The short version
- Most of the work of learning to speak can be done on your own: getting the words ready and training your mouth to say them.
- Build a "conversation partner" by recording questions on your phone with gaps to answer in.
- Practising alone gets you ready. You still need real conversations to use it, but you'll get far more out of them.
"I've got no one to practise with" is probably the most common reason people give for not speaking Spanish. It makes sense. Speaking seems to need two people. But you can get a lot of useful practice speaking Spanish alone, at home, in the car or on a walk, and it prepares you for the real conversations much better than waiting for them.
What finally got me speaking in Spain was building conversations around themes and practising them out loud before I needed them. You can do all of that on your own.
Here's how to do it.
Why practising alone works
When you go blank in a conversation, it's usually for one of two reasons. You can't find the words fast enough, or your mouth has never actually said them. Both of those can be fixed without anyone else in the room.
Saying sentences out loud on your own trains your mouth. Rehearsing a particular conversation means the words are ready when it comes up. And with nobody listening, you can get things wrong, repeat them ten times and sound silly without it mattering.
The one rule: it has to be out loud. Reading a dialogue in your head or thinking through an answer doesn't count. A whisper is fine. Silence isn't.
First, decide what you're practising
Practising alone goes wrong when there's no plan. You sit down, say Hola, me llamo…, and run out of things to say after thirty seconds.
So pick one conversation theme for the week and write down the questions someone might ask you about it. Here's an example for talking about where you live:
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Dónde vives? | Where do you live? |
| ¿Cuánto tiempo llevas viviendo allí? | How long have you been living there? |
| ¿Qué es lo que más te gusta del barrio? | What do you like most about the area? |
| ¿Es tranquilo? | Is it quiet? |
| ¿Hay buenos bares cerca? | Are there good bars nearby? |
| ¿Vives solo o con alguien? | Do you live alone or with someone? |
These questions are your raw material. Every method below uses them.
Five ways to practise on your own
1. Make a voice-memo conversation partner
This is the one I'd start with. It's the closest thing to a real conversation you can get alone.
Open the voice memo app on your phone. Read your questions out loud in Spanish, leaving about five seconds of silence after each one. Then play it back and answer each question in the gap. When that gets easy, record them again in a different order with shorter gaps. Now you have to answer faster, and you can't predict what's coming next.
It feels strange for the first day or two. It works because you're answering a real voice, in real time, instead of reading from a page.
2. Check yourself with phone dictation
Add a Spanish (Spain) keyboard to your phone and use the microphone button to dictate. Say a sentence and see what it types.
If it writes what you meant, your pronunciation was clear enough. If it writes something odd, try the sentence again and listen to which word went wrong.
Dictation guesses from context and sometimes corrects your mistakes for you, so it can't tell you everything. It's still a quick, free way to spot words that aren't coming out clearly, like pero and perro.
3. Read a dialogue, then cover one side
Write a short conversation using your questions and your answers. Read the whole thing out loud a few times. Then cover your side and say your answers from memory while reading the questions.
Once your side is easy, cover the other side and practise asking the questions. Being able to ask is just as important as being able to answer.
4. Describe photos from your phone
Scroll through your camera roll, stop on any photo, and say three things about it in Spanish. Where it was, who was there, what you did. Esto es en la playa de la Malvarrosa. Estoy con mi hermana. Fue en agosto y hacía muchísimo calor.
It's a good way to practise the past tense on things you actually remember, and you'll never run out of material.
5. Shadow short clips
Shadowing means playing a short bit of Spanish audio and repeating it at the same time as the speaker, copying their rhythm and intonation. It's very good for the mouth side of speaking. There's a full guide in shadowing in Spanish: what it is and how to do it.
Which method to use when
Each method is good for a different problem. If you know what's holding you back, you can spend more time on the one that helps most.
| If your problem is… | Try this |
|---|---|
| Going blank when someone asks a question | Voice-memo partner |
| Not being understood | Phone dictation check |
| Not knowing what to say | Read a dialogue, then cover one side |
| Only knowing the present tense | Describe photos from your phone |
| Sounding flat or very English | Shadowing |
You don't need all five every day. Two of them, done out loud for 15 minutes, is plenty. If you want a structure for those 15 minutes, there's one in a 15-minute daily Spanish routine that works.
What practising alone can't do
Practising alone gets the words ready and gets your mouth used to them. What it can't do is give you surprises. A real person asks things you didn't plan for, speaks faster than your recording, and reacts to what you say.
Solo practice is preparation. It's easy to keep preparing because it feels safe. Once you can get through a conversation on your own without notes, go and have it with a person, even a short one.
The good thing is that real conversations go much better when you've done this first. You'll understand more, because you've already heard yourself say most of it, and you'll have questions ready to keep things going. For ideas on where to find people, see where to get Spanish conversation practice online. You can also post a voice note in the 100 Spanish Conversations community on Skool and get replies from other learners.
Recap
- Most of the work of learning to speak can be done on your own.
- Pick one theme and write the questions you'd be asked.
- Use a voice-memo partner to practise answering in real time.
- Check your pronunciation with phone dictation.
- Practise alone to get ready, then use it in real conversations.
If you'd rather not write all the questions and dialogues yourself, 100 Spanish Conversations gives you the words, sentence patterns and conversation for a new theme each week, ready to practise on your own.
Leeroy studied Spanish for years before moving to Spain and finding he couldn't hold a conversation. He built Basically Spanish around the method that fixed it. Questions? leeroy@basicallyspanish.com