Spanish for Mexico: a daily practice plan that replaces app points.

Six weeks out, the points do not help.

Six weeks before the move, the evening disappears into a game that awards points for a streak. You finish a lesson, feel briefly productive, then picture the arrival: a taxi driver asking something at speed, a landlord talking about the deposit, a shop assistant saying a price you cannot catch. Nothing comes out.

The fear is not really grammar. It is opening your mouth in front of someone who switches to English in two seconds. That fear shrinks with a small set of phrases you have said aloud many times, in a situation you recognise. It does not shrink with points.

Here is a different plan: three scenes from a move to Mexico City (the taxi, the landlord, the corner shop), five fixed phrases each, rotated over a week in 10 to 15 minutes a day and logged on the free planner. Fifteen phrases, said often, out loud.

Scene 1: the taxi from the airport.

Five phrases take you from the rank to the door. All five use usted, the polite form, which is the safer choice with a driver you have just met.

Two extras are worth the space: No tengo cambio. (I don’t have change.) and ¿Me puede dar un recibo? (Can you give me a receipt?) With a friend you would drop the polite form: ¿Me llevas a esta dirección?

Show the address on your phone as you say the first phrase. You are practising a sentence, not performing under pressure.

Scene 2: the flat viewing.

In Mexico City the rent is la renta and the flat is el departamento. Five phrases cover the questions that cost money if you skip them.

Keep the polite usted here; the utilities question is the one that saves money later. One more line is worth carrying: ¿Cuál es la contraseña del wifi? (What is the wifi password?) In Spain you would hear el alquiler for the rent and la fianza for the deposit; in Mexico City, la renta and el depósito. Use the words you hear around you.

Scene 3: the corner shop.

The small shop is where prices arrive fastest. In Mexico you will hear la tienda for a shop, and la tienda de abarrotes for a grocery shop.

The pattern ¿Tiene ___? works for anything on the shelf; swap in agua, pan or pilas. At the till the reply is often quick: ¿Algo más? (Anything else?) and your answer is No, gracias. If a price disappears into the noise, use ¿Puede repetir, por favor? (Can you repeat, please?)

Rotate the three scenes, fifteen minutes a day.

Monday taxi, Tuesday landlord, Wednesday corner shop, then again. Short and repeated beats one long Sunday session. A US Department of Education practice guide recommends spacing learning over time and using quizzes to re-expose learners to key content; this rotation borrows those ideas in a small way. It is a planning example, not a promise about learning speed.

The 10 Minute Practice Planner is built for exactly this log. It is a PDF you can type into (64 labelled fields) or print: a setup page, a seven-day log with from memory, with a prompt and not yet ticks, phrase ideas with audio links, and a phrases-to-revisit list. The Word file is a secondary editable copy.

One taxi dialogue to say out loud.

Both speakers use usted forms (suba, puede), which is the polite choice with a stranger in Mexico. Read A aloud, answer as B, then swap. Finally change one detail: ask to stop at a pharmacy instead (una farmacia).

Is this just another app that gives you points?

Fair question, especially after an app made you feel productive without making you speak. Here is exactly what this page and the free plan are, and what they are not.

• No points, no streaks, no microphone. Nothing here records your voice, and reading the plan needs no account.
• The whole plan is on a web page. All seven days are open without signing in, with the Day 1 greeting dialogue and the Day 4 café dialogue.
• Planned extras, clearly labelled. Our planned phrase packs ($9 each, $19 for all three) and a planned $49 course are separate, optional one-time purchases if they launch; nothing is on sale today and this page and the free plan are complete without them.
• No promise about speed. This is a practice plan, not a fluency test, and individual progress varies. The Spanish is checked with AI review; there is no independent teacher review yet. See our Editorial Policy.

What makes it different from points: every minute ends with words leaving your mouth, in a scene you will meet in your first week in Mexico City.

Before you move: Spanish phrases for travel to Mexico.

If a scouting trip comes first, use the same method with travel phrases instead of relocation phrases and keep the rotation at three scenes. Our travel page arranges basic Spanish for travel to Mexico by airport, hotel and restaurant, and Day 4 of the free plan is the café dialogue itself, with a swap for tea (un té) or a glass of water (un vaso de agua).

Moving to Mexico: practise the scenes first.

Moving to Mexico asks for a handful of conversations in the first fortnight: the taxi, the flat, the shop, the pharmacy, the neighbour. Each one is small, repeated and predictable. Practising the scene before you meet it means the first real version is your second attempt, not your first.

The relocation pages group phrases by those situations, and the flat-hunting vocabulary page expands the landlord scene to twenty words. Keep the daily count small: five phrases is a plan; fifty is a folder you never open.

Common questions.