spanish learning websites for students

The 13 Best Spanish Learning Websites for Students (Plus Tips to Make Your Own Spanish Class Website)

We’re teaching in a digital world.

Most students actually turn to websites to help them learn Spanish—and they can be an invaluable resource for teachers. 

Spanish learning websites can be accessed from anywhere, and they offer a variety of features (such as multimedia activities) and formats (such as “cloze” questions and open-ended questions) for different learning styles.

If saving your time and sanity sounds swell, here are 13 awesome websites for learning Spanish that you’ll definitely want to incorporate into your Spanish classroom.

I’ve also included tips on making your own Spanish website if you want to give your students a more customized experience!  

Contents

13 Spanish Learning Websites for Students

1. StudySpanish.com

 spanish learning websites for students

This website allows students to access brief explanations of grammatical points and practice with verb drills and pronunciation. It also offers custom flashcards (cool!), an idiom generator and a bilingual cultural section where students can read and listen about different aspects of Hispanic American and Spanish culture.

2. FluentU

FluentU logo

On top of more traditional grammar and vocabulary practice methods, your students can actually learn Spanish by watching clips of Spanish movies, TV shows, vlogs and other authentic media on FluentU. 

As a language learning platform, FluentU features interactive subtitles that explain Spanish words while linking to a video dictionary: 

Since it has flashcards and post-video quizzes too, it’s great for in-class activities, computer lab class days, long-term group projects and individual homework assignments.

Students can access it on both web and mobile (iOS and Android). 

3. Duolingo

spanish learning websites for students

With more than six million active users every month, Duolingo is the most popular language-learning platform around! Although it’s best known for its mobile app, Duolingo is also available for free on the web.

Duolingo’s Spanish course is very well-developed with plenty of support for teachers, and students can get through a lesson in as fast as 5 minutes. Each lesson consists of games like matching pairs and mock conversations for teaching vocabulary and grammar. There are also Spanish podcasts, stories and audio lessons that you can use as listening practice for students.

For a full review of Duolingo, you can check this out

4. Spanish Dict

spanish learning websites for students

No Spanish class website would be complete without a link to an English-Spanish dictionary. Spanish Dict is the most popular online resource available, with more than a million words available for translation.

Aside from being a dictionary, it even has Spanish courses, vocabulary lists and full grammar lessons from beginner to advanced. Students can also use it as a conjugator–it can identify the tense of a Spanish verb and even show the full conjugation chart.

5. Memrise

spanish learning websites for students

Memrise is a user-generated learning platform that specializes in language learning and uses flashcards as memory aids. Its focus is on conversational Spanish, and you can choose the specific Spanish dialect and accent that you want to teach.

One particular strength of Memrise is that it includes a lot of video clips of actual native speakers for students learning new Spanish vocabulary. It also keeps track of which words need to be reviewed for the day using spaced repetition.

For more about Memrise, here’s an in-depth review

6. Spanish Language and Culture by Barbara Kuczun Nelson 

spanish learning websites for students

One of the best and my personal favorite is Colby College’s website. There’s stuff here for absolute beginners to the most advanced students, ranging from verb conjugation practice to more open-ended exercises and even fun multimedia activities with music.

This is a site you’ll definitely want to recommend for your Spanish language courses and encourage your students to work with often.

7. Conjugation.org

spanish learning websites for students

A cool site that does just what you think it does: It conjugates verbs. In all tenses, moods, shapes and sizes.

Students just click here and enter a verb they wish to conjugate, choose the subject pronoun they want and…¡ahí está! (there it is!) The site even offers the -se conjugations of the imperfect subjunctive! Fancy!

8. Spanish Proficiency Exercises

spanish learning websites for students

A neat-o website from the University of Texas at Austin. The website features a series of video-recorded interviews with native speakers that gradually increase in complexity, so there’s something for every skill level—from beginning to superior.  Students can click around here to test themselves or build their listening comprehension skills.

9. Herramientas de español by Enrique Yepes

This is another neat site similar to Conjugation.org, but it has a greater number of topics that students can choose from.

In addition to verbs, students can click on self-correcting tutorials involving nouns and articles, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation. Some of the links take you to “off-site” websites like StudySpanish.com.

The breadth and variety of tutorials will appeal to students looking for more comprehensive online resources.

10. Spanish Language Drills by Samuel Schiminovich

A cool Spanish language practice website that offers drills on Spanish grammar. For each grammar topic, there are ten sentences where you have to fill in the blanks using dropdowns. The format is interesting because one sentence can have several possible correct answers.

Although fewer grammatical points are offered for practice, a neat feature of this site is that students get extensive feedback about why a particular answer was right or wrong.

11. CARLA: Center of Advanced Research on Language Acquisition

spanish learning websites for students

Okay, so this website isn’t exactly for practicing conjugating irregular verbs or mastering the differences between ser and estar. Still, the grammar glossary is extremely useful for students who are still struggling to understand how a noun differs from a pronoun and what on earth “subject-verb agreement” means.

It’s a “must-have” for beginning and intermediate Spanish students, as well as for advanced students who need a refresher!

12. Quizlet Flashcards

spanish learning websites for students

Quizlet might seem at first glance as though it would be too general for a list like this. However, the website offers the awesome capability to not only make your own study cards, but also to quickly look up and use flashcards that other students designed for their classes.

This means that there are entire sets of flashcards already available for categories like “reflexive verbs,” “body parts,” “animals,” “adjectives” and so much more. Students can even find flashcard sets based on a particular book chapter or teacher/professor.

13. Quia Web

spanish learning websites for students

This user-friendly website allows you to create your own educational games, quizzes, surveys and more, as well as explore more than ten thousand Spanish activities and quizzes created by other educators.

Students can also easily take your quizzes on the platform, and Quia automatically scores them and compile their grades for you. Why not take advantage of all those resources in one convenient location?

5 Quick Tips for Incorporating Websites into Your Spanish Classes

  • Make sure students don’t see the use of the websites simply as “busy work.” Let them know why you’re assigning the websites (practice for an exam, for example).
  • Since everyone learns differently, give your students a choice as to which websites they’ll work with. 
  • Consider assigning some websites for credit and others as optional (but highly recommended!). You can even use some of the exercises in class as input material or a quick warm-up.
  • To make the websites easy to find, post an organized list of favorites online and direct students there. 
  • Finally, encourage students to recommend additional nifty websites they might come across. 

How to Create Your Own Spanish Class Website

6 Reasons to Make Your Own Spanish Class Website

  • A class website saves time. Once you’ve established the site, all you have to do is to update it from year to year. For extra information, you can also just easily tell students, “It’s on the website.”  
  • It increases student responsibility. With a class website, students can do anything from finding their daily homework assignments to learning about study abroad opportunities. This gives them more opportunities for active learning rather than the traditional passive method of sitting in class and listening to the teacher.
  • It makes materials accessible. A website is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. With a website in place, students can access the information on their time, in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.
  • Your website creates an online community. This is especially true if the site includes links to foreign language clubs, cultural activities and events that students can also participate in on campus. Additionally, students can work collaboratively with tools like Google Docs without being in the same room. Teachers might also consider a comments section or chat option.
  • Most importantly, it makes learning fun. No one likes the same dry old worksheets every day with exercises divorced from the actual usage of the new language. With a class website, students can work outside the box and get more engaged.

What to Include in Your Spanish Class Website

Class-Specific Information

The first and most important information to include in any Spanish class website is class-specific information.

This includes, but is not limited to, the class syllabus and rules, the teacher’s schedule and contact information, lesson and homework materials and additional supplemental content for extra practice. This puts everything you want students and parents to know about your class right at their fingertips.

You may also decide to include a review of skills and concepts on your site so that struggling students can brush up.

Links to Other Sites

Why invent the wheel when there’s a wealth of excellent supplemental material for language study available online? There are plenty of fantastic websites available for Spanish students of all languages and at all levels. You can include any of the websites we’ve listed above, like Spanish DictStudySpanish.com or even FluentU

Cultural Information

Another important feature of any Spanish class website is cultural information about the more than 460 million people who speak Spanish as a native language. This can include maps and information on foods, holiday traditions, history, music, currency and virtually any other topic you can think of.

Fun Extras That Relate to Spanish Language Learning

There’s so much that makes Spanish an awesome language to learn, and here’s your chance to showcase all those fun features!

This is the perfect section for:

  • Songs and videos—I highly recommend Señor Jordan’s hilarious and informative videos on YouTube

  • Your teacher biography (especially if you do any traveling to Spanish-speaking countries)
  • Class photos, especially photos of cultural events
  • Links to study abroad opportunities or on-campus clubs

…And pretty much anything else your students would find interesting. You know your students; go with their interests and make your website so inviting that they’ll look forward to logging on!

 

And there you have it—a starter guide for making a Spanish class website, with 13 amazing sites that you can share with your students right away. 

Happy surfing!

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