenever we embark on a journey to learn a new skill, barriers like these feel all too real, and you might already experience this every time you sit down to study Spanish.

The thing is, we need to feel that it’s going somewhere, that we’re making progress. It’s a deep-rooted human need that applies to language learning as much as anything else.

We have a course that breaks down the barriers that keep you trapped in a learning plateau… 

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