Click to discover why this online Spanish course is like no other
Online Spanish course 100 on-demand Spanish lessons, 75+ hours of listening content, WordAmigo vocabulary tools, and a closed Facebook student group.
In more detail
James Spanish School — JSS — is an online Spanish course built specifically for English-speaking adults who want to learn real, spoken Castellano for everyday life in Spain. Founded and taught by James Bretherton, a genuinely dual-native speaker of English and Spanish, JSS is not an app, not an AI-generated course, and not a generic language programme. It is a specialised system developed and refined over more than 25 years of face-to-face teaching experience.
James Bretherton arrived in Spain from Bristol at the age of four and completed his entire formal education in Spanish, from primary school through to a university degree with English language teaching qualifications. Spanish was not learnt — it was lived. This dual-native perspective is central to how JSS works. James understands from the inside of both languages exactly where English speakers encounter difficulties with Spanish, and he teaches through that understanding rather than around it.
The full JSS course comprises 100 streaming video lessons: 50 core lessons and 50 spoken Spanish practice modules. Together these represent over 75 hours of content, all professionally pre-recorded and available on demand, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no expiry date, on any device, from anywhere in the world. Students can repeat individual lessons as often as they wish, work at their own pace, and access detailed lesson notes, Q&A support, and self-assessment tools throughout.
The core lessons focus on the structure and logic of Spanish, explained through English and completely free of grammatical jargon. Students begin building correct sentences from lesson one, without ever being told what a gerund or a past participle is. Pronunciation is introduced at lesson six, before habits form. The spoken Spanish practice modules address the skill that defeats the majority of adult learners: understanding what native speakers say back to you at full speed. These modules are built around thousands of real-world exchanges featuring different Spanish accents from across Spain.
JSS also covers the cultural knowledge that textbooks and evening classes consistently ignore — how daily life in Spain is structured, what to expect at a Spanish wedding or funeral, and how to integrate comfortably and confidently into Spanish social life. These cultural elements appear within the core lessons and are expanded significantly within the JSS closed Facebook student group, where James uploads additional short cultural videos on request, answers questions that fall outside the lesson structure, and engages directly with students. The group is available to anyone who holds the full course and functions as a community where students can share tips, memory aids, and support each other through the learning process.
Vocabulary development is handled through WordAmigo, the AI-powered vocabulary system developed alongside the JSS course and included free with the full 100-lesson package. WordAmigo gives access to over 12,000 word pairings across more than 160 subject categories, with native-speaker audio playlists generated on demand, colour-coded pronunciation feedback, interactive flashcards, and text quizzes. Pronunciation recording and assessment — recording your voice, receiving instant colour-coded feedback, and repeating until each word is correct — is provided entirely through WordAmigo.
JSS carries a cast-iron guarantee: for any core lesson a student honestly feels they learnt nothing new from, they receive a free spoken Spanish practice lesson in return, no questions asked.
The first 10 lessons are priced at €55. The full 100-lesson course including WordAmigo is €399, payable in up to six monthly instalments. Students come from across Spain — the Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca, Costa Cálida, the Balearics, and the Canaries — as well as from Great Britain, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and across Europe. Most have previously attempted evening classes, language apps, town hall lessons, or other online courses with limited progress. With JSS, the consistent finding is that students understand Spanish for the first time, rather than simply memorising it.
James Spanish School has been helping English-speaking adults learn Spanish for over 25 years. JSS was founded by James Bretherton — who came to Spain at four, completed his entire education in Spanish, and carries both languages as a genuine native speaker.
James explains Spanish through English, unpacking the logic of the language rather than asking you to memorise rules you do not understand. Students who have made little real progress through evening classes, apps, or town hall lessons consistently find that with JSS they finally understand Spanish rather than just repeat it.
The full 100-lesson course is available on demand, 24 hours a day, from anywhere in the world, with no expiry date. It includes WordAmigo free — an AI vocabulary system with over 12,000 word pairings, native-speaker audio, and colour-coded pronunciation feedback.
The first 10 lessons are €55. The full course including WordAmigo is €399, payable in up to six monthly instalments. Cast-iron guarantee: for any lesson you honestly feel you learnt nothing from, you receive a free spoken Spanish lesson in return.
Start learning today: https://jamesspanishschool.com/shop3
Hello, I’m James Bretherton and welcome to James Spanish School. If you’re an English-speaking adult living in Spain or planning to, you’ve probably realised that learning Spanish isn’t just about vocabulary. It’s about confidence, clarity, and being able to join in the conversation around you. That’s exactly why I built JSS.
This isn’t an app, it’s not one of 30 AI-generated courses. JSS is a specialised system crafted over decades, designed to teach real-world Castellano — European Spanish — for everyday life in Spain. I’ve been teaching face-to-face for over 25 years and Spanish is my first language. I know what works, especially for adults who want to integrate quickly and comfortably.
Most of our students are over 60 and they’re not looking for grammar drills, they want results. We focus on spoken Spanish and from lesson one you’ll learn how to build correct sentences on the fly. We strip away all of the jargon and prioritise what really matters, which is tuning your ear and speaking with confidence.
Our 50 core lessons build the foundation, then we go deeper with 50 spoken Spanish practice modules and over 75 hours of listening content, because listening is the hardest part and the most important. We also cover cultural essentials — how to navigate the middle of the day, what to expect at a Spanish wedding and funeral, and how to integrate seamlessly.
And it does not stop there. Every student gets lifetime access 24/7 with no expiry, and can repeat lessons as often as they like, plus detailed notes, Q&A support, and self-assessment tools. If you ever finish a core lesson and genuinely learn nothing new, we’ll credit you with extra spoken Spanish practice lessons free of charge, no questions asked. That is our cast-iron guarantee.
And for vocabulary, we’ve built WordAmigo — our custom AI-powered system. It’s designed to help with memory retention, especially for senior learners. You’ll get access to over 11,000 word pairings, pronunciation testing, and smart flashcards that adapt to your progress.
So if you are ready to learn Spanish the smart way — with humour, clarity, structure, and real results — join us at JSS. I will be with you every step of the way. You have no idea how much content there is within the course and what you will be getting. Below you will find five of the common student groups. Click on the one or ones that seem closest to your situation and discover much more. Vamos!
So the JSS closed Facebook group is a place for you to ask questions that would be off topic within the normal lesson structure. I’m sure there are lots of things that people have wanted to ask, and they’ve waited until they think they’ll come across a specific lesson on the subject, and if it hasn’t come up that question gets lost. Well, this group is where you can ask me all of those questions. And of course I put out the cultural lessons which a lot of people really enjoy. Within the normal core lessons I have included many cultural lessons, but I always feel that I need to get back to verb endings, verbs, sentences, and structure, and sometimes when I’m going on about cultural content some people get bored. Well, this is totally different because you know that you’re in this group to get the cultural content videos, which I’m uploading, and people are asking for different ones which I’m creating as we go along. So I can add plenty of short videos here to keep everybody entertained.
Also, as I’ve got a captive audience, I can ask you questions — like I’ve been doing — if you can help me out with certain things when I’m going to make or upload them to the website. I ask your opinion because you are the real students, the people at the other end of the camera.
And that’s why also on the website we have many, many reviews from students. Many of you have sent in reviews. We couldn’t publish them all of course because there are so many, but we’ve got lots of them on the site. We’re finding that people are more visual learners, so people like visual content even with reviews. That’s why I’m hoping to add some reviews from students with a picture of them and then just a short MP3 audio that can be recorded with your phone, so that people can hear that these reviews are not just made by me — these are real people. And as you can see, one of my students, Kerry, has done a little audio which is exactly what I’m looking for. If anybody would be willing to do a few more of these and email them to me I would be incredibly grateful. I won’t post them on this group — they’ll go straight on the website. I’ll select the ones I would like. I want a variety of accents: if anybody’s got a broad Scottish accent, or Welsh, or American, or anything like that, that would be great. I would like people visiting the website for the first time to see the age group — and as I keep going on about, not all of you are old, some of you are very old. I would like some pictures of you now, not black and white ones please from when you got married, and a little audio MP3, because that goes such a long way. It’s all about reviews nowadays, as you know.
So this group is going to help you with the cultural content, and every now and again I can ask a little favour, like I’m doing now. I would be very pleased if anybody could do something like Kerry has done here. Thanks in advance.
So the JSS closed Facebook students group is a place for anybody who has the entire course to ask questions that are maybe off-topic from any of the lessons you’ve watched. Students are going to share ways that they’ve remembered things, or tips, or little charts that they’ve made, and you can ask each other questions. I’ll of course be monitoring the group to make sure nobody steps out of line, and I will upload a little cultural clip every week, and also reply sometimes with video, sometimes with text, to questions that you’re asking — maybe about me personally, about my life, about the course, or any part of Spain or the Spanish language that you’ve been curious about that I have not covered in any of the lessons.
So it’s a safe place for people to ask questions and have input from other students, because there are lots of students in there, and also for me to upload content that I haven’t put within the lessons because it’s cultural, or it’s off-topic, or it’s something that somebody’s asking me which I think other people would benefit from. So here’s a short video on it — a really good place for students to continue learning even if they’ve finished the entire course, or to help you realise that everybody is in the same boat as you and struggling to remember things and struggling to advance past certain lessons, and that you are not alone. When you’re doing the course on your own you might think it’s just you that’s struggling to understand these lessons, or maybe it’s just you that has done 20 and lost your mojo and hasn’t picked it up again. But it’s a good place — it’s like a group for Spanish lessons — a wonderful place for everybody to learn, and it would be really, really good to have you on board.