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How to make the most of a live online Spanish lesson
Headphones, your own material, written corrections and the Spanish of video calls. What sets a useful online lesson apart from just another call.
You have your Spanish lesson at nine, between two video calls. You open your laptop, glance at your email and the camera is slow to start. Ten minutes in, you are still thinking about the previous meeting. And so the online lesson becomes just another call in your day.
It doesn’t have to be that way. A live lesson by video conference works, but it calls for different habits from those of the classroom. These are the ones that make the most difference.
What changes compared with the classroom
An online lesson saves you the journey and follows you wherever you go: the office, your home or a hotel in another city. It also leaves a written trail. Whatever is noted down in the chat or in a shared document is not lost when you log off.
It has its costs too. Compressed audio makes fine pronunciation work harder. Your email is one click away. And you lose part of the body language that, in a conversation, helps you understand.
Almost everything that follows is about making the most of the former and making up for the latter.
Before you connect
Five minutes of preparation change the whole session.
- Headphones with a microphone. A laptop microphone picks up echo and noise. To work on the difference between «pero» (“but”) and «perro» (“dog”), the teacher needs to hear you clearly.
- Email closed and notifications silenced. An hour with interruptions is worth half an hour.
- Material open. The email you need to answer, Thursday’s presentation, the contract you still don’t fully understand.
- The platform you use at work. Lessons can be held on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. If you choose the one you use every day, you also practise its actions in Spanish: sharing your screen, raising your hand, writing in the chat.
During the session, corrections in writing
In the classroom, many corrections are said out loud and forgotten. Online, you have a chat. Ask the teacher to write the important corrections there, or in a document you can both see. When you finish, copy that text into your notes.
Share your screen whenever you work with real material. Correcting an email live, sentence by sentence, teaches more than discussing it from memory.
And keep your camera on. Seeing the other person’s face helps you understand. The teacher also notices sooner when something has not been clear.
The Spanish of the video call itself
Video calls have their own repertoire. It is worth practising it in class, because you will use it every week.
| Situation | Phrase |
|---|---|
| Checking the sound | «¿Me oyes bien?» (“Can you hear me all right?”) |
| Flagging a problem | «Se te ha congelado la imagen» (“Your picture has frozen”) or «Te oigo entrecortado» (“You’re breaking up”). |
| Microphone off | «Tienes el micro silenciado» (“You’re on mute”). Many people say «Estás muteado». |
| Asking to speak | «Si me permites un apunte…» (“If I may make a point…”) |
| Interrupting politely | «Perdona que te corte un segundo» (“Sorry to cut in for a second”). |
| Showing something | «Comparto pantalla. ¿Se ve bien?» (“I’m sharing my screen. Can you see it?”) |
| Closing the meeting | «Lo dejamos aquí y te mando un resumen por correo» (“Let’s leave it there and I’ll email you a summary”). |
A note on forms of address. In many Spanish companies people use tú (the informal “you”) from the very first meeting, even with senior managers. If in doubt, start with usted (the formal “you”) and switch to tú when the other person does.
If you live in another time zone
Many people take their lessons from outside Spain. The time difference seems like a detail until a session goes wrong.
The Institute’s tip. In a country that does not change its clocks, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE, your lesson moves twice a year. Spain puts its clocks forward at the end of March and back at the end of October. A lesson at 10:00 Madrid time is at 11:00 in Riyadh in summer and at 12:00 in winter. When booking, always confirm which time the session has been booked in: Madrid’s or yours.
After you hang up
The session does not end when you close the call. Spend ten minutes rereading the chat. Pick three expressions and set yourself the aim of using one in your next real meeting. In the following lesson, say how it went.
Between sessions, fifteen or twenty minutes of review are enough to keep up continuity. Frequency matters more than length. If you also have in-person lessons, you may find how to prepare for your private lessons in Madrid useful.
Live online lessons at the Institute
The International Institute of Spanish offers live online one-to-one lessons on Teams, Zoom or Google Meet. A single hour costs €50; packs cost €240 (5 h), €450 (10 h), €850 (20 h) and €2,000 (50 h). You can alternate them with in-person sessions at Gran Vía 40. Everything starts with a free 30-minute level test. Find out more on our live online Spanish lessons page.
