In this paper, we present a new general approach for solving nonlinear evolution partial differential equations. The novelty of the approach is in the combination of spectral collocation and Lagrange interpolation polynomials with Legendre–Gauss–Lobatto grid points to descritize and solve equations in piece-wise defined intervals. The method is used to solve several nonlinear evolution partial differential equations, namely, the modified KdV–Burgers equation, modified KdV equation, Fisher’s equation, Burgers–Fisher equation, Burgers–Huxley equation and the Fitzhugh–Nagumo equation. The results are compared with known analytic solutions to confirm accuracy, convergence and to get a general understanding of the performance of the method. In all the numerical experiments, we report a high degree of accuracy of the numerical solutions. Strategies for implementing various boundary conditions are discussed.