Learning Spanish vocabulary

Spanish spelling is friendly: it is written the way it sounds. That is why people skip the two things that do cost marks.

The accent is part of the spelling

In Spanish an accent marks the stress, and sometimes the whole word: el (the) and él (he) are not the same, and papa is not papá. It is not a detail; it is a mark.

El or la, and the words that break the rule

Most nouns follow the -o and -a rule, which is exactly why the exceptions are the ones you get wrong: el día, la mano, el problema. Learn those with the article attached.

Ser and estar are two words, not one

A word list will give you "to be" twice. Practising them as separate words with their own example sentence saves you the guesswork later.