One-to-one lessons
How to prepare for your private Spanish lessons in Madrid and make progress without losing focus
Goals set in real situations, a pace your diary can sustain and your own week as material. This is how to organise one-to-one lessons.
You sign up for private Spanish lessons with the best of intentions. The first few weeks go well. Then come the trips, a meeting that overruns, a cancelled session. Two months later, the lesson is a pleasant conversation that is going nowhere.
A one-to-one lesson has an obvious advantage: everything is tailored to you. But without a minimum of structure, that flexibility also drifts. These are the decisions that make the biggest difference to the outcome.
Define your goal in situations, not levels
“I want to reach B2” is a reasonable goal, but it does not guide any particular session. A list of situations that you currently handle in English, or simply avoid, is a far better guide:
- Running the Monday team meeting without switching language.
- Calling your building’s managing agent about a fault at home.
- Talking to your children’s form tutor at the first meeting of the school year.
- Replying to a supplier’s email without running it through a translator.
With three or four situations like these, the teacher organises the grammar around what you need. The subjunctive stops being a chapter in the textbook. It becomes the way to say «Prefiero que lo veamos el jueves» (“I’d rather we looked at it on Thursday”).
That is what the level test is for, your first conversation with your teacher. It measures your level, but above all it makes clear what you need to do in Spanish and by when.
Be realistic about the hours
Moving up a level takes time, and it is worth knowing that before you start. These are the Institute’s guideline estimates for one-to-one lessons:
| Step | Approximate hours |
|---|---|
| From A1 to A2 | 60 |
| From A2 to B1 | 80 |
| From B1 to B2 | 100 |
The figures vary depending on how much you practise outside class. With two and a half hours a week, going from B1 to B2 takes about forty weeks. With five hours a week, about twenty.
How you spread the hours also matters. Two or three sessions a week usually achieve more than a single three-hour one. What you review often sticks sooner than what you study in one go.
Bring your week to the lesson
This is the great advantage of a private lesson, and the one people make least use of. You do not have to follow a textbook page by page: you can bring your week.
Have you got an appointment at the bank on Thursday? Tuesday’s session can prepare the questions: «¿Qué comisiones tiene esta cuenta?» (“What fees does this account have?”), «¿Me lo puede mandar por escrito?» (“Could you send it to me in writing?”). If you have received a letter from Hacienda (the Spanish tax authority) that you do not understand, bring it. If you are going to present results in Spanish, rehearse the whole presentation and ask for corrections at the end.
The Institute’s tip. Keep a note on your phone called “Phrases I was missing”. Whenever you are lost for words in a real conversation, jot down what you wanted to say, even if it is in your own language. Spend the first ten minutes of each session on that list. No textbook offers anything so closely matched to your day-to-day life.
Ask for the corrections that help you
Correcting everything is exhausting, and what is corrected in passing is forgotten. It is more useful to agree on two or three priority errors and keep an eye on them for several weeks. Ask the teacher to note them down and come back to them in the next session.
Those errors depend a great deal on your mother tongue. Among Arabic speakers, for example, these are common:
- Confusing p and b, because Arabic has no /p/ sound: «peso» (“weight”) and «beso» (“kiss”), «pata» (“paw”) and «bata» (“robe”).
- Mixing up e with i and o with u. Standard Arabic distinguishes three vowel qualities; Spanish has five. Hence «mesa» (“table”) for «misa» (“Mass”).
- Leaving out the indefinite article: «Es empresa grande» instead of «Es una empresa grande» (“It’s a large company”).
A teacher who knows your language anticipates these mistakes and explains where they come from. The Institute’s teachers are bilingual in Spanish and Arabic and work with this comparison between the two languages. There is more detail in Spanish for Arabic speakers.
Choose a timetable that survives the week
Lessons are rarely lost through lack of interest. They are lost to the diary. Look for a slot that holds up. In Madrid, the 14:00–16:00 slot tends to go on business lunches. The end of the afternoon is the first thing to be sacrificed when a meeting overruns. First thing in the morning usually holds up better.
If you have to leave Madrid, do not cancel: switch the session to online. For those days, how to make the most of a live online lesson will help. And if you do cancel, give 24 hours’ notice; with less, the session is deducted.
Check the validity of the packs too: 10 hours in 4 weeks, 20 in 8 and 50 in 20. All three assume a pace of about two and a half hours a week. If that pace is not realistic for you right now, start with single hours or with the smallest pack.
Review the plan every month
Once a month, go back to the list of situations you started with. Have you run the Monday meeting in Spanish yet? If the answer is still no, change the focus of the sessions, not their number.
Private lessons at the Institute
The International Institute of Spanish offers one-to-one lessons at Gran Vía 40 and online. Every programme starts with a free 30-minute level test. A single in-person hour costs €70; with a pack, between €65 and €50 an hour. There is no enrolment fee and no charge for materials. You will find the details on our private Spanish lessons in Madrid and prices pages.
