The Language Learning Curve: What 500+ Spanish Learners Reported

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Language learning rarely follows a straight line. After asking more than 500 Spanish Obsessed readers about their Spanish, I found a few patterns in the time they had been learning, the time they spent each week and the skills they found hardest.

My own Spanish took plenty of turns too.

After five years of learning Spanish at school, I was only able to remember the bizarre phrase “tengo diez peces” (“I have ten fish”).

To be honest, when I started Spanish, I never thought that I would get much further than “buenos días”, so maybe talking about fish was a step forward from that!

As it turned out, I returned to Spanish as an adult in evening classes at university, and then jumped between various self-study courses before moving to Spain for an eight-week language course. I experimented with all kinds of materials and, perhaps most importantly, moved into an all-Spanish-speaking flat within a month or so. I spent the next two years in Spain, and the year after that in Colombia.

I remember watching Spanish TV on my first night in Valencia and wondering if I would ever understand what they were saying. After a few months in Spain, I could work my way through a newspaper (El País, probably not the easiest one for learners!), although I stopped every second word to look something up and took an hour to get through one article.

With listening, for a while I could only pick out words and phrases. Later, I started to connect the dots, moving from getting the gist to understanding the subtleties of a conversation. I remember the frustration many learners know, when they can understand more than they can say, and then the joy of finally being able to express myself as I wanted to.

Becoming a confident Spanish speaker took me a long time, and it was anything but a linear process. I certainly haven’t finished learning, and I hope I never do.

Fast-forward a few years, and I became curious to understand whether other people’s experiences learning languages were the same as mine.

I run a website for Spanish learners, Spanish Obsessed, with my Colombian partner Lis, and we asked our readers to share their experiences learning Spanish. Our survey asked how long they had been learning, how much time they spent on Spanish each week, what level they thought they had reached and how difficult they found different skills.

We were delighted to get more than 500 responses!

There’s an important limit to this data: it came from a voluntary, one-off survey of Spanish Obsessed readers. The answers were self-reported, including each person’s level, and we didn’t follow the same learners over time. That means the results describe this group, but they can’t tell you how long you personally will take, prove that one stage causes another or represent every language learner.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

How Long Had the Survey Respondents Been Learning Spanish?

When we compared time spent learning with self-rated level, here’s what people in this survey reported:

• People who described themselves as pre-intermediate had been learning for around 18 months on average.
• The biggest difference in reported learning time appeared between the pre-intermediate and intermediate groups.
• People who described themselves as advanced had been learning for an average of six years.

These are snapshots of different people, not a timetable for one learner. Someone who studies for five hours a day has a very different schedule from someone who studies for two hours a week, and “advanced” was each respondent’s own judgement rather than a test result. If you want a planning estimate based on focused study time instead of calendar years, see our guide to how many hours it takes to learn a language.

How Much Time Did Respondents Spend on Spanish Each Week?

The answers also showed that study time varied across the self-rated levels:

• Beginners reported nearly six hours of Spanish per week on average.
• People in the middle groups reported closer to three hours per week.
• The most advanced group again reported spending more time on Spanish, using a mix of listening, speaking and reading.

It’s tempting to turn that dip into a story about motivation, but the survey didn’t measure why people spent less time or what happened to those who stopped learning and never answered it. The practical point is simpler: if your early enthusiasm fades, a smaller routine you can keep is more useful than an ambitious one you abandon.

Which Language Skills Did Respondents Find Hardest?

Respondents rated speaking, reading comprehension, listening comprehension and grammar from 1 (easiest) to 5 (most difficult). These are perceptions rather than test scores, but they still show where this group felt the strain.

Here’s what they reported:

• Complete beginners rated grammar as especially difficult, while higher-level respondents rated it as less difficult.
• Elementary and pre-intermediate respondents gave speaking fluency and accuracy some of their highest difficulty ratings.
• Across the levels, speaking was generally rated as the hardest skill and reading as the easiest.

That doesn’t mean speaking has to wait until reading feels easy. It means that if speaking is the skill you want, it needs its own practice rather than being treated as something that will appear automatically after enough reading or grammar study.

Four Useful Phases to Recognise

Based on the survey patterns and our own experience, we’ve broken the process into four useful phases. They aren’t fixed scientific stages, and you may move through different skills at different speeds.

Use the descriptions to identify what feels familiar and choose your next focus. Don’t use them to predict a date when you’ll be “finished”.

Phase 1: Beginner to Elementary

At the beginning, everything is new and you can immediately see how to use many of the phrases and words you learn. This can feel like a burst of quick progress.

If you’re enjoying that early momentum, use it to build a routine before the novelty wears off. Grammar may still look like one large, intimidating subject, so keep it tied to phrases you actually want to use.

Focus areas for beginners:

• Enjoy the quick wins and use them to build a language-learning habit.
• Choose a routine that will still fit when the first burst of enthusiasm settles down.
• Start using simple phrases now, instead of waiting until you know all the grammar.

Phase 2: Elementary to Pre-Intermediate

At this point, the easy wins may start to thin out. You know enough to notice how much you still can’t do, and progress can feel less obvious even while your knowledge is growing.

Speaking can be especially frustrating when you understand more than you can produce. If your study time drops, shrink the routine until it fits, then give speaking a regular place in it.

Focus areas for pre-intermediate language learners:

• Revisit the reason you wanted the language and choose one goal you can act on this week.
• Track something concrete, such as conversations held or pages read, so slower progress is easier to see.
• Practise the skill that feels stuck instead of adding more general study.

Phase 3: Pre-Intermediate to Intermediate

This phase can take patience because the next improvement may require far more practice than an early vocabulary win. By now, though, you have enough language to make that practice much more interesting.

You may be able to follow the main idea in more of what you hear and read, and hold conversations that go beyond rehearsed introductions. Different skills won’t necessarily advance together, so a strong reader may still need focused listening or speaking work.

The wider your range of real conversations and input, the easier it becomes to notice the gaps that are actually worth working on.

Focus areas for intermediate language learners:

• Have as many real conversations with real people as you can.
• Increase your input with Spanish television, podcasts, books and news that are challenging but still understandable.
• Choose one recurring weakness from your conversations and work on it directly.

Phase 4: Upper-Intermediate and Beyond

By upper-intermediate, Spanish may start to feel less like an object you study and more like something you use. You can do more of the things that brought you to the language in the first place, even though there will still be gaps.

You can have more fulfilling conversations, understand a wider range of Spanish and spend more time doing things you enjoy in the language. That creates a useful loop: the more you enjoy Spanish, the more time you spend with it, and the more opportunities you have to improve.

Progress still won’t be automatic or perfectly smooth, but your practice can become much more personal.

Focus areas for advanced language learners:

• Keep trying to bring Spanish into your daily life. You can create plenty of immersion without moving to a Spanish-speaking country.
• Use Spanish for things you already do, while keeping focused study for the specific gaps that matter to you.
• Reassess your goals as they change, because “advanced” can mean very different things for conversation, work, exams or literature.

The useful part of a language learning curve isn’t predicting the date you’ll arrive. It’s recognising what feels difficult now, then choosing practice that trains that skill directly.