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Kwiziq review: fun AND quality grammar lessons

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Kwiziq is a gamified membership system meant to help French and Spanish language learners understand and conquer grammar concepts, in an intuitive, enjoyable way. In this Kwiziq review, we’ll take a deep dive into what that actually means for you and your language learning.

So, what do we need to know about Kwiziq? Let’s take a deep dive into this website. Is it the right resource for you?

Kwiziq review: how does the AI work?

To date, Kwiziq supports the following languages:

  • French
  • Spanish

Kwiziq’s claim to fame is its artificial intelligence. It uses its AI to determine your proficiency with different grammatical concepts, as well as when to test you on them. The way it tests you feels almost like Anki to me, which is a good thing.

It’s not that it reminds you of these things right before it thinks you’ll forget them, but it really throws one or two concepts at you until you make your way through them and prove that you’re ready to move on to something more advanced.

To master these levels, you take quizzes! The AI determines which concepts you should review, and then offers you quizzes, or “kwizzes”, based on this material. Your mastery of every concept starts at 0% and goes up or down depending on the questions you get right or wrong. As you get closer to 100%, the AI will suggest you move on to an upper level.

Besides the technical stuff, Kwiziq’s grammar is separated into CEFR levels, so both you and Kwiziq know what your actual skill level is: A1-C1, A1 being beginner, and C1 being advanced.

This is a great way to conceptualize your language level based on your knowledge of grammar. Clearly, Kwiziq is laser-focused on improving your grammar and keeping you in the know about what you’ve learned and what you still need help with.

Finally, these levels are presented to you in a progress map (as long as you’re a paid member). A green subject is one that’s been mastered, yellow is in progress, and red occurs when you have performed below 0%. Because the AI wants you to stay above 0%, it advises you not to answer questions if you’re not sure about their answer.

Kwiziq review: all the pros and cons to consider

So, now that you have the basic idea of Kwiziq, is it for you? The next section of this Kwiziq review will address several pros and cons based on my own detailed use of Kwiziq for both French and Spanish.

Pro: Kwiziq provides decent explanations of grammatical concepts

Kwiziq has experienced language teachers who create all of its content, and you can see who has provided this information quite easily. As I said, grammar is hard, and these concepts can sometimes take several different tries to finally get into our brains.

When I found Kwiziq, I was right in the middle of an “I kind of understand the difference, but I generally fumble and fall a lot when I try to use them” phase with the preterite and imperfect tenses in Spanish. Now, Kwiziq’s explanation didn’t really help me a lot. What did help me was their chart for the actual conjugations. Looking at what the ending should be over and over again did help me.

At the end of the day, one person can only do so much. The descriptions of when and how to use these grammar concepts are pretty well-executed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they help certain ideas to really click for you.

Pro: Kwiziq rewards you for learning

One of the best parts about Kwiziq is that it rewards you for your efforts. It’s completely gamified, which means you get rewarded every time you answer 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of the questions pertaining to a certain grammatical concept correctly.

You get little stars after each of these accomplishments, so sometimes you’ll finish a Kwiz with a couple of dozen stars celebrating your success! These stars are also paired with “kudos”, which you get every time you accomplish literally anything.

Past the individual lessons, you’re rewarded for your success in certain levels, as well! Accomplishing certain percentages of success in your level means you’ll get trophies: a bronze shield for achieving 50%, a silver shield for 75%, a gold shield for 90%, and a diamond for 100%.

These also build up on top of each other: the more high-level trophies you win, the more foundational awards you get. For example, the A1 diamond trophy is yours once you achieve a diamond in A0 and gold in A1.

Finally, Kwiziq also rewards you for landmarks. You get your first one after your first kwiz and are continuously rewarded for the number of kwizzes you take in a day. The more kwizzes you take, the more landmarks you achieve, and the more kudos you receive.

Con: Kwiziq punishes you for your wrong answers

The way that Kwiziq’s AI works is that it takes all your answers at face value. Correct questions help you, incorrect questions hurt you, and questions that you don’t answer remain neutral. Therefore, Kwiziq tells you not to guess answers if you don’t know them in every kwiz.

While there’s nothing wrong with telling you that you’re wrong, the thing I don’t like about that is that the whole reward system is based on percentages: once you get a certain percentage right, you get a happy little green color, more stars, more trophies, etc.

However, this means that the more times you answer a question incorrectly, the more you have to get it correctly to get all these rewards. Which makes it almost impossible to reach milestones for concepts that may be more difficult for you.

This conflicts with one of my own philosophies for motivation: trying and failing are better than not trying at all. If you don’t try, how do you know if you’ll succeed? Kwiziq punishes learners for this.

Personally, it introduces more anxiety into my brain than is necessary because it means I’m constantly second-guessing whether I actually know the thing that I think I know. It means that I’m never confident in myself because the risk is so extreme.

The whole premise of Kwiziq feeds off a reward system, but if you’re having a hard time understanding something, forget about getting rewarded for practicing that concept, because you’re just never going to get that star. Which means I’ve honestly given up on certain parts of Kwiziq. I didn’t like how much negative reinforcement I was getting – I was being punished for trying!

Pro: Kwizzes are short, 10-question, multiple-choice exercises

The thing about Kwiziq is that it’s addictive. You get rewarded for almost every kwiz you take, and kwizzes are only a minute or so long. You don’t have to commit any time whatsoever to this fun little game. It’s easy to, once you go down the rabbit hole of figuring out your grammar, but you can just take 30 seconds to practice.

Plus, the fact that they’re multiple-choice (at first) makes them significantly easier to swallow. When you’re learning these things at first, you only have to choose from a few different options.

They’re not just 10 questions about 1 concept, either; they’re 10 questions on 2-3 concepts that the AI thinks you should be practicing.

Once Kwiziq’s AI thinks that you’ll be able to do it, it’ll throw you a few fill-in-the-blanks. These are the ones you have to be careful with, though, because it doesn’t take too kindly to typos. One mistyped letter, and you throw away the whole question, even if you were right.

As you can see, these questions get tough! These are things that you don’t necessarily need to know for conversational use of the language, so don’t get hung up on them if you’re not taking some sort of assessment.

Con: No mobile app for this Kwiziq review

We all love to do everything mobile. Especially with Kwiziq’s quick little quizzes, it should be fun to whip your phone out every once in a while, and kwiz your way through some Spanish practice! At least, that’s what I would love to do during a boring movie or something.

Unfortunately, as of this Kwiziq review, there is no mobile app. You can open the website on a mobile device, but it’s not the best – it’s too easy to accidentally hit the wrong multiple-choice answer, you have to keep scrolling to see the full sentence, etc.

Pro: Instant gratification

A great part about Kwiziq is the fact that you can instantly get an explanation as to why they marked your answer incorrectly. At the result of every quiz, they give you links to the lesson page, so you can figure out what you did wrong (or, in some cases, which grammatical concept they were even testing!).

This is an easy way to fill those little gaps in your grammar brain instantly, as opposed to creating a list of things that you should look up, and then you kind of forget what you did, and then you have to find the question again and figure out how to answer it, and it just goes on and on.

Even if I do think that Kwiziq punishes you too harshly for failing (as I believe failing should just mean that you put the effort forward, not “bad language learner, you were wrong”), I do appreciate the ability to get a question wrong and then instantly be directed to the lesson page for a quick reminder.

Con: if you take a break, don’t get anything wrong

Even though Kwiziq’s robot tells you not to answer questions if you’re not completely sure, there is a scenario in which this is different. I ran into this situation when some new topics had been recently added to the A1 level, which brought my 90+% down to somewhere in the 80s. All I wanted to do was get some questions right on this new subject so that my percentage would go back up to the 90s. It was all basic Spanish concepts, so I knew that I already understood them.

When I went to take a new quiz, I avoided all the other questions; I didn’t want to commit the brain space to the other subjects, just the one where I wanted to up my percentage. According to Kwiziq, I wouldn’t be punished for not trying to answer. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I was on a beginner quiz, and I got all those questions wrong! Which, of course, brought my entire percentage farther down. Didn’t even matter that I got that one question right, the one that had been at 0%. All my little green areas quickly turned yellow, because Kwiziq had just assumed that I had forgotten all those beginner concepts.

Moral of the story: either stick with your kwizzing, make sure you answer all your old questions or don’t pay too much attention to that percentage. If the AI assumes that you forgot something, it will bring your score down to encourage you to relearn those lessons. I get what they’re trying to do, but they should’ve given me a big red flag saying “hey, our rule about not trying to answer questions that you don’t know doesn’t apply anymore, I will judge you on everything!”.

Pro: Kwiziq’s free trial

Kwiziq offers 10 free Kwizzes per month to everyone. I love this because the free content never expires! You can take free kwizzes as long as you want, they’re just limited. At the start of the new month, these 10 kwizzes are recharged.

This also means that you get your free kwizzes even if you were a member in the past but have since canceled, which is a thing that a lot of companies punish you for. If you cancel, you’ll still get an email once a month reminding you of free kwizzes that you have left, and when they’ll expire. Even if I’m not paying anymore, I still really like to be informed of free content that’s waiting for me.

Kwiziq review

Con: You can get a lot more for free elsewhere

Kwiziq isn’t the only guy out there with free quizzes to test your grammar fluency, but they’re the only one I know about that limits their quizzes. They are in competition with a couple of other resources that offer very similar products, with very similar information, all for free.

For example, Spanishdict is a great website with a free online Spanish-English dictionary, forum, and similar quizzes. These quizzes aren’t led by artificial intelligence, but they do a great job of providing you with the practice for some of these more difficult concepts.

Another popular free resource for grammar quizzes is StudySpanish. This website also has significant amounts of information available to help you understand your grammar, with some more hidden behind a paywall.

Note that both of these options are Spanish only. I’m not aware of similar resources for French as of this Kwiziq review.

Con: Kwiziq might be out of your budget

While Kwiziq is far from the only monthly membership platform to learn a language, it is on the pricey side. I do think the value is absolutely worth the price if you can swing it, and you specifically need to improve your grammar.

You can click here for Spanish pricing, and here for French pricing.

But don’t leave this Kwiziq review yet, there are still important features to talk about!

Pro: Kwiziq is more than just grammar

Primarily, Kwiziq is perfect for improving your Spanish and French grammar, but the other exercises in the “library” are excellent as well.

Just like Kwiziq’s grammar content, the exercises are also organized by A1-C2, so you get a really solid, in-depth understanding of your skill levels across the board, considering all 4 are rarely in the same place at any given time. And, honestly, I highly recommend Kwiziq for all language learners, if even just for these exercises.

In those practices (especially the last one), I love that it has you grade yourself. This is more flexible than the normal kwizzes, so you don’t have to mark yourself wrong for not seeing a word if you don’t find that necessary.

Then, of course, Kwiziq then links you to the individual lessons used in the statement, so you can figure out what you did wrong. If you’re not up to doing that research just yet, the icons to the right of the lesson links let you save them for later.

Still not quite getting it? All users are able to comment on the lessons and ask their questions, and Kwiziq’s Spanish teachers are actually incredibly responsive; if you’ve found something ambiguous and your question helps them see that something is confusing, they also have the power to make changes.

Plus, you can’t forget about the Weekend Workout! Every weekend, members get brand-new writing and listening challenges appropriate for every level sent directly to their email. It’s honestly a really nice reminder to keep up your practice, even if it’s only a little bit.

Kwiziq review: how to know if it’s the language app for you

At the end of the day, this Kwiziq review shows us a really great resource for French and Spanish learners. It has every grammar concept under the sun, and more are being added regularly.

Its gamification and easy-to-swallow kwizzes are addictive, which means that you’ll learn more grammar than you ever would anyways (let’s be real, most of us hate learning grammar). The exercises that are updated regularly are also a major win, I think.

If you’re not looking for grammar help, Kwiziq’s price point may not be worth it for you, depending on how much you use the other exercises. If you’re looking for something similar at a lower price point, I would recommend Yabla instead – not as pretty or user-friendly, but has similar types of exercises.

After reading this Kwiziq review, I would recommend all Spanish and French language learners, no matter the level, at least go through a few free kwizzes (click here for Spanish, or click here for French) and have the AI assess your level.

Busuu review: the best combo of academic & social

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Busuu is one of the most popular, recognized, and biggest language apps out there (so much so that they bought out Verbling, and are now owned by Chegg, a huge education company), and in this Busuu review, it will be made clear why it’s so well-liked. Get to know all of Busuu’s features and how to best use them for your own language learning so you can reach your language goals faster.

If after this Busuu review you find that it’s not the best solution for your language learning, I’ll also share some alternatives based on Busuu’s flaws so you can make the best choice for your languaeg learning.

Busuu review: languages offered

Busuu is available to learners of the most common foreign languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

Busuu is appropriate for all levels of these languages, making it accessible for language learners coming from all over. This is important because some of Busuu’s features are only successful because of its huge audience.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at Busuu and see if it’s the language app for you.

Busuu review: quality of lessons

Thanks to Busuu’s partnership with Chegg (a college education company), you can rely on Busuu for a high-quality education based on the CEFR levels (or Fluency Score, as they put it). Right from the start, this sets our expectations: Busuu is focused on academic use of the language, i.e. passing exams and textbook knowledge.

While many of us language learners have been taught that this is the only and/or best approach to learning languages, but it quite simply is not (always). If your goal is not an academic one, and you instead want to focus on being conversational as a priority…well, we’ll talk about this lower down in this Busuu review.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at Busuu’s first lesson to see how they execute their academic approach.

If you’re not a total beginner in the language, you have the option to take Busuu’s assessment. As a general rule, I take these online language level assessments with a grain of salt; no matter the platform, they’re almost always some variation of inaccurate. I recommend you do the same.

From the start, it’s clear that I was right about Busuu’s approach to learning a language! Very academic, very focused on using the language “correctly” and working towards the eventual goal of taking and passing an assessment.

Busuu’s assessment basically judges my ability in Spanish based on grammar, and much less so on things like communication or understanding. As such, I was really frustrated to be put at the A2 level in Spanish. I understand why – my A2 grammar is top-notch, and my intermediate is fairly functional but not quite textbook – but A2 is much too conservative, and I know that the content will be too easy.

It doesn’t seem like this would be too big of a deal, but in the past (and in the present for many language learners) I’ve followed these assessments, learned what they’ve told me to learn, and then quickly gotten bored and given up because of it.

After completing the assessment, you’re sent off to a comprehension lesson based on where Busuu thinks your level is. And keep watching, because I was genuinely shocked at the end to see some gamification.

As I assumed, the A2 level was boring and repetitive for me. The vocabulary was snooze-worthy, and I was not even the least bit challenged. This isn’t as much of a problem for me because I know how to solve the problem, but it can prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for language learners who are used to being bored and use this as further proof that they don’t like/are not good at learning languages.

Fortunately, Busuu allows you to switch lessons and attempt checkpoints at any time! You have to achieve at least 80% in this checkpoint, and the questions are pretty well-rounded. They prioritize grammar, of course, but also include other ways to use the language.

Regardless, I do really like the lessons themselves (once I get to my appropriate level!). Everything is very smooth and user-friendly, and the video comprehension questions make the language just a touch more 3-dimensional, too. I can tell that they’re trying to make a traditionally boring skill just a bit more engaging.

And like any intentional journey to learn a language, Busuu lessons end with a certificate! Unfortunately, official institutions will not accept a McGraw-Hill (another textbook company!) certificate from Busuu as proof of foreign language fluency.

You can use it as a resume builder for unrelated career paths, or you can frame it for your own personal pride, but it’s not the same as an official CEFR exam.

This certificate is also only available to paid users (which we’ll talk about more in a second).

Vocab review

Need to review? Busuu has a sleek way to have you review the vocabulary terms you come across in the lessons. The platform itself looks great, and I appreciate how you not only have to spell the words, but you also will be marked wrong if you don’t use appropriate accents, but there’s room for growth.

For one, I wish I could tell Busuu that I already know these terms. If I continued on with more at-level vocabulary, it would be easier to kick these easier terms out and focus on what would actually be helpful for me. I don’t see that option anywhere, though.

I do also wish you could add your own vocab! Assuming you’re using more than just Busuu to learn a language, or that you’re not a total beginner, it would be helpful to include other terms that you find off-platform. Spanishdict is an excellent example of this improvement.

Honestly, the fact that you can’t give Busuu any input whatsoever is a major bummer. These words are super easy for me (I told you I wasn’t A2!), and if I follow this lead, I’ll just be studying these terms that I already know until my eyes bleed.

Busuu community

Besides the frankly awesome lesson pathway, Busuu really excels with their community! You can only get so far in your language learning without actively using the language and making any kind of connections; fortunately, Busuu’s got you covered.

Click over to the “Community” tab to participate.

Here you have the opportunity to make connections with other language learners who can benefit from your native skills (hello, potential language exchanges!), as well as to practice your own use of the language in whichever way you see fit.

If your priority is communication, focus on the different ways to practice speaking. Likewise with written skills.

Whichever method of communication you want to improve, your response will be automatically submitted to the community, where native speakers can help correct you and encourage you along the way, just like you can encourage those practicing and learning your native language.

Wait a beat, check your notifications, and you’ll get a handful of corrections from the native-speaking community.

If you like, you can also go through and add respondents as friends and form a mutually-beneficial relationship where you correct each other’s submissions.

Finally, you can see all your corrections, submissions, and potential language friends by visiting your profile.

Busuu’s community may not be their primary talking point, but do yourself a favor and keep it in mind when you consider using Busuu to learn a new language! Even if this isn’t the only version of an online community for language learners, I think it blows communities like HelloTalk out of the water completely.

The difference between Busuu Premium and free

The bulk of Busuu is available for free to all, which is amazing! It’s awesome to see such a high-quality resource accessible to language learners of all different economic backgrounds. If you opt for Busuu Premium, you can also access:

  • No ads
  • Additional “fun” courses (travel, pronunciation, etc.)
  • AI-powered vocab review
  • Faster community feedback
  • The aforementioned Busuu certificates

These features are all not required for basic learning of the language. If you find them beneficial to your language learning and believe they would help keep you motivated, you’ll be happy to know that Busuu Premium is also very reasonably priced!

You can also start out with a 14-day free trial before you commit.

Click here to see updated pricing.

Busuu review: worth the hype for you?

Busuu’s success isn’t a mystery – it combines the academic approach to learning a language with a more motivating platform (meaning modern technology, not boring textbooks) and a strong community of other language learners to help keep you and your language learning on track.

If this sounds like your kind of language app, you can click here to get started with a free trial of Busuu Premium.

However, if grammar is not high on your list of priorities, you may find Busuu boring. If, for example, you want a stronger focus on conversational skills, you might consider finding a tutor on Verbling (which is owned by Busuu, fun fact!)

Or, if you like the structured, step-by-step approach to mastering a language but don’t want to rely so heavily on grammar, LingoDeer may be another option for you to consider.

Babbel vs Rosetta Stone: how to choose

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The conversation of Babbel vs Rosetta Stone depends completely on what kind of language learner you are, and how far you want to go with your language.

Rosetta Stone, for example, is great for ultimate beginner learners who just want to get to tourist-level understanding, while Babbel is for much more intensive learners.

But, if that doesn’t answer the question of Babbel vs Rosetta Stone for you, let’s go into detail. Both resources are genuinely high quality and very useful, but neither is for every single type of language learner.

Babbel vs Rosetta Stone: languages

First things first, which language(s) are you interested in learning? Both Babbel and Rosetta Stone teach:

  • Dutch
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish

Rosetta Stone also covers:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Tagalog
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Irish
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Latin
  • Farsi
  • Vietnamese

And Babbel has:

  • Danish
  • Indonesian
  • Norwegian

Babbel vs Rosetta Stone: lesson format

Both languages apps are structured very similarly…but there are key differences.

For example, Rosetta Stone is much more simple. It’s designed for the simplest goals: tourist level of the language. The lessons are static, and you know exactly what you’re going to get. You’ll also be consistently drilled several times over.

This is excellent for beginner language learners without any experience who need to get used to repetition, but boring for those with experience.

Babbel, on the other hand, is more responsive to your answers. If you keep getting something wrong, it’ll bring it up again and again until you get it. Plus, the content is going to go much more advanced, considering it’s built to be more textbook-like.

Babbel leads you through significantly less repetition than Rosetta Stone. Babbel does it SRS (Spaced Repetition) style, where you see more difficult terms more often; Rosetta Stone has a set number of repetitions for you to get through in every lesson.

If you try Rosetta Stone, you’ll learn very quickly if the repetition is too much for you, or if it’s exactly what you need.

From here, it’s pretty evident that Rosetta Stone and Babbel come from very different beginnings: Rosetta Stone being 3-figure-investment CD sets, Babbel being one of the first language learning apps.

Babbel vs Rosetta Stone: levels

As mentioned, Rosetta Stone is only going to get you so far. Babbel will get you…well, farther than that.

The first sign: Babbel asks you to assess your current level. And interestingly enough, the whole thing is in English!

On the other hand, Rosetta Stone doesn’t attempt to assess your level at all. Instead, it presents you with the lessons available and lets you choose the one that you think matches up with your current skill level. This approach is ideal for complete beginners.

Rosetta Stone’s static lessons follow the subject-verb-noun sentence structure all the way through its advanced content. It is engaging and well-rounded and helps you learn to use the language in more than one way, but it still maintains the same, identical patterns regardless of content.

This isn’t a problem if you just want to use the language to communicate simply, maybe for an upcoming trip or something. More experienced learners, however, will get bored quickly.

Rosetta Stone will get you speaking and understanding fast because of its real-life content; Babbel builds your skills over the long term because they’re being built to be more flexible, and useful in a variety of contexts (reading books, watching TV, etc.).

This isn’t to say Babbel doesn’t provide a real-life education, though, but we’ll talk about that later.

Language learning journeys: Rosetta Stone vs Babbel

One of the most important things to keep in mind is where your language learning app is going. It is worth noting here that the exact content from language to language isn’t going to necessarily match.

Like with any other language app, more popular foreign languages are going to be more developed. It’s a simple supply/demand thing. Regardless, here’s how the Spanish courses compare.

Babbel does offer support for more niche interests than Rosetta Stone, at least with languages as popular as Spanish.

However, Rosetta Stone, again, drills its lessons thoroughly. This leaves less room for the fun stuff or other needs you may have.

Speaking practice

If being able to speak your target language is important to you, it’s just as important to choose a language app that will support that goal. So when it comes to learning to speak, how do Babbel and Rosetta Stone compare?

While Rosetta Stone was offering live coaching for a minute, I’m guessing it never really took. At the time of this review, Rosetta Stone is limited to the tech in their app.

On the other hand, Babbel’s coaching system, Babbel Live, seems to be going strong! Basically, every month you can join a certain number of small group classes (limited to 6 participants) with a Babbel teacher where you can get real-life conversational practice.

*Note that a Babbel Live subscription is separate from the Babbel app, but if you pay for Babbel Live, you get the app thrown in free. The Babbel app is priced similarly to the Rosetta Stone app.

Which is your next language app?

While both Rosetta Stone and Babbel are pretty huge language learning apps and are insanely well-known within the language learning industry, they’re actually quite different from each other and serve wildly different needs.

Rosetta Stone is simple. It’ll get you to basic conversations pretty quickly, and will drill you again and again until the lessons truly sink into your long-term memory. And even if you want to eventually go into more intermediate content, Rosetta Stone is still a high quality start.

Babbel is more flexible. It follows your lead and gives you only the information that you need when you need it. Plus, the skills you learn from Babbel can be easily applied to any language learning goals you may have.

Made your choice?

If Rosetta Stone sounds more like your speed, you can learn more about it in my Rosetta Stone review or click here to get started.

Alternatively, if Babbel makes more sense, you can find my Babbel review right here, or click here to try the app.

Busuu vs Babbel: minor differences, major implications

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Busuu and Babbel are in tight competition with each other. It can be difficult to compare the two because they are so similar (not to mention both being named 2-syllable words that start with ‘b’). So for language learners, which is better, Busuu vs Babbel?

In this blog post, we’ll focus on what each language app does differently, for better or for worse, so you can make an educated decision for your own language learning strategy.

Busuu vs Babbel: languages

Both Busuu and Babbel offer their content in the following languages:

  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

You can also use Busuu to learn:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • Japanese

and Babbel to learn:

  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Indonesian
  • Norwegian
  • Swedish

Busuu vs Babbel: getting started with each app

Like many other apps to learn a language, Busuu and Babbel both give you the opportunity to assess your current level in the language. However, the way they do this is wildly different.

When assessing your skills, most language learning resources will provide you with a series of activities and see how far you can go before answering consistently incorrectly. This is exactly what Busuu does.

It’s a very simple, black-and-white, “either you know it or you don’t” kind of thing. Very academic.

And while I would also consider Babbel to be a more academic approach to learning a language, their assessment style is…decidedly not.

Here, Babbel is more focused on how your skills can be used in real-life scenarios. Here, Babbel is less focused on helping you get an A on an exam and more focused on what you can do with the information you already have.

When it comes to assessments like these (as in, assessments given by a computer), I’ll tell you what I tell my clients: don’t rely on these results too much. If the app does its tech right, these assessments will get the right level of activity for you, but it’s not a very reliable indicator of your skill in the language as a whole.

And this is an excellent display of this. Do you care more about acing a test or using these skills? How do you want to have your foreign language abilities judged?

Busuu vs Babbel: which skills you’ll build

To the unseasoned language learner, Busuu and Babbel seem to both be excellent quality apps. While this is true, there are some small yet important differences to consider when comparing to two, especially when it comes to which skills you’ll be building.

Let’s look at a Busuu lesson.

In this lesson, you follow along with a simple dialogue and then are tested on your comprehension of the conversation. Exercises like these are really helpful if you want to be able to understand conversations in a foreign language or watch foreign language movies.

These are important skills, but they’re not the only important skills.

One of my biggest critiques of Duolingo is that it’s a lot of button-pushing, not a whole lot of learning to use the language. And in this way, Busuu has the same problem.

To show you what I mean, here’s a Babbel lesson.

In one Babbel lesson, you’re using the content in a variety of different ways, including speaking and writing. Most language apps struggle to fit such a holistic approach into one system, but Babbel does it well!

If speaking and contributing to the language (not just understanding it) is important to you, this is a major distinction.

How each app reviews vocabulary

An important part of learning is the review, and both Babbel and Busuu have slightly different systems to do this. Each platform allows you the option to review instead of learning at any point, and these reviews are similar to their lessons.

For example, here’s a Busuu review session.

Busuu takes the vocabulary terms it’s shown you and has you actively write them out. This is very helpful for recall, as it forces your brain to think about it more deeply than it would if you were just constantly pushing buttons.

Let’s compare it to Babbel’s review.

I love that Babbel starts out by asking you how you’d like to practice. If you’re intentional about your language learning and are clear about what skills you want to develop, this is an A+ way to review.

This is opposed to Babbel, which does not give you any options. Writing out all the answers is excellent, but it can also be frustrating if spelling isn’t your priority.

Busuu vs Babbel: how you’ll practice having conversations

Likely the biggest way that these two apps differ is how you’ll practice using the things you learn in conversation. Neither is better nor worse than the other, but this difference can truly define which app is the better fit for you to learn a language.

Central to the Busuu experience is the community. As you complete your lessons, you’ll be led to submit a recording or written prompt (your choice) to Busuu’s community. You also have the option to truly invest time into Busuu’s community and build up your conversation skills.

This is a hugely important part of the Busuu experience because there are so many options to use the language you’re learning in engaging ways. It’s always your decision when to practice and how in easy, 5-minute exercises that are not just pushing buttons.

Assuming you take the time to build up some relationships and connect with other community members, your functional language skills will skyrocket.

Babbel takes a different approach with their new group lesson service, Babbel Live.

While Babbel focuses on short, community-driven practice sessions that you can execute in whatever ways you need to in your own time, Babbel gets you in front of professional teachers that will lead you appropriately and correct your mistakes.

These are very different strategies, so here’s a basic pros/cons list to help you understand your best fit.

Babbel Live

  • Professional support
  • Scheduled lessons = accountability
  • Labor-intensive
  • Expensive over time

Busuu community

  • Convenient for any schedule
  • Flexible activities
  • Unreliable feedback
  • Less structured focus

How much do they cost?

Both Babbel and Busuu are premium apps. They’re not free, but they’re also not outrageously expensive. If you’re in a position to invest in your language learning, the prices are worth it.

That said, the apps themselves are similarly priced. Their subscription lengths may differ, but the price you pay monthly/yearly/whatever is essentially the same.

You can find updated Busuu prices here, and subscription prices for the Babbel app here.

Babbel Live is a different, more expensive subscription, but real access to language teachers is going to cost more (and be worth more) than an app. Check Babbel Live prices here.

Busuu vs Babbel: make your choice

Now that we’ve compared Busuu vs Babbel in different ways, it should be clear which language app is the better fit for you.

Babbel is considerably more flexible, as it’s always asking you how you want to complete your activities, so you’re always building the skills you want to build. And if you spring for Babbel Live, you’ll be held accountable by your teachers in your lessons to not only study, but also to study correctly.

On the other hand, Busuu’s lessons are a lighter touch, closer to Duolingo’s method of tapping away. It’s not quite so surface level, though, as you can use Busuu’s huge online community of language learners to help correct you and keep you accountable.

Still can’t decide?

You can learn more in my review of Busuu here, or my Babbel review here.

Pimsleur review: barely keeping with the times

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Back in the days of pre-internet language learning, you had 2 ways to learn a language: attend a class, or buy one of those CD sets that had you go over words and phrases in the language over and over again until you got a hang of it. The CD method is basically this Pimsleur review – yeah, it’s old-school.

This Pimsleur review will talk about what exactly the Pimsleur method is, Pimsleur’s promises, and what to expect if you do choose to buy the course. Is Pimsleur right for you?

Pimsleur review: languages

Right off the bat, Pimsleur boasts a significant number of languages:

  • Albanian
  • Arabic (Eastern)
  • Arabic (Egyptian)
  • Arabic (Modern Standard)
  • Armenian (Western)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Creole (Haitian)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Lithuanian
  • Norwegian
  • Ojibwe
  • Pashto
  • Persian (Dari)
  • Persian (Farsi)
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Punjabi
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish (Latin American)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Swiss German
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Twi
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Vietnamese

Pimsleur is an audio-based resource, which means the specific accent of any given language can be very important. So, if a certain “version” of a language is important to you, then Pimsleur may be an excellent match for your needs.

The Pimsleur Method

The Pimsleur Method is based on the research of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, whose interest and research were based on memory.

The Pimsleur Method itself is a very strict one: 30 minutes of practice every single day (no more, no less), of pure listening and speaking work. Do not attempt to read or write while you listen.

With this approach, Pimsleur promises you’ll be able to converse at an intermediate level in just 30 days. 30 days of 30 minutes of practice today means Pimsleur promises intermediate-level fluency after just 900 minutes (15 hours) of listening and speaking.

Pimsleur review: lessons

The first 30-minute lesson of every language on Pimsleur is absolutely free. You can work through any language you like, as many times as you like, but it’s only that first lesson. This can give you an idea if the approach is something that you’d like to use, without any financial risk.

For some, this first minute-long snippet is all you need to know about Pimsleur. You’re listening to an audio clip of a man slowly explaining (in English) a basic exchange of basic phrases.

If you find that boring, go to my language app search instead to find something better for you. If the slow pace and the excessive English narration don’t bother you, continue reading this Pimsleur review.

As mentioned early, Pimsleur was designed to be listened to and repeated (a common language learning strategy called “shadowing”) while you’re doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

When going through these lessons, you’ll start out with pretty basic, usable phrases: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and “No, I don’t”, for example. Great for tourist-level learning, and getting a pretty solid background of the language.

Pimsleur will take these phrases apart and really drill you in on each individual aspect of the words and phrases, which is good for absolute beginners. It’s definitely all about training your ear to figure out what you’re listening to and saying. Excellent for listening practice as well as pronunciation – understanding the exact sounds that the language uses, not just the word itself.

Pimsleur’s reading approach

While Pimsleur is primarily focused on practicing speaking conversational phrases, it’s also recommended that you continue on their reading practice (but only after the initial lesson is done).

Here you’ll break down the pronunciation of important words and patterns bit by bit, by preparing you for common pronunciation mistakes as well as comparing the sounds of your target language with the sounds of English.

This is truly a slow, methodical approach to pronunciation via shadowing.

It’s not really reading as much as it is pronunciation, which is confusing. In fact, nothing about Pimsleur’s method could be considered effective reading practice.

Pimsleur review: other activities

The two samples above are really the meat of the Pimsleur app. There are other features (discussed below), however, it should be noted that that is THE Pimsleur Method. The rest of the features mentioned in this Pimsleur review are more of Pimsleur’s attempts to keep up with the times than anything else.

As in, not completely necessary.

For example, here are the practice games Pimsleur uses to help you truly drill the lesson’s vocabulary into your brain.

I do like that they’re trying to make the content just a little more engaging for the 21st century, but remember that Pimsleur is very clear that all these fun and games are after you listen to the initial lesson, not instead of.

While it feels like Pimsleur missed the mark a bit with those games, I do enjoy Pimsleur’s voice coach (it’s a chatbot….anytime you hear a language app talking about chatbots, it’s this).

In the future, I’d really like to see Pimsleur expand this section. Personally, I find this much more engaging than listening to a 30-minute recording that’s mostly in English anyway.

Pimsleur review: price

In the past, Pimsleur was very financially inaccessible – you would plan to spend a few hundred dollars for just a basic language education. Fortunately, time and tech have changed, and Pimsleur has negotiated their prices accordingly.

As aforementioned, you can access the first lesson of any language for free at any time.

If you decide to continue with the Pimsleur Method, you can opt to pay monthly, either for just the language you’re learning or for all languages Pimsleur offers. You can see updated pricing here.

Fortunately, gone are the days of spending $1,000 and waiting for your new CD set to come in the mail (and hoping for the best that you’ll actually use it) – now you can get started instantly!

Pimsleur review: who it’s for

We’ve reached the end of this Pimsleur review, so should you try it?

As I said, if the slow pace, the relaxing cadence, or the heavy English narration are distractions for you, then Pimsleur may not be the best way for you to learn a language. In that case, I would suggest Language Transfer or the LanguagePod101 series.

Or, even simpler, find videos for beginners on YouTube! That free content combined with the Language Reactor Chrome extension…the sky’s the limit.

However, if you enjoyed listening to the videos in this Pimsleur review and are happy to repeat words and phrases until you can have simple conversations, Pimsleur may just be the language app for you. Get your 1-week free trial here!

Glossika review: for all your repetition needs

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Glossika is a highly engaging way to learn 60+ different languages. It does this with AI-supplemented sentences, high-quality audio, and a variety of different types of exercises. In this Glossika review, let’s take a walkthrough of the platform and discuss who can benefit most and who won’t.

And if Glossika doesn’t look like your kind of language app, keep scrolling to see some Glossika alternatives.

Glossika review: available languages

As mentioned, Glossika offers courses in 60+ languages:

  • Arabic (Egypt)
  • Arabic (Morocco)
  • Arabic (Standard)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Azerbaijani
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali (India)
  • Bulgarian
  • Cantonese (HK)
  • Catalan
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Beijing)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Taiwan)
  • Croatian (Štokavian)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English (British)
  • Estonian
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish (SW dialect)
  • French
  • Gaelic
  • Georgian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hokkien
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Kazakh
  • Korean
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Manx
  • Mongolian
  • Norwegian (Nynorsk)
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Russian
  • Serbian (Ekavian)
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish (Mexican)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese (Northern)
  • Vietnamese (Southern)
  • Welsh
  • Wenzhounese

And because Glossika cares about language preservation, a few of them are available for free; you don’t get all the benefits of a paid membership, but you do get unlimited spaced repetition practice to do your part to keep these languages alive.

We’ll talk about that more at the end.

Glossika review: the placement test

To start with Glossika, you can first opt to take a placement test. It’s a very simple test: listen to a few audio recordings of sentences, and select the sentence that you hear. If it ever gets too hard, you can always let Glossika know that you need to start from that level.

Unfortunately, like most placement tests, it’s pretty useless.

While the audio recordings themselves are very clear and high quality (the same goes for the usability of Glossika as a whole), I’d rather they just toss the whole thing.

The sentences are so different that all you need to do is recognize one single word at the beginning to answer correctly. This is regardless of whether you understood the statement itself or could even create it – you can see towards the end of the above video that I could answer correctly based on literally the first word.

And that’s beside the fact that it’s only testing listening (despite claiming to exercise all the language skills) and didn’t even attempt to test me beyond B2. Where the placement test is concerned, I’d rather they just ask me directly.

Glossika review: learning new phrases

Glossika teaches users a new language by introducing new sentences that are useful in day-to-day life. You’ll learn to understand the language implicitly, as opposed to learning new vocabulary words and grammatical terms piece by piece.

You’ll learn 5 phrases like this at a time, through reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as using spaced repetition.

Glossika lessons follow this format:

  1. The new phrase is presented written in both your source and target language
  2. You hear a recording of the phrase in both languages, so you can follow along
  3. You type out the phrase in the foreign language
  4. You reread the phrase just in the foreign language
  5. You record yourself saying the phrase in the foreign language

As you can see, you got these phrases drilled into your brain really well. It doesn’t seem to be wildly sensitive to mistakes (I didn’t use any capital letters or accents, for example) which can be a significant drawback if you don’t get used to spelling appropriately, especially with Spanish.

Glossika is very customizable, which is a plus; for example, you can opt out of speaking practice if it’s not convenient for you at the moment, or you can turn the English translation on or off. The only problem is that these customizations aren’t obvious.

Another example: this next video was actually my first attempt at a lesson with Glossika.

I didn’t realize that it had automatically been set to “listening mode” until I started clicking around. There’s no tutorial showing you these options, nor any attempt to even let you know they’re there, so you’ll have to do some experimenting for yourself.

Maybe there’s an option to require correct accents somewhere? If there is, it’s not obvious.

Another helpful setting that Glossika didn’t tell me: if any of the phrases are too easy for you, just click the smiley face, and they’ll be taken out of the cycle.

Nonetheless, if used appropriately, this approach can provide language learners with a very well-rounded language education.

As a whole, I do love Glossika’s approach! In general, it’s engaging, modern, and really attractive.

Glossika’s “reps”

If you hang around Glossika’s Facebook group enough, you’ll see tons of talk about “reps”. The basic idea is that Glossika teaches through repetition, and your mastery of any given phrase or sentence can be defined by how many reps you’ve completed.

With Glossika’s approach, if you repeat their sentences enough times, you’ll master the language! How many times? According to this page here:

  25,000 Reps → Speak sentences comfortably
  50,000 Reps → Start engaging in casual conversations at natural speeds
  75,000 Reps → Start honing skills with more specialized topics
100,000 Reps → Mastery level where you can say just about anything

This is Glossika’s version of spaced repetition (also known as SRS). This concept is not unique to Glossika; it’s when a computer program predicts how easy or difficult any given term or phrase is for you. If it’s easy, and you get it correct, it puts that term to the side until it thinks you’re just about to forget it. Then it shows you that phrase again, therefore getting that phrase from your short-term to long-term memory.

Does this make sense? Sure. Using this strategy, could you theoretically boil down a language to a specific number [of repetitions]? Makes sense.

The problem is (and this is my personal opinion), repeating the same phrases tens of thousands of times is insanely boring.

You’ll practice each phrase 5 times at a minimum, more often if you’re struggling with it. This strategy is great for the more logical and scientific of minds, less so for those needing more entertainment.

Don’t get me wrong, repetition is very important for every language learner. But for my own personal needs, this level of repetition drives me crazy.

Using your stats

Glossika is very scientifically-lead, so their stats are a bit more interesting than most. For one, I love this feature of the “Memory” tab.

Note: I don’t know if the audio problems are because of my device, or a Glossika error.

As I was doing my spoken reps, I honestly didn’t realize that my audio was actually being recorded, so I was disappointed at first. However, going back into this section I can listen to myself repeating the phrase, and compare it to Glossika’s native audio.

This is a helpful strategy called “shadowing”, where you learn to mirror your pronunciation of a foreign language based on an audio clip. Honestly, it’s pretty tough to come by, which is strange considering it’s a simple way for any given language learning app to help you practice speaking a foreign language.

Another interesting feature: you can choose the topics of Glossika’s sentences.

I appreciate being able to tell Glossika that I have absolutely no interest in talking about the military or science. It’s not quite enough to make the approach less boring (again, as a personal opinion and not at all an objective one), but every little option that users can mess with is a bonus.

Glossika’s pricing

Glossika offers free trials to all new users, and then offers 2 pricing tiers: $30/month for unlimited reps in unlimited languages, and about half that per month to only change your language once every 30 days.

This new lower tier is brand new as of this Glossika review, and I’m very happy to see the compromise to make language learning more accessible!

And finally, in an effort to promote minority languages, the following languages are 100% free to all users:

  • Catalan
  • Gaelic
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Manx
  • Welsh
  • Taiwanese
  • Wenzhounese

If going through this Glossika review convinces you to give it a try (more on that below), I highly recommend you at least spring for your free trial. No credit card is required!

Glossika review: who it’s for

Glossika is beautiful, smooth, and high quality, but it’s not for everyone. For one, Glossika does not start from 0, with basic vocabulary and grammar. Instead, you’ll start with beginner phrases. It’s more of the “figure it out as you go” approach, as opposed to the “1+1=2” one.

If you’re a big fan of repetition, Glossika is great for a wide variety of language learners, especially how well they tackle all the language skills. The advanced customization is a huge plus, too, as long as you’re tech-savvy enough to figure it out for yourself.

But if you want usability with a less…sterile approach, you’re not alone. If that’s the case, I might recommend Busuu, which connects the language more by way of living, breathing community, as well as more explicit language lessons.

Hooked on Glossika and want to give it a try? Click here to start your free trial!