What students say – More student reviews
Rated 5 out of 5
Lynn Cain (verified owner) – 23rd March 2026
Love this course. I started trying to learn Spanish using Duolingo but gave this up when I went to a class, as I realised that Duolingo was South American Spanish. I went to the class for a while, but then I found JSS, which I’ve found to be the most useful. I like the fact that I can go at my own pace and will always have the videos and lesson notes to refer back to. James explains things really well and there are quizzes which track progress. I definitely recommend this course. I’ve found the spoken lessons very useful. I’m still working through them, but I intend to keep going over them to help everything stick in my memory. I’m surprised at how much I’ve understood when doing the listening exercises, especially as, for the most part, I’ve been listening before reading the lesson notes. The lessons have also given me the confidence to try speaking Spanish in shops etc. I find the direct Q&A chat very useful. I’ve asked for clarification a couple of times when I’ve been a bit unsure about something, but I also find reading all the other questions and answers very helpful too. As I’m doing this course remotely, it’s reassuring to know that there is back-up if I have any questions or problems with the course. Help is always at hand. I also find the cultural tips useful. Since James explained about the queuing system in Spain I no longer think people are pushing in! I’ve already directed some of my friends to the ‘My Living in Spain’ series on YouTube.
Rated 5 out of 5
Pamela Rose (verified owner) – 21st March 2026
Over the years, I’ve attended several formal beginners/intermediate Spanish courses in the UK with limited success. I still never felt I understood the structure of sentences or culture in Spanish very well. I saw a post about James Spanish School online course on Facebook. It was a perfect deal for the 100 lessons, especially as there was no time limit on using them and the fact you could repeat them as often and whenever you like was a real bonus. James is a very entertaining tutor and I love the humour and sarcasm when comparing Spanish and English perceptions of the different cultures. I always end up laughing. For various personal reasons, I’ve ‘fallen off the wagon’ in terms of working my way through the lessons on a regular basis, but the great thing is that I know I can revisit those lessons I completed and carry on again whenever it suits me, and I have every intention of doing that. The culture clips provided in the online lessons (and on the Facebook group) are so useful, as are the notes that come with the video lessons. Having a test after each lesson is really useful in terms of identifying progress and providing a sense of achievement. I would (and have) recommended this course to my friends and family. I haven’t started the spoken Spanish practice section yet. I live in the UK and so do not attend class groups; however, the online community group is very useful for reading students’ comments, listening to the short, focused culture clips and verb explanations that James uploads – these are fascinating and useful to dip in and out of. I’ve sent the link to lesson demos to my daughter in Australia, as learning Spanish would be so useful for her in her travels and if she ever wanted to move to a warmer climate closer to home.
Rated 5 out of 5
Kerry Charters-Byrne (verified owner) – 19th March 2026
I started to learn Spanish a few years before coming to live in Spain, including night school, Michel Thomas and other courses on CDs, various online courses and phrase books. I knew a fair bit of Spanish but didn’t really know or understand what I knew, nor how to put it all together. James’s classes were like the keys that unlocked it, and I finally understood what I knew and how to put my knowledge together with my new learning. He has come up with a unique formula to make learning the basics fun and easy and to give you a great structure to build on. His sense of humour makes the classes enjoyable and memorable. After the first year, the spoken language classes began and for once James did not do all the talking; he made use of his family, friends and actors to help us hear different voices and accents. The spoken process built up from single sentences to short stories with different themes and varied, interesting content. It rapidly became easier to understand the stories when you did not focus on one word, instead listening to whole sentences – trust James when he explains this theory. Being able to repeat the lessons multiple times has also helped to tune my ear in; often when you hear a word that you don’t understand, it’s because it’s more than one word but when spoken it blends together. I am far from fluent, but I can get by with long Spanish lunches with my neighbours, and I am sure I have made them laugh a few times with my mistakes. James gave me a firm base to stand on and the confidence to use what I have learnt. I was lucky enough to attend James’s physical class; his response to questions was always first class. In four years he answered every one of our class questions – nothing ever fazed him. To say “”he knows his stuff”” is putting it mildly; no question was ever a “”silly”” question. James’s humour also helps you to remember. Once I started online classes, the Q&A option is as good there as in the physical class – getting answers to your questions as you work through a subject is most helpful. I am also part of the JSS Facebook group; this has been a friendly environment to learn more, ask questions and have access to James’s cultural tips, which have been invaluable in helping to understand some of the Spanish customs and ways. After my first lesson with James I recommended him to others, and will always continue to do so. I am living proof that his methods work. I love my life in Spain – learning the language and culture enhances this more every day.
Rated 5 out of 5
Brod Kearon (verified owner) – 16 th March 2026
The practice lessons are great for getting you used to the sound of the language and deciphering what people are saying to you. It helps enormously to repeat those lessons over and over, especially the ones about the dreaded numbers! I’m working my way through the lessons again. Learning how to deal with tradesmen, the post office, the doctor, etc. is invaluable, but I feel I need more dialogue practice. For instance, now that we know (more or less) what people are saying, we need to be able to respond quickly and confidently, and that takes conversation practice. I can understand much more now than I did when I started the course, but I still get stuck when trying to speak. The Facebook videos are a great help in explaining how certain things work in Spain. I don’t live in Spain, but I spend about four or five months a year there, so I need to be able to operate in Spanish. The only trouble is that our place is in Catalonia and everyone speaks Catalan. Of course, they can speak Spanish but some of them pretend not to be able to! The cultural clips are great – could some of them perhaps be in Spanish? I haven’t seen ‘My Living in Spain’ – I must check it out.
Rated 5 out of 5
Julie Armitage (verified owner) – 13th March 2026
I am still at the early stage of the spoken course. I find it an advantage to have the course available for me to repeat each lesson as many times as I need so that I can tune in to the words. Learning to listen is an art, and James’s advice about not focusing on one word and its translation, but listening to the whole sentence/story, really works. I find it very useful to have each lesson available so that I can go back to it if I need to refresh my knowledge. It’s a great way to learn to listen as well as speak Spanish. Being part of an online group has really helped me. I can ask at any time if I need to clarify a point, and learning from what others ask is really useful too. The cultural clips are fascinating and help me navigate my new life here in Spain. The journey is always ongoing as James releases new ideas to help us.
Rated 5 out of 5
John Henderson (verified owner) – 11th March 2026
I tried learning Spanish before using ‘Spanish with Paul’, but I found it to be very laborious and struggled with being unable to speak to local Spanish people. I tried Duolingo, but I never liked the running streak of days as an incentive. I find JSS gets to the point so quickly and you focus on what’s important in relation to learning the language. The whole way you teach it is fun, enlightening, and to the point with minimum time wasted. The dad jokes are very good – the only bit I didn’t like were the jokes about a Scotsman driving a Dacia, which I am both! Ha! Honestly, all great fun. I had so much more confidence in a short time to say what I want, and my brain wasn’t full of useless information. I prefer the online classes because I can go at my own speed, revisiting/revising lessons at any time. We are all different in our learning, so we can focus on an element that we personally are struggling with and stay there until we master it without feeling any pressure from others. I also like the comment section because you still feel you are learning as a group, so you have the best of both worlds. My confidence has grown greatly regarding neighbours, shops, bars, and now I look forward to having that exchange with Spanish-speaking people. I loved the structure of learning a language from scratch, because naturally English is my first language and it came automatically without too much work, having youth on my side at the time. Finally, I have different neighbours and friends using JSS as a language tool – Americans, English, Dutch, Swiss – and we are all in agreement it’s the best one out of all the others we have tried. I have just started the spoken Spanish practice lessons, so I don’t have much to say about them, but I am really enjoying them and even after only a few I am feeling the benefit. I enjoy reading the questions and answers in the tutorial support and I find most, if not all, of my questions have been asked and answered. Some of the comments let you adjust your learning process. I really enjoy the culture clips and tips on Facebook and find them very helpful in answering my queries. As I mentioned before, the feeling of the group and the benefit of learning at your own pace gives you the best of both worlds.
Rated 5 out of 5
Jane Aldridge (verified owner) – 8th March 2026
My previous experience with learning Spanish involved Duolingo (which I hate) and an evening class because we had several holidays in Mexico and I always liked to learn vocabulary before we went on holiday so I could chat to staff in the hotel. When we made the decision to make a permanent move to Spain two years ago, I knew I needed to find a course that would help me understand how to have proper conversations. I was not going to be one of those Brits who appear to take a pride in not knowing any Spanish apart from how to ask for two beers! I enjoyed James’s course from the outset and found the way he explained the structure of the Spanish language really helpful. I found the two-verb rule incredibly useful. Learning at my own pace is great, and I have learned an awful lot from the course, I have to say. I make a point of speaking Spanish every time we go out, and the course has given me the confidence to do that. We belong to an intercambio group in Coin, where we live, and some new Spanish members complimented me on my Spanish, and I was absolutely delighted. I still have a lot to learn, but I can say that James’s course has really helped to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Thank you! I really like the spoken Spanish practice lessons – I found them really hard at first. Learning to listen to a whole sentence without trying to translate every word takes some time, but it makes a lot of sense. Where I live in Andalusia, local people speak very quickly and miss off the endings of words, so trying to get the gist of what they are saying makes sense. I am really surprised by the progress I have made, but I put that down to the structure of the course. I purchased the additional spoken lessons and love the structure of those. After leaving them alone for a while I was surprised by how much more I understand. I have found the direct Q&A chat very useful on the occasions that I have used it, and I have enjoyed the cultural clips that I have viewed in the closed JSS Students group on Facebook. I love living in Spain.
Rated 5 out of 5
Peter Johnson (verified owner) – 6th March 2026
Finding James’s Spanish School has absolutely changed the way I think about learning a new language. After moving to Spain in 2020 I was determined to learn Spanish – like a lot of people I tried Duolingo and thought I was making some progress! This was until I came across James Spanish School. After my wife and I signed up to his in-class lessons we were a little bit nervous as the first lesson day approached – it felt like going back to my school days again! But we didn’t need to worry; as soon as we walked in we were totally put at ease by James’s fantastic personality. As part of the in-class lessons we had access to the same content as the online students, and it was fantastic that the content was exactly the same as the in-class lessons. What struck us first, right from lesson one, was how much we absorbed in every lesson. James has a real skill to deliver the lesson in a way that has clarity and detailed explanations of why you say things in a certain way and order. Having a non-pressured atmosphere absolutely helped to maximise the absorption of the subject of each lesson. Once the first year core lessons had ended, my wife and I were really looking forward to the spoken Spanish lessons. On our first day of the first year core lessons I remember us feeling a little nervous – like our first day at school; year two started with absolute excitement to put into practice all the information and knowledge that we learned in year one. It’s not until you look back that you realise how much you have progressed. I am not going to make out it was easy to listen to sentences in Spanish that got progressively longer with past, present and future tenses! And of course numbers! But after listening to James’s advice on not focusing on just one word or number as the rest of the sentence washes over you, it made perfect sense and gradually listening became so much easier. The sense of achievement is great when you just switch to auto mode in your head and understand totally what was said on the first play. What gave us the most satisfaction was to use the knowledge we gained in practical situations when out and about here in Spain – anything from a simple greeting to asking questions at the pharmacy, medical centre or shops that I would never have tried before without using a translation app. Each time you speak in Spanish in everyday life it gives you a massive boost of confidence! We also enjoyed the online lessons where you have to put English sentences into Spanish – once again you can really gauge how far you have come in such a relatively short time. Obviously you have to put some hours in each week on revision and study, but speaking from my own experience the determination in me became stronger as time went on, especially when a Spanish local congratulates you on a sentence or two that you have said to them and you understand what’s being said back to you in Spanish! James’s method of teaching is unique – and of course his legendary humour! Along with the video online lessons it was great to know that there was support available. I have used this feature on occasion when I had a question about a certain topic; my questions were always answered fully and promptly. For James there is no such thing as a silly question, so it was nice to know I could ask no matter how silly it seemed to me. Sometimes James’s answer just reminds you of something that you always knew but didn’t spring to mind immediately.
Rated 5 out of 5
David Austin (verified owner) – 28th February 2026
JSS is a totally refreshing approach to learning Spanish. I have tried various other methods and find they tend to get bogged down in detail and exceptions, whereas James gives you simple rules to follow. Even if I know that there are sometimes exceptions to a “”JSS rule”” it is still immensely helpful when under stress while talking with a Spaniard. A good example is “”if a noun ends in A, it is feminine, if not it is masculine””. Yes, there are a few exceptions, but it never dawned on me before that this is 99.9% true, and it takes a lot of stress away in conversation. The lessons are very enjoyable (despite James’s dubious sense of humour) and the insights into Spanish culture fascinating. I have only just started the spoken section, but am amazed at how much I can understand. Doing an online course can seem a lot less involved than lessons in person; the ability to ask questions and see the comments of others does make you feel more like being in a community.
Rated 5 out of 5
Aileen Burges (verified owner) – 23rd February 2026
I really recommend this course for Brits wanting to learn Spanish . I have done various Spanish courses before, both online and in the classroom, and I can say this one is the absolute best. I am on lesson 20 of the online course and am thoroughly enjoying it. The experience far exceeds all the other courses.
Rated 5 out of 5
Kelly Nicholls (verified owner) – 28 February 2026
I have only recently signed up and straight away I have learned so much more. James has a brilliant style which makes it easier to learn and is very funny too.
Rated 5 out of 5
Sarah Freeman (verified owner) – 22 February 2026
I bought the full course a couple of weeks ago. I learnt more in the first few lessons than I have doing over a year on Duolingo and other apps. James is very good at explaining and is fun to listen to. I have laughed out loud on more than one occasion! I would highly recommend to anyone looking to learn the language.
Rated 5 out of 5
Stuart Bennett (verified owner) – 30 December 2025
Great lessons, definitely improved my understanding in only 4 lessons
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