Native courses
Survival Like a Native
Land, greet, order, get home. Nine lessons covering the Spanish your first days in Spain will actually demand — from the first hello to the situations you hope never happen.
beginner → intermediate · 9 steps · 9 scenes
After this course you can
- Greet people the way locals actually do — and know when it's tú and when it's usted
- Handle numbers, prices and times without freezing at the till
- Ask for directions, ride the metro and take a taxi entirely in Spanish
- Check into a hotel, order food and drinks, and complain politely when something breaks
- Describe symptoms at a doctor or pharmacy — and cope in a real emergency
This course is for your first days on the ground: the airport taxi, the first café, the hotel desk, the moment someone rattles off directions at full speed. No grammar ladder, no CEFR levels — just the nine situations you cannot avoid, in the order you’ll meet them.
Each step pairs a lesson with a short practice session built from its real sentences. Read the lesson, do the practice, play the step’s scene, and the next step unlocks. Steps get harder the way real life does: hellos first, hospitals last — and the final steps assume nothing but deserve your full attention, because they’re the ones you’ll be glad you did.
What's inside
Counted from the course itself. Nothing here is rounded up.
- 9 steps
- A lesson, a drill built from it, and a scene — in the order real life hands them to you.
- 9 scenes
- Branching conversations with no undo. Where you end up is wherever your replies took you, and you can always play it again.
- 77 drills
- Built from the sentences in the step they belong to: multiple choice, gap-fills, word order, matching, dictation, listening.
- 219 native-speaker notes
- On the replies: what gives you away, and what somebody local would have said instead.
- 9 audio sessions
- Hands-free, and not a read-through: you get the prompt, then a silence to answer out loud in, then the answer. For the walk or the washing-up.
- A journal, and its review
- Phrases you earn in a scene are kept. Later the course hands them back and asks you to write them out from memory.
A map of the whole thing- Every place the course takes you, on one board, opening as you get to it.
This is what a scene feels like
The opening of El quiosco, the first scene of Survival Like a Native. You walk into it once step 1 is done.
Un quiosco en la terminal de llegadasWith: La vendedora, El señor de la cola
You hear
La vendedora
¡Venga, el siguiente!
Right — who's next!
Your reply — pick one
- 1¿Quién es el último, por favor?Who's last in the queue, please?
- 2Perdone, ¿va usted delante de mí?Excuse me, are you ahead of me?
- 3Sí, yo. Ponme un agua grande.Yes, me. Get me a large water.
What you find out after you choose
Understood, but clumsy
You said: Sí, yo. Ponme un agua grande.
Answering 'the next one' with 'me' is how you find out there was a queue. Because nobody stands in line in a way you can see, checking first is the whole social contract here — and 'ponme', which is friendly enough mid-conversation, arrives as an instruction from someone who has just stepped in front of a man who was waiting.
219 notes like that one sit behind the replies in this course — not whether you were right, but what you sounded like.
Who these are for
You can walk into this one cold. Step one is a beginner lesson, so no Spanish is expected before it.
Who they are not for
- Anyone who needs a certificate. Nothing here maps to CEFR, nothing is examined, and no one is watching.
- Anyone who wants grammar tables. The grammar is inside the sentences, explained where it actually bites.
The pathway
Every step, in order. Your own progress lives on the page you play from.
Step 1 of 9 · beginner
Greetings Like a Local in SpainMaster the everyday greetings that native Spanish speakers actually use — from morning coffee to evening tapas.
Step 2 of 9 · beginner
Everyday Phrases Textbooks Never TeachReact, agree, disagree and encourage like a native — the tiny everyday Spanish phrases you hear constantly but never find in a textbook.
Step 3 of 9 · beginner
Numbers and Time: Say Them Like You Mean ThemDodge the classic number traps, read phone numbers and prices like a local, tell the time the native way, and survive dinner at 10pm.
Step 4 of 9 · beginner
Asking for Directions: Never Stay Lost in SpanishStop a stranger politely, ask the way three different ways, and actually understand the answer — todo recto, a la derecha and beyond.
Step 5 of 9 · intermediate
Public Transport: Metro, Bus and Taxi Like a LocalCatch the metro with coger (carefully), buy the right ticket, survive rush hour like a sardine, and give a taxi driver an address without blinking.
Step 6 of 9 · beginner
At the Hotel: Check In Without the PanicHandle check-in, ask for towels and wifi passwords, complain about the air conditioning, and check out — all with one magic formula.
Step 7 of 9 · intermediate
Ordering Food Like a LocalLearn the phrases that will make waiters smile and your dining experience in Spain infinitely better.
Step 8 of 9 · intermediate
At the Doctor — Describe Your Symptoms Like a NativeBook an appointment, explain exactly where it hurts, and survive the Spanish pharmacy — the health vocabulary natives actually use.
Step 9 of 9 · beginner
Emergency Spanish: The Phrases You Hope You Never NeedCall 112, say what hurts, find the on-duty pharmacy, and report a stolen wallet — the survival kit you memorise now and thank yourself for later.
Before you start
Do I need an account?
No. There is nothing to sign up for. Your progress is kept in this browser, which means it is waiting when you come back — on this device, in this browser, and not on your phone as well.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Every course, every scene and every drill is free while we grow.
Where do I start?
At step one of whichever course matches where you are now. Everything after it stays shut until you have done the one before, so there is no order to get wrong.
Do I have to play the scenes?
Where a step has one, yes — playing it is part of what opens the next step. It is also the only place you have to produce the language with somebody waiting, which is the whole point of it.
Can I get it wrong?
In a scene, constantly: every reply gets an answer and the conversation carries on, because what opens the next step is having turned up, not how well it went. Drills are stricter — three lives, and running out means taking that step again. Either way nothing is lost but the run.
Start where you actually are.
Free while we grow. Your progress stays in this browser.