Grammar

BaseLang Review: pricey, but worth it

January 20, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

BaseLang is a Spanish-specific language learning service that connects Spanish learners to native Latin American Spanish speakers. BaseLang is special because it’s the first (though no longer only!) of its kind: unlimited lessons for one monthly price.

In this BaseLang review, you’ll learn everything you need to know about this resource: what you’ll learn, what you won’t learn, and if you should consider BaseLang for your Spanish language learning.

BaseLang review: comparing plans

BaseLang keeps it simple: unlimited 1:1 Spanish classes to get you to speak Spanish quickly. They offer 2 options (which we’ll talk about below) and offer you a free trial of $1. No fluff, not wild marketing schemes…BaseLang gets right to it.

From the get-go, you’re directed to choose how you’re planning to use BaseLang: either online, or in-person at their location in Medellin, Colombia. Unless you’re planning to relocate to Colombia, we’ll stick to online.

While we’re here, let’s talk about these differences, starting with BaseLang Real World.

BaseLang Real World

BaseLang’s Real World plan is simple: it’s basically a gym membership for learning Spanish. Pay one monthly fee, and get unlimited access to conversational practice with native speakers.

These classes are taught via Zoom, and are all private, 1:1, with native Spanish speakers.

Your lessons do follow a curriculum, but it’s largely up to you to decide your structure including when you learn, with whom you learn, etc. We’ll see what that looks like in a minute.

BaseLang Grammarless

If BaseLang Real World is your basic 24-hour gym membership where you show up whenever you have the time and take turns using the machines, BaseLang Grammarless is hiring a private trainer.

You choose your teacher and meet with them on a fixed schedule, and while a personal trainer can’t promise you washboard abs in 30 days, BaseLang guarantees zero-to-conversational fluency after 80 hours.

This translates to either four-hour days (conversational in a month) or two-hour days (conversational in 2 months). Very intensive.

And if that’s not enough practice for you, BaseLang Grammarless includes BaseLang Real World.

BaseLang teachers

If you go for BaseLang Real World, where you don’t choose your teacher at the beginning and instead basically use any teacher that’s available for flexibility, there’s somewhat of a process.

Here are your options for finding yourself a BaseLang teacher.

I do love the basic category options on the left in particular. Especially that gender option – one of my main qualms with italki is that you can’t search for teachers by gender. Apparently I’m not the only one!

Side note: in the above video, you’ll see the selected teacher doesn’t have any availability. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is because I was supposed to click the teacher in the left-hand column. That teacher was simply left over from the initial search.

BaseLang teachers have always had a little get-to-know-you video, but the newer (to me) bit is that bottom bar. That “Private Rating” part is SO helpful – last time I was active on BaseLang, you just got a list of BaseLang teachers to choose from, and you had to remember which ones you liked. Now you don’t have to remember!

I’m a huge fan of the option to favorite a teacher, too.

One of the problems I’ve run into is trying to get onto BaseLang scheduling the minute the next day opened up, only to find my favorite BaseLang teacher, and my favorite time of the day was already taken. That was WAY too much effort so I really like this fix for that.

You can now set up to 3 teachers as favorites. Favoriting a teacher allows you to schedule a lesson with them 2 days in advance.

Nonetheless, in past years BaseLang would just give you a list of the BaseLang teachers available in this time slot, and it would be up to you to go back into the section with their bios and descriptions and everything. Now they’re included right in this scheduling section, which is a serious improvement!

Once you’ve got your timing and teacher all figured out, there’s nothing left but to confirm your lesson!

Important note: BaseLang is known for its extra-high turnover rate, especially with its best tutors. Basically, if you love a particular teacher, they’re always going to be booked out until they just kind of disappear and you have to find a new favorite.

BaseLang review: scheduling a session

The first thing that happens when you go to schedule a BaseLang class is you’re asked to add the email address linked to your Zoom account – it also mentions that Zoom has a much better connection than Skype which is somewhat promising for me, as one of the worst problems I’ve had with BaseLang in the past is really bad connection.

Then you get to schedule a lesson.

In the past, you used to be able to schedule a BaseLang lesson by time or teacher, which I really liked. At some point, they seem to have removed the latter choice, so you can now only schedule a lesson by time on this screen; if you want to schedule by the teacher, you can do so in the “Teachers” tab.

One thing that BaseLang is proud of is the fact that you’re able to schedule a lesson at literally the last minute. You can also show when multiple consecutive classes with the same teacher are available. That’s HUGE! This option makes the BaseLang search so much more efficient than it used to be.

Just make sure that your time zone is correct in the settings tab, or else you’ll have to guess/hope that everything’s all set, and you’re not going to miss any sessions (which I definitely have).

The old adage of “beggers can’t be choosers” is usually pretty accurate in this scenario. While there are a surprising number of teachers available, you can’t be sure that you’ll necessarily hit it off with one of them, if they speak any English, or if you’ll enjoy your lesson.

Sometimes you just don’t jive with a particular tutor, it’s a normal part of finding a teacher in literally any scenario.

BaseLang review: Lessons

While BaseLang Real World is much more loosey-goosey than Grammarless, there is still a curriculum. This curriculum used to be confusing, but they seem to have simplified it a lot, which is great.

Under the “Lessons” tab, you’ll find Core Lessons and Electives.

Core Lessons are broken up into levels 0-9, from beginner to advanced, and are there to support your grammar education.

Each of these core lessons is broken into subjects based on grammar and/or vocab. Just click into any of these lessons that you might want to review and you’ll get some PowerPoint slides to click through.

From here you can see that BaseLang truly offers lessons from beginner to advanced – you can choose to follow this pathway as rigidly as you like, or not really at all, based totally on whether you prefer to focus on grammar or conversational skills.

These lessons aren’t particularly special compared to something you could find elsewhere, but it is nice to be able to reference the material you might’ve been working on in class that day.

Then we have Electives. Same layout and all, just some fun vocab to help you express yourself in your sessions if you’re looking for pure conversational practice.

These lessons are very interesting to me, but they’re clearly best used with BaseLang teachers. By themselves, these slides are lackluster at best. I’m guessing the intention behind them is to give BaseLang students some inspiration/conversation starters, in which case these will definitely keep the conversation flowing.

I know I said it before, but it’s worth saying again – I’m really glad that BaseLang made these lessons much more simple. There used to be an independent intro and all this frankly unnecessary information. This is much more helpful!

Interestingly, BaseLang has also supplemented these courses with their own Memrise flashcards. This makes it super easy to review the vocabulary independently, which is a great study practice.

BaseLang price

Whether you use BaseLang online or in person in Medellin, Colombia, BaseLang Grammarless is $1200. For an 80-hour program with guaranteed, that’s just $15 an hour.

Plus online learners get BaseLang Real World for unlimited classes thrown in for free. You quite literally can’t beat that.

BaseLang Real World online is the most affordable option. But if you need the in-person classes, that drives the price up. You do get the online classes thrown in, though.

You can see BaseLang’s updated prices here.

BaseLang alternatives

So, basically, BaseLang Grammarless takes the structure of Lingoda (and the intensity of Lingoda Sprint) and mixes it with the teacher-student relationship that you (at least should) get with Verbling or italki.

Let’s be clear about the difference between Lingoda Sprint and BaseLang Grammarless because they are both highly intensive Spanish-speaking courses.

Lingoda Sprint is a 2-month course (and only opens to new students every 3 months) that includes 15-30 classes per month (15 classes for Sprint, 30 classes for Super Sprint) and a guaranteed refund (50% for Sprint, 100% for Super Sprint) if you attend all of these classes. These classes happen at varying times with different teachers.

Lingoda also offers a couple of other less intense options.

BaseLang review: should you try it?

After this BaseLang review, I’m a fan. However, it’s not for everyone. They are very intentional about their preferred audience, which is great.

In particular, BaseLang is best for Spanish language learners (total beginners, if you’re going for BaseLang Grammarless; level doesn’t matter for BaseLang Real World) who are looking for highly flexible 1:1 lessons with a native-speaking Latin American tutor, whether in-person or online.

Is grammar important to you? Not for you. More interested in Castilian Spanish? No-go. Your time zones don’t match up (BaseLang functions on Eastern Time)? Look elsewhere. Don’t have the energy to work with a person (i.e. introverts and neurodiverse folks) for close to 100% of your language learning? Definitely not.

However, if you can spare at least $179 a month and are able to commit to a reasonably significant number of hours to learning conversational Latin American Spanish with a private tutor, BaseLang has quite a few options for you to play with.

After reading this BaseLang review, are you still not sure? Another super special feature of BaseLang is their negative risk guarantee: pay only $1 for your first week, and if you don’t like it, get $20 back.

On top of that negative risk, use my link and get $10 off your first month of online practice!

Memrise vs Duolingo: want vocab or grammar?

January 19, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Two of the most well-known language learning resources on the internet today are Memrise and Duolingo. They’re pretty similar: both have vocabulary practice in a variety of languages, both have cute little graphics and motivations for being consistent, and both are available both on mobile and desktop. But what happens when we look at Memrise vs Duolingo?

Let’s address the differences between the two. Which one will work for you? Duolingo and Memrise both have their shining moments, and both have something that the other just doesn’t do so well. So let’s jump into it: Memrise vs Duolingo.

Memrise vs Duolingo: available languages

You can use both Memrise and Duolingo to study the following languages:

Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Icelandic
Italian
Japanese
Korean

Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

Memrise also supports:

Icelandic
Mongolian

Slovenian

And languages offered by Duolingo include:

Czech
Esperanto
Finnish
Greek
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian

Irish
Latin
Navajo
Romanian
Swahili
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Welsh

Memrise vs Duolingo: how does Duolingo work?

Basically, Duolingo is a free program that works in what they call “trees”. Trees are collections of little mini-lessons, generally ranging from beginner to intermediate, depending entirely on the language. More commonly-learned foreign languages have a lot more content to them than the newer additions.

Duolingo advertises the ability for its users to learn a language in just 5 minutes a day using Duolingo, making the time-commitment for learning a language feel really tiny. You go through each and every one of these tiny little lessons until you get to the end of the tree, and there are no more lessons to be had.

Duolingo mixes up lessons with both plain memorization and constructing sentences. Historically language learners have complained that Duolingo teaches languages through sentences you’ll never use; this is key to Duolingo’s strategy, but it’s not for everyone.

The point is, Duolingo will teach you to put sentences together in a grammatically correct way.

If you’re not an ultimate beginner when you start your Duolingo tree, you can just take quizzes at “checkpoints”, so you don’t have to waste your time learning vocabulary that you already feel comfortable with. You can just go right to lessons that are actually worth your while, which is nice.

It can be a little tricky to find the right level, though, since they’re named things like “City” and “People”; while the vocab introduced in those levels may very well relate, the grammar probably doesn’t!

Memrise vs Duolingo: Memrise courses

Memrise courses are heavier on the vocab side of things. Memrise has some free content but is more of a paid service than Duolingo (which is not a paid service at all, unless you want to get rid of the ads – more on that below). If you stick to the courses made by Memrise itself, you’ll learn vocabulary and a few key conversational phrases. Basically, simple rote memorization.

There isn’t really a strict system to Memrise content; they don’t have a tree to go through, or particularly intentional “levels”. If you want, you can go through whichever lessons you want at whatever time, though they are organized from ultimate beginner to intermediate-beginner.

Though Duolingo’s system of titling lessons is not totally helpful, they’re more helpful than lesson titles on Memrise! So, likewise, if you’re not an ultimate beginner, it might take you a sec to figure out where to start.

Like Duolingo, you can also set your goal to spend 5 minutes a day learning, so both Memrise and Duolingo are very attractive to those with limited amounts of itme.

Duolingo Plus

Duolingo now has its own paid service (if you’ve ever asked yourself “how does Duolingo make money if it’s always free?”). It’s a pretty wholesome concept: pay 10 bucks or so a month (depending on your commitment) if you want to:

Remove ads without an ad blocker (meaning Duolingo still gets paid, but you don’t see ads)
Use Duolingo offline
Support free education
Get unlimited hearts (if your Duolingo app is on the Gems system, not the Lingots system. I explain these systems a whole lot more in my Duolingo review!)

It’s a nice little option for you if you want to support free language learning education, which is an idea that I personally like. I’m all for financially supporting language learning!

Though, to be fair, there is a very widely-acknowledged theory that Duolingo is slowly but surely trying to push the Plus system. Draaaaaama!

If you want to try it out, you can opt for a free 7-day trial. But, again, it’s not a heavy investment, so if you’re going to be using the product anyway, I would throw a few bucks at it if you’ve got it!

Memrise Pro review

Memrise also comes with a paid option, Memrise Pro. Memrise Pro is a bit more bang for your buck, in my opinion. You’ll get a couple more tools to enhance your language learning:

Difficult word review
Video/audio files in Memrise courses
Learning statistics

The first two of these are definitely really helpful for taking in languages. Difficult word review is pretty self-explanatory: Memrise Pro knows which words you have a hard time with, so you have the option to study only those and shove them into your brain. It’s like Anki’s SRS system, but prettier.

The video and audio files are also a nice touch. It’s a step closer to immersion, learning your words by hearing a native say them, and not in a robotic way. It’s a decent way to start training your ear to hear the language, and it’s another method of learning the new vocabulary.

Honestly, it is a much better way to take in new words. I always recommend taking in new foreign vocab with more than one sense.

That being said, Memrise has a much heavier focus on vocabulary, while Duolingo teaches more grammar than anything else.

The statistics Memrise Pro offers can also be very helpful. If you stick with it, you can see what you’re studying, how often you’re studying, when you’re studying, and when you’re getting the most questions right. This can be a great way to shift your language learning strategy to one that works with your natural habits.

Personally, I prefer PolyLogger for this, though it’s admittedly not as complex as the above screenshot.

Duolingo forums

My favorite thing about Duolingo is the forums. The lessons themselves are pretty simple, but they each connect to a thread on their forum where members have talked about the questions. There are so many members that there’s a pretty good chance that any questions you may have about your lessons have already been answered.

In this way, Duolingo goes way above just simple question and answer and directs you to think more about grammar and how the language actually works, which goes into more intermediate and sometimes advanced concepts. If you still have questions, you can ask them yourself, and the forum is pretty active.

The Duolingo community is super helpful and has answered all of these questions pretty well, from what I can see. They also link to other resources online that explain these things well. If anything, it’s a good way to find this other helpful content online, so you can branch out on your studies.

Memrise’s member content

Memrise lessons themselves are decent, but they only go so far. Fortunately, Memrise isn’t just a language learning resource, but also just your basic flashcard app, so members have created flashcards for the words and phrases that they’re learning outside of Memrise itself.

So, depending on your language of choice, you might find the vocab or grammar that you’re looking for either in the Memrise courses themselves or in the member-generated content. There’s lots and lots of content, so you can take in almost endless amounts of vocab just on Memrise.

And, since it’s a flashcard app, it will probably never stop growing. So keep an eye out for new decks, and even make your own decks to share with the world. Where Duolingo is limited to the lessons they create themselves, Memrise grows whenever members share their own content. That’s a lot of vocab for you to learn, so if you want to stick with it, you can go far!

Duolingo app review

It’s hard to find another website that does desktop and mobile as well as Duolingo. It’s definitely built to go wherever you go, so Duolingo’s app is convenient and easy for your eyes. It’s actually meant to be more of a mobile app, so that’s where you’ll get your push notifications reminding you to get your studying in every day.

Now that the Duolingo app also links to the forums in every question, it’s also a much more convenient way to find explanations or common complaints about any particular problem.

It’s super seamless, so you don’t have to think about it at all – just let the app remind you every day to get your studying in and keep up your streak. The more you get back to it, the more you learn! Perfect for the more easily distractible and forgetful language learners.

Memrise app review

The Memrise app used to be awful, but fortunately, they’ve stepped up and made it MUCH more user-friendly. Now it’s nice and smooth to compete with the Duolingo app, complete with cute little sounds, vibrations when you answer a question incorrectly, and seamless integration with what you’re doing on desktop.

However, there’s still one hiccup with the Memrise app: you can’t access your statistics! If seeing your journey and growth is important to you, I hope you’re on a computer a lot, because you just straight-up can’t see them on the Memrise app.

Memrise vs Duolingo: Memrise paid app screenshot

On top of that is the section where they talk about Memrise Pro. Yes, while you’re on the free version, I absolutely understand pushing the paid content. That makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is when you do pay for Memrise Pro, and not only does that section stay the same, but it doesn’t link to paid content! It literally just says that you’re a subscriber, and reminds you what you get.

Memrise vs Duolingo

Comparing Duolingo vs Memrise…whichever one you use definitely depends on your needs: vocab? Grammar? Creating your own study materials? A clearly defined path? Input and questions from other users? These factors can easily define your choice of Memrise vs Duolingo.

They’re both simple tools to play with from day to day, complete with daily notifications to keep you motivated in the short term and fun graphics and sounds. But, if you’re looking for more CEFR-based help (content structured along the same lines as official assessments), Duolingo is a bit more structured.

However, if content is king for you, Memrise is a great option for Duolingo alternatives. As long as people use Memrise, the amount of content you can find on it will never stop. If you’ve got a desk job like most of us, it’s not hard to keep a tab open to Memrise and drill new and old vocab in your downtime. Not a bad way to take in new words if you ask me!

Click here to get started with Duolingo, or here to start Memrise.

Duolingo Review: how to use Duolingo in 2023

January 19, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Ah, Duolingo. The internet’s most famous place to study foreign languages. It’s cute, it’s bite-sized, and it makes you feel good. All that surface-level stuff aside, does Duolingo work? Is Duolingo good for all types of language learners? We’ll discuss in this Duolingo review.

And if Duolingo is the answer for you, how do you take advantage of everything that it has to offer (which is a lot)? That’s where this Duolingo review comes in.

How to use Duolingo

The first question for this Duolingo review: is Duolingo effective? It can be, as long as you understand what it’s used for. What I mean by that is Duolingo does not offer conversational practice, any independent speaking, reading, or writing. There’s a teeny tiny bit of listening when you’re learning the words, but that’s about it.

1. Overview of Duolingo
2. Lingots
3. Duolingo’s learning path
4. Other features
5. Duolingo Leagues
6. Duolingo Achievements
7. Super Duolingo
8. Duolingo alternatives

That being said, the question of “how effective is Duolingo” is…a mixed bag. For what it does, it can be very effective! Because of the tools it provides (i.e. reminders, gamification, competition), Duolingo is effective for:

Learning beginner vocab and beginner-intermediate grammar (in some languages)
Forming a daily habit
Making language learning fun
Creating competition

And, most importantly, making language learning free and accessible to all.

You’re not going to get conversational using just Duolingo, but you can easily get a very solid base in the language, with which you can search elsewhere in the world for more advanced concepts and actually practice your fluency.

Duolingo can be a great start for your language learning in a variety of languages. The languages you can find on Duolingo include:

Arabic
Chinese
Creole
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Korean

Latin
Navajo
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Scottish Gaelic
Spanish
Swahili
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Welsh
Yiddish

Duolingo also offers fantasy languages, like Klingon and High Valyrian; suffice to say, you’re more than covered for language learning inspo.

How does Duolingo work?

Duolingo works by providing you with a bunch of little, incremental lessons that are easy to consume, and constantly giving you positive reinforcement via adorable sound effects, awards, and notifications. It absolutely is addicting, and that’s their MO. They get you addicted to coming back and spending even just 5 minutes with them.

On top of that, with Leagues and XP, you can use Duolingo to find motivation via competition against other language learners regardless of target language, goals, and skill level. I’ll go more in-depth about this later.

Lingots

“Lingots”(pronounced ling-guhts) are Duolingo’s currency. You earn lingots by:

earning crowns in any skill
finishing any skill
practicing
continuing a streak for a specific number of days
finishing a League in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place

When you only have to study on Duolingo for 5 minutes a day, it’s really not hard to see why you’d keep coming back. This is why Duolingo depends heavily on Lingots to keep Duolingo users hooked.

With these lingots, you can buy:

streak freezes (if you forget to come back one day, you won’t lose your current streak) (
double or nothing (double your wager if you maintain a 7-day streak)
extra minutes in timed practices
hearts (AKA more practice)

In the past, lingots could be used to buy several other things as well, like outfits for Duo the owl. However, today your options are limited, and this is one of the many updates to Duolingo that users are not happy about.

For free Duolingo users, “hearts” also play a major part in the Duolingo experience; you automatically get 5 hearts; whenever you get a question wrong, you lose a heart.

You can keep learning until you get 5 wrong, and lose all 5 hearts. Once you lose all your hearts, you have three options:

quit playing and wait to get 1 heart every 5 hours
buy more hearts with lingots
earn 1 heart by practicing old skills
get Duolingo plus (to be explained later)

Duolingo review: the learning path

Duolingo teaches languages by way of a learning path. These learning paths are made up of bite-sized lessons collected together and organized by skill. Because Duolingo is as gamified as it is, and these lessons are so easy to swallow, it’s not hard to push yourself to learn more and more; not only that, but Duolingo has so many adorable little achievements and reminders that it’s easy to stay in the habit, which is awesome.

Unfortunately, even though these lessons are based on grammatical concepts, they’re not named specifically based on that. For example, the “City” skill doesn’t teach you the name of cities, but words like “store”, “small”, “school”, etc. Kind of confusing. I wish they took the LingoDeer approach of having lesson titles match up with the actual lessons.

Here you can see a lesson about “changes” under the unit about places being…neither of those.

These skills are organized by level, and for the more extensive languages (namely Spanish and French), Duolingo will ease you into a more and more advanced understanding of the language.

For the more extensive languages, there are 5 crowns per skill (on mobile you may have 6 crowns per skill, the last crown, “Legendary”, being a review worth 40 XP). Each of these crowns is broken up into 5 levels, and each of those levels has 10 questions each.

One of the things to keep in mind with Duolingo is that even though there are a ton of languages to learn, not all of them are as complete as some of the more common foreign languages.

That said, more commonly learned languages like Spanish have a significantly longer learning path than something like Finnish.

Regardless of the language, Duolingo is best for language learners with little to no experience in a given language. If you’re an intermediate learner of the more commonly-learned languages, you may also find Duolingo valuable.

This is because of the “Checkpoint” feature of Duolingo. If you’re not a total beginner of the language, you can take and pass Checkpoint Challenges to show Duolingo what you know, and get to the lessons that’ll actually be beneficial to you.

Again, this does depend on the language you’re learning, as well as your abilities. These Checkpoint Challenges are not easy – simple mistakes make a big difference.

Otherwise, Duolingo’s learning path guides you one lesson at a time. Many users complain that they’d like more choices as to what they’re learning at any given time; if you don’t want to take that particular lesson, you’re stuck.

There are other things to do in Duolingo that are not connected to the learning path to give you something else to do, like separate speaking/listening exercises.

Duolingo review: other options

In the past, Duolingo offered users more options: which skills to learn, when to learn them, and how many repetitions they want. With the new learning path, those options are totally gone; users must take the next lesson, or else they can’t move on.

For Super Duolingo users (i.e. paid members) on mobile devices, there are a couple of other options. Timed practice, for example, has users review vocab at breakneck speeds to earn more XP and get to the top of the League leaderboards.

Users might also find timed practice with more advanced content, like translating to transcription (listen to an audio clip and write down what they’re saying).

Suffice to say, Duolingo truly changes things up (albeit inconsistently – they’re known for their A/B testing, so it may take a while for updated exercises to hit your account).

Here’s a tip for you if you want to use Duolingo: try to focus on these kinds of comprehension questions, if you can:

These are excellent because they lead users to use their language skills together with their critical thinking skills to check for understanding.

Simple, brainless, matching exercises will only take you so far, so I’m glad to see these more complex exercises.

As you continue through Duolingo’s learning path, you’ll also work through Duolingo Stories; again, this is one of their better features for genuinely building comprehension skills in an engaging way.

It is worth mentioning that you can commonly get questions wrong because of a typo that isn’t relevant to the actual thing you’re being tested on. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten questions wrong because the sentence started with “Julie” and my phone auto-corrected to “Julia”. Super frustrating.

PRO TIP: add the language you’re learning to the keyboard on your phone! This’ll reduce the number of silly autocorrect mistakes.

Duolingo Leagues

Let’s talk about the competition aspect of Duolingo: Duolingo’s leagues exist as yet another level of gamification to keep you coming back to the app.

Everything that you do in Duolingo earns you at least 10 XP. You can earn more by not making any mistakes, reviewing your mistakes, or doing separate speaking/listening exercises (Super Duolingo users only).

This XP is used to pit users in competition with each other for the next week, based on when they started the week.

The purpose of Duolingo’s leagues is to motivate you to practice enough to get to the Diamond League.

Every week, you get pitted against 25 other Duolingo learners (regardless of language, skill level, etc.) who started their Duolingo week at the same time as you. You move forward, backward, or stay in one of 10 leagues from week to week:

Bronze
Silver
Gold
Sapphire
Ruby

Emerald
Amethyst
Pearl
Obsidian
Diamond*

Each of these leagues is a week long, which means it’ll take you at least 10 weeks to get to Diamond League. Competing against 25 other language learners, you have a week to:

graduate to the next league by finishing in the top 10 (plus earning lingots if you finish in the top 3)
stay in your current league by finishing in spots 11-20
get demoted to the prior league by finishing in the bottom 5

If you get to the Diamond League, there’s one more challenge for you: stay in that league for 3 weeks to earn all 3 pieces of the Diamond. It won’t be easy, though, especially at the very end. Some users use illegal bots to earn thousands of XP points just to earn the coveted award.

Achievements

As you continue on through Duolingo, you’ll get cute little achievements here and there. Things like following 3 friends, adding a profile picture, maintaining your streak for a varying number of days, etc.

There is one important achievement that really raises the stakes, especially in the Diamond League. This achievement is the Legendary award.

The only way to achieve this is to finish the Diamond League in the #1 position. This means that the Diamond League can get FIERCE! Not to mention stressful.

Sometimes the Diamond League is pretty chill and the winner only had 2,000 XP or so, and sometimes the top 2 players are fighting till the death, and the #1 finishes with something like 10,000 XP.

So yeah, it can get crazy.

How does one land this extra special achievement? I have a couple of tips (that don’t involve the bots that some people absolutely use to cheat) just for this Duolingo review.

Don’t start the league until the last minute
Leagues are events that restart every week, but timing can be a big deal. Think of others who are lazy or busy, and can’t maintain their streak until the last minute. Try waiting until the very last minute to join the league – you can even use a streak freeze to really put it off and still maintain your streak!
Check out the competition before you get too crazy
I’ve been in leagues where players have used bots to earn 8,000 XP in the first hour of the league. There’s no point in competing against that. If you find you’re in a league with players who are too competitive, maybe wait til next week.
Work through old lessons or a language you already know
If your goal is to get as much XP as possible, don’t worry about learning new things. Go through beginner lessons in your language, or if you’re already at an advanced level of another language, go through that tree. Remember, the specific language you’re studying has no weight in Leagues.
Take advantage of your free Duolingo Plus trial
Duolingo Plus means no ads. Take advantage of the time saved! When you ditch the ads, you save a few seconds each lesson, and that can really add up (or at the very least remove the frustrations of ads when you’re already stressing your XP).

Super Duolingo review

Duolingo’s thing is free education forever. There are no gimmicks, no surprise “if you want to keep learning, pay us!”, nothing, which is great, especially for a large, publicly traded company.

But as time goes on, more and more users have a bad taste in their mouths with Duolingo and believe that they’re trying to focus more on monetizing the site than focusing on providing a great, accessible language learning app.

Whether that’s true or not is not for me to say. With the free app, the only disturbance you’ll get to your language learning is ads. With the hearts system, you’ll also be disrupted if you get 5 questions wrong.

If you really care to get rid of the ads (as well as get a couple of perks), you can opt for Super Duoilingo. If you want to try it out, every account gets free access to Super Duolingo for 14 days. You’ll get to try out:

no ads
unlimited hearts (i.e. unlimited learning)
mistake practice (any exercises you get wrong)
unlimited Legendary (do an exercise and your final lesson turns purple)

In my opinion, sticking to the free Duolingo won’t break your language learning experience; however, if you find yourself using it a lot and would benefit from some extra learning tools, there’s no harm in using your free trial.

You can opt for Super Duolingo either in the app or on desktop.

Duolingo alternatives

If after this Duolingo review you’ve decided it doesn’t quite suit your language goals, what are some Duolingo alternatives?

If you like the heavy gamification (easy to use, great colors, and fun sounds/animations), you may prefer Mondly or Drops which are both great for beginners who want to build their foreign language vocabulary.

Or, if you like the usability but want to learn vocabulary that you’ve found or are more relevant to your own personal interests/goals, I’d recommend Lingvist or Quizlet.

Finally, if you’re learning a language from scratch and want a structured path but can’t deal with Duolingo’s heavy gamification, you can try Rosetta Stone or Babbel (this post compares all 3 resources!).

Duolingo review: who it’s for

If you’ve made it this far into this Duolingo review, it’s the moment of truth: will Duolingo help you learn a language?

Duolingo is appropriate if you:

want a simple way to practice a language
thrive off reminders and happy sounds
are just starting out learning a language for the first time
know absolutely nothing in the language

However, steer clear if you:

are focused on getting conversationally fluent
are looking for a high-quality language education
get annoyed by constant reminders
want to learn sentences you’ll use in real life
want explicit grammar instructions (not “figure it out as you go”)

Sold? Click here to get started with Duolingo!

LanguagePod101 Review: A+…except for pricing

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

One of the more popular online resources to learn a language is LanguagePod101 (or JapanesePod101, SpanishPod101, etc.). Should you join the hype? This LanguagePod101 review will help you decide.

Learn about how the LanguagePod101 series (under the Innovative Language umbrella), how they teach languages, and whether it can help you achieve your language goals with this LanguagePod101 review.

LanguagePod101 review: languages

The LanguagePod101 series is available in a ton of languages, including:

For this LanguagePod101 review, we’ll look at SpanishPod101.

LanguagePod101’s free content

When you first sign up for an account, you’ll instantly be smacked in the face with a bunch of sales copy. They really want you to know that they’ll take your money!

Literally, that’s my first impression, that it’s really salesy. Which, I mean, if they can back it up, I’m ready to look past it. It’s when the paid product is crap that this becomes a serious nuisance.

As usual, my first step is to see what options I get for narrowing down the lessons: if it asks me about my experience with Spanish, tests my Spanish knowledge, and whether or not they actually use that information to help me.

SpanishPod101 (boy is that a mouthful) offers a diagnostic test. You can see below how I started with the bottom of the barrel, level 1 assessment, quickly understood what was expected, and then went through the levels until I was stopped.

Definitely beginner grammar. If that’s the level you need, then you’re all set! The issue is if you’re at all above that beginner level. If that’s the case, and you want to start out from where you already are, you’re gonna have to splurge a bit on the paid features.

I will definitely be addressing this, but first, we haven’t actually looked at the actual content yet! For this, I’m gonna stick to just stating that I’m at a vaguely intermediate level.

The next step is to choose a pathway! LanguagePod101 has a ton of content, and their solve for this is to create “pathways” depending on your skill level and goal. Here’s some examples.

As you can see, this pathway feature is almost like my language app search, though just for SpanishPod101 lessons. You can filter by how you like to learn (audio or video only), what subjects you’re interested in, and your current level.

When you click on the pathway of your choosing, you’ll basically get a playlist of the lessons included in the pathway. You can pick and choose lessons as you please.

Let’s get started with the pathway I’ve chosen!

I chose video because I’m not much of an audio person (Pimsleur, for example, bores me to tears), but considering this is basically just a YouTube playlist…it’s not much better.

So let’s go down a pathway that’s a SpanishPod101 “original”.

I’m impressed! What they’ve done here is come up with a short conversation to teach specific vocabulary/concepts, recorded, then split it up in a whole bunch of ways to give you a ton of options to study. With just one audio clip, you can

slow down the original audio
follow along in the target language or English
take the audio one line at a time, with the option of further slowing down each audio
listen to teach line, record yourself repeating it, and compare the two (a strategy called “shadowing”
do all the above with teach individual term introduced

That’s a lot! This is a seriously effective approach if you enjoy dissecting audios like this. You could literally spend hours on each audio.

You can also see lesson notes and grammar, but these are just basic written explanations. This is more functional for those who want to pick up the grammar implicitly (i.e. “figure it out on your own”) and might get stumped somewhere. If you need something more, I’d go elsewhere.

If you don’t want to use the available pathways, LanguagePod101 also offers a variety of vocab lists…with a HUGE caveat.

While you can view all sorts of vocab words, this is clearly built just for paid customers. I really like this platform, but any aspect of this section that would be really really great is stuck behind that paywall.

And I’m guessing part of their strategy is to show you that paywall enough times that you get frustrated and fork over the money.

LanguagePod101 review: paid content

With a free account, you do get access to a lot of stuff – basically, all the content itself. Paid subscriptions have access to all the content presented in a variety of different formats. So, really, it’s up to each individual language learner if a paid membership is worth it.

What’s more, there are three paid options. This makes things kind of confusing (in my opinion), but I’ll let the website speak for itself.

Remember how I talked about how salesy the whole site is? This is where that bait and switch comes back.

Those advertised prices don’t seem too bad at first glance! But see the asterisks? Those asterisks are there to let you know that that monthly rate only applies to 2-year subscriptions…which means you could be paying up to $550.

Holy crap!! That’s…incredibly misleading! Especially because when I go to purchase a $12.58 subscription for one month of Premium Plus, and it ends up being $47. Literally almost 4x the advertised price.

If you’re able to commit, then you’ll start to see the more reasonable monthly cost, but you’ll be paying it upfront and hoping that “new language learning resource energy” doesn’t die out.

Fortunately, these subscriptions also include a 60-day money-back guarantee, which…helps.

Regardless, this is what I really wanted to test out: getting my own teacher and personalized assessments. If this section is decent, then it’ll absolutely be worth $47/month.

The first questions are more qualifying questions: your current level, where you’re from, and the reason you want to learn Spanish.

Then we get into the assessment itself.

In just 10 questions, the assessment quickly goes from beginner Spanish to advanced to see where you’re at. It’s a pretty good test – even I wasn’t sure about a lot of it!

That was a tough test! It tested every aspect of learning Spanish (except speaking), and it touched every level.

When you submit your responses, you’ll get an automatic result, plus a verification by a “resident Spanish expert” within 48 hours.

When that email arrives, it’ll really break down the process that they recommend you use with the content they give you. It’s very, very, very in-depth. Here’s what the email says about the podcast episodes and lesson tools:

Listen to the main audio track
Read the lesson notes
Listen to the audio track with the lesson notes. If you don’t understand 80%, listen a third time
Review difficult vocabulary

On top of all that, you also get a Student Manual which, among other things, basically forces you into a weekly schedule of listening practice, vocabulary review, and writing practice.

Your teacher is there to help answer questions, guide your curriculum, assess your progress, and more.

LanguagePod101 review: should you try it?

If this LanguagePod101 review taught me anything, it’s how detailed and well-rounded this language learning resource is. All of the content itself is free to all users, but paid members get the benefit of a more personalized, hand-held approach to their Spanish.

All that said, who’s it for? Well, the free lessons are great for listening practice. You can find seemingly unlimited free podcasts that guide you from ultimate beginner to native-level audio with transcripts included for you to pick and choose the vocab you need to work on.

And the paid membership?

If you’ll really benefit from taking apart the content in several different ways, then the lower tiers would be beneficial to you. Do keep in mind, though, that unless you commit to 2 years’ worth of lessons (which adds up to a few hundred bucks alone), you’re not going to be paying $4/month. It’s misleading and I really don’t like that.

But the higher tiers? Those are definitely for language learners looking for structure. Like a lot of structure. LanguagePod101 is meant to be treated as seriously as an in-person class, which helps you keep yourself accountable, mixed with the flexibility of a one-on-one tutor, at a fraction of the price.

That Premium Plus level is very much so worth it if that’s what you’re looking for! LanguagePod101 does everything…EXCEPT for speaking practice! You will not get effective conversational practice using this resource.

If you want a great vocab/grammar/reading/listening education, this might be a great option for you. If speaking is your primary concern, though, this might be a waste of your time. In that case I’d recommend something like Language Transfer or Pimsleur (still audio-based, but for speaking).

And even though the advertised rates for the Premium Plus membership are not completely honest, it is a genuinely good deal to have someone holding your hand and providing you with personalized homework for $25-$50/month (depending on how long you want to commit yourself to this).

Click the appropriate language below to get started:

Conjuguemos Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Conjuguemos is a study tool used to learn verbs, vocab, and grammar in a handful of languages. The vision behind it is a way to make learning these things fun for the classroom – it’s not a fancy app, but that also means it’s totally free to use (for individual students, at least).

So amongst all the other resources and apps out there for language learners, who is Conjuguemos for? What does it do right, and what does it need to work on? In this Conjuguemos review, I’ll discuss just that!

Conjuguemos languages

As always, let’s start this Conjuguemos review with the languages available themselves. Conjuguemos supports a handful of very popular foreign languages, including:

French
German
Italian
Korean

Latin
Portuguese
Spanish

However, not all these languages are totally complete – it looks like the more popular languages (Spanish) have significantly more material than less popular languages (Latin).

It’s kind of like Duolingo in that it’s totally free, but…you get what you get, ya know?

As an experienced Spanish language learner and considering Spanish is the most evolved language on Conjuguemos, let’s buckle up and focus there!

Conjuguemos review: verbs

Once you select a language, all the materials available in said language are shown to you in a pretty well-organized way. And, I gotta say, if this is supplemental to the tools you’re already using, there’s nothing better!

As an independent language learner who’s full up on vocab and really just needs to brush up on the past tense and subjunctive sometimes, I stick to the first section.

Under this section, all your options for studying these verbs are laid out for you by subcategory. You can practice all of your Spanish conjugations, or you can narrow it down by something as vague as Indicative/Subjunctive/Imperative moods, or as specific as stem-changing Preterite tense verbs.

You can chew up all these grammatical differences any way you choose, whichever way works for you and your grammatical weaknesses.

My past tense isn’t nearly as good as it should be, so I’m gonna go with the Preterite tense, regular verbs only.

Don’t know this tense at all, or very little? That drop-down menu on the right links you to all the learning materials you could ever need: conjugation charts, worksheets, flashcards, everything.

While you can get that information in so many different places online, it’s handy to have links right here to review before testing yourself. I won’t go too in-depth, though, ’cause that’s not where Conjuguemos shines!

Let’s start with Graded Practice.

This bit is simple but effective! For 5 minutes (or however long you set your timer for – I’ve found 5 minutes to be plenty to both get my practice in and also not exhaust myself) you conjugate your verbs.

If you need a hint, click “Show Hints” on the bottom right. If you just want to guess (like I do), try your best and you’ll be corrected and won’t be moved on until you get it right, correct accents and all! Conjuguemos also keeps track of what you struggle with and will show you those terms a couple more times.

Not quite an SRS algorithm, but more like common-sense practice!

Plus, if you have an account, you can opt to record your results and keep track of your improvements over time.

Next up, we have flashcards!

On the front you get the English verb – on the back you get the translation and all the conjugations you need.

Personally not my favorite method (I like translating on the fly MUCH more than this rote memorization), but I do appreciate the self-reporting, like Anki and Rocket Languages also do very well.

Last but not least (in this section), we have games!

If you’re not using Conjuguemos under a teacher (I’ll talk about what that means in a bit) you, unfortunately, can’t play those first 3 multiplayer games, but you still have plenty of options!

They’re all very simple and fun – here are some shots from Frog Game, Crossword, Wordsearch, and Memory:

Yeah, I know, not the fanciest looking. I mean if you’re into the whole 80s/90s video game vibe (I’m not sure that was intentional, but it’s the impression I get) the aesthetics are great!

But we’re talking about learning languages, so aesthetics aren’t necessarily the priority anyways.

Suffice to say, Conjuguemos offers a ton of methods for us to learn and practice our verbs. And that’s just the one section! Let’s move on to vocabulary.

Conjuguemos review: vocabulary

Conjuguemos takes an interesting approach to vocab. Because it’s primarily meant to supplement formal classes, we get two options: vocab by textbook and vocab by theme.

Under “vocab by textbook”, Conjuguemos has a list of what I’m assuming are popular Spanish textbooks in a variety of levels. If you’re using one of these textbooks, Conjuguemos has vocab separated by textbook and chapter, so you (or your teacher) can use it to help you through!

Selecting any of these individual chapters within these textbooks will send you to that same activity page with Graded Practice, Flashcards, and Games options.

The idea is that your teacher uses Conjuguemos to keep track of how you’re doing in these chapters, as well as provide you with a more entertaining way to do homework! Not bad at all!

Or, if you’re not using Conjuguemos for a class, you can also just sort vocabulary by theme and learn them that way. It appears to be the same words that you’ll study in any textbook (food, clothing, colors, etc.).

Spanish grammar

Next, let’s take a look at the Conjuguemos approach to grammar! While yes, verb conjugations are a part of grammar, Conjuguemos gives them their own independent sections, and rightly so.

Under grammar, we get concepts like Gustar, Por vs Para, and more. Each of these concepts sends you to a Graded Practice, which is basically a digital worksheet to use to practice your use of said concepts.

And just like in all the other sections, accents matter! If you don’t use accents, you will be marked as wrong. It’s tough, but it’s true.

Listening activities

Finally, we have some listening activities. These don’t really seem to relate to any subject in particular but are great for working on listening comprehension in a couple of ways.

All the listening activities are organized into Themes, Grammar, and Cultural Topics. They’re also in a variety of different accents, which is noted right on the activity page.

These videos are great snippets of real Spanish-speakers talking at native speed, though with easy vocab that relates to their themes.

For example, this exercise is a boy named Dani being “interviewed” about basic information: where he’s from, how old he is, etc.

It’s not the slow, crystal clear speech that you’d expect from beginner audio, so be prepared to not understand a lot of it. This is some serious comprehension practice!

From here you have two options to test yourself: the comprehension quiz and the listening quiz. Here’s the comprehension quiz, answering the same basic questions that Dani is answering.

For more of a challenge, the listening quiz gives you the transcript and asks how many words you want to fill in for yourself. Obviously, the more words you remove, the more difficult the challenge.

This’ll take some time and some serious thinking! This is a great way to practice listening comprehension, especially considering not only the number of different accents available but they’re also labeled as such so you can easily broaden the number of accents you can understand.

In other words, this is hella supplemental study content!

Conjuguemos review: pricing

The pricing plans here are interesting and are clearly different from most other resources in that it’s built specifically as supplemental content for more formal classes.

Independent language learners don’t pay a dime! This pricing is more for teachers and educational institutions who can use Conjuguemos to help communicate their students’ individual needs.

And independent language learners also aren’t missing out on a whole lot! The only glaringly obvious thing you’ll be missing if you’re joining without a teacher is that you can’t play the multiplayer games, since those are based on playing against other classmates.

Otherwise, teachers or institutions who opt for a paid plan for their students can use Conjuguemos for a very reasonable price.

Who should use Conjuguemos?

I love using Conjuguemos for one-off grammar practice as shown in this Conjuguemos review. Just five minutes here and there remembering my past tenses or other various grammar concepts gives me a little instant gratification.

I love the Graded Practice, that it’s just a simple but effective way to practice grammar rules in context. That bit’s my favorite.

Unfortunately, while Conjuguemos technically supports a handful of languages, many of them (namely Latin and Korean), this Conjuguemos review shows that they just don’t have enough content (yet) to make it worthwhile. If you’re learning any of the other languages, though, and need some basic grammar practice, Conjuguemos is gold!

Especially if you’re taking a formal course using a textbook that’s supported, this is an amazing supplemental resource! Or, if you’re a teacher looking for easy, convenient help for your students, see what Conjuguemos can do for you!

Babbel Review: textbook, but make it modern

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

Babbel is a very well-known language learning app that’s been around since 2008. Named after the Tower of Babel (a biblical myth attempting to explain the existence of different languages), Babbel combines educational strategies with real-life conversations to teach users a variety of different languages.

In this Babbel review, let’s talk about how Babbel teaches languages behind-the-scenes, and what kind of language learner can benefit from the Babbel app and Babbel Live.

Babbel is available for learners of the following languages:

Danish
Dutch
English
French
German
Indonesian
Italian

Norwegian
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

So, if you’re learning one of these languages, this Babbel review is right for you!

Babbel review: overview

When starting with Babbel, you can either choose your level yourself, or take Babbel’s assessment. While this isn’t a unique concept, Babbel does take a unique approach.

Now, this is interesting because there’s no objective testing when it comes to specific skills; unlike Busuu (one of Babbel’s direct competitors), you’re not tested on your ability to use grammar correctly, or whether you can fill in the blank. Instead, it’s focused on real-life abilities.

And by real-life abilities, I mean your own perception of your abilities. It’s more of a “would you feel comfortable doing this” than a “how do you appropriately conjugate this verb” kind of thing.

Is this helpful? That’s for you to decide. I appreciate how it reflects how subjective language learning is as a whole, but also respect that some feel the need to be “tested”. 9 times out of 10 I do not trust more objective assessments because languages are simply too complex, so I always suggest taking these things with a grain of salt.

And if you’re not satisfied with this assessment, you’re free to choose your own path anyway.

Babbel’s beginner content starts off with basic vocab, grammar, and pronunciation; the advanced stuff finishes with slang, cultural insights, and more of the subtle aspects of the language. It’s all relevant, real-life stuff, for a variety of different language levels.

And none of it is “required” – you can skip around however you like, whenever you like.

Babbel’s lessons

Starting from Babbel’s dashboard, you’re directed to either learn something new or review your past lessons (assuming you’ve used Babbel in this language in the past).

We’ll start with a new lesson, which is a very quick, bite-sized snack that you can either do real quick when you have 5 minutes to spare, or you can “marathon” as many in a row as you want. Great for the busiest of language learners who want to make good use of their limited time.

As you can see, the interface is very modern and smooth and leads you to use the language in a variety of ways to both keep things interesting and give you a well-rounded education. This approach is a decent reflection of the different ways that language is used, so you’re prepared.

Like anything, there are pros and cons to Babbel’s lesson format.

Pro: you can choose between selecting the provided letters/spaces, or just type them yourself

Con: it automatically turns non-accented letters into the appropriate accents, without even suggesting you make the effort yourself. This causes a lot of bad habits!*

Pro: you’re not using rote memorization: you get context via sentences, imagery, and a native audio recording*

Con: you can’t speed up or skip lessons, or even skip the repeating of phrases after completing them

Honestly, I’d consider the statements with the asterisks to be objectively important; the other two are my own personal preference.

So what about Babbel’s review option? Let’s take a look.

You start by choosing the review style that best meets your goals: flashcards, listening, speaking, or writing.

The review you choose is then powered by spaced repetition, which is a common algorithm across many language learning apps.

Basically, Babbel’s spaced repetition is based on levels; the level that particular word or phrase is on dictates when you’ll see it next, and whether you get it right dictates if it stays on that level or moves around:

Level 1: one day
Level 2: four days
Level 3: seven days
Level 4: fourteen days
Level 5: sixty days
Level 6: six months

Correct answer: move up a level
Incorrect (first time): maintain level, review again the next day
Incorrect (more than once): move down a level, review again the next day

Obviously, this is more useful the more often you use Babbel, but as a whole it’s a great approach. Choose when you want to review, and went you want to learn something new! You’ll theoretically be reviewing more often than you’ll learn, and you also get to choose your method of review each time.

Again, I like the amount of choice involved. Especially in more academic settings, it can feel really stifling when you’re done with a particular topic or lesson, but you have to complete a set number of exercises before you get the option to move on.

Babbel doesn’t put up these obstacles.

Babbel Live

Over recent years, Babbel has grown from just the app and lessons to include live group coaching! This is a separate membership not included with the Babbel app (more on that later), but can really make your Babbel experience more engaging and valuable.

Signing up for a Babbel Live class is just as smooth as the rest of the Babbel experience.

To start, you set the parameters of your level and your schedule. From there, you find a group class on a theme that interests you. Sign up with a couple of clicks, and you’re set! Add this class to your preferred calendar and download the material you’ll be using in class to prepare.

Once you add the class to your calendar, I like that the event includes the link shown in the above video, so you have easy access to all that info.

However, the self-study lessons mentioned in that link don’t seem to relate at all to the theme of the lesson; the theme is the society of the future, but the linked lessons are about professional emails?

I would love to see these themes/topics match up directly with Babbel’s lessons, so you can take the lesson independently, and then actively practice it with a professional tutor and other peers. This would really tie the two options together, as well as help solidify these lessons for language learners who like to practice via conversation.

As of the date on the bottom of this post, Babbel Live is only offered in Spanish, German, French, and Italian.

Babbel’s pricing

Freebie seekers look elsewhere! Babbel is offered exclusively at a monthly membership rate. Depending on your commitment (ranging from monthly to lifetime), the Babbel app is available for $8-15/month. Click here for updated pricing.

As aforementioned, a subscription to the Babbel app does not include Babbel Live – however, a subscription to Babbel Live does include free access to the app; suffice to say, this makes Babbel Live that much more valuable.

At commitments ranging from monthly to annually, Babbel Live offers unlimited group classes! At $50-100/month, it’s honestly a steal. It’s important to note that if you commit to more than a month at a time for a lower per-month rate, you will be paying the full financial commitment at signup.

Click here to learn more about Babbel Live.

At these prices, assuming you will reliably attend a Babbel Live lesson at least once a week, I would absolutely consider the Babbel app and Babbel Live worth the price, even just at the monthly rate.

Of course, whether that’s feasible to you depends on your own lifestyle and your goals.

Babbel review: who it’s for

Babbel is an oldie but a goodie in the language learning industry, and I’m happy to see them growing with the times (i.e. offering live coaching). In general, there’s a lot of potential for language learners of the offered languages, especially those ready to invest both the time and money in Babbel Live. Not to mention Babbel’s recent acquisition of the Toucan Chrome extension.

Because Babbel is still pretty academic, it can feel a little stale if you’re not into the strict, structured approach. If you want to avoid language learning that feels like a textbook, you’ll want to steer clear; maybe try Busuu’s similar approach, or head to the other end of the spectrum with something like Tandem.

However, if you appreciate the structure of a textbook combined with a modern platform and convenient access to conversations with professional tutors, Babbel is a safe bet for your language learning.

Sold? Click here to start with Babbel!