How do I say ...

Hello

I take care of two amazing young girls who go to a bilingual school, which means Spanish lessons for me as well when it's time for homework. I have always wanted to learn Spanish myself, so this seemed like a good time to start. Looking at all the language learning options was actually quite overwhelming though with so many to choose from. I ended up trying a few options and figured I would share what I walked away with for anyone that it might be helpful for.

Preply

Hola

I took Japanese classes many years ago and had the most fabulous Sensei who not only made the classes fun, but I also even still remember quite a bit of what she taught us all these years later. And I would have loved to have found something similar now, but with an ever-changing life schedule saw how this could become tricky. So, I looked at online schools and decided to give Preply a go. I loved that I had this big list of amazing sounding teachers to choose from, see if their schedule matched with mine and read how other students had enjoyed their lessons. I got really lucky in finding a lovely teacher in a country I was even looking at as a possible one day move to location. And I loved our classes! She really listened to what I hoped to get out of these lessons and adjusted her lesson plan to that. And it was really nice to speak with and see a real teacher. Sadly, she had to step away from Preply and my schedule became a bit more all over the place, so I looked for another learning option.

Pimsleur

Konnichiwa

I found Pimsleur when cassette tapes were still a thing and enjoyed learning the first course and still remember some words today. Now many technology years later, I re found my friend Pimsleur as an app and gave it another go with Polish this time. I really tried for a few lessons, and then sadly decided this wasn't working for me. However! I still think Pimsleur is great! There's a reason I loved Pimsleur for Japanese. But I also in general had an easier time connecting to Japanese and was also taking in class classes at that time. Pimsleur gives you the words to listen to and then repeat them yourself and then those words come back over the lessons, so you learn through listening and repetition, and how I realized that I might be a more visual learner. With Japanese I had mostly already seen the words written out or recognized the sounds. With Polish, I felt I needed to write the words out for myself first to understand what Pimsleur was trying to teach me. Writing everything down first and now walking around with a notebook while also listening to the lessons, it just became too much for me. So on to the next app in the vast app ocean.

Our green owl friend, Duolingo

Witam

I am guessing a few of you have seen our little green owl friend around. He looked very friendly, so I gave him a go and I really enjoyed it! and also felt I was really learning. That is, until I got to the slightly more complicated levels. Our little green owl friend is free if you don't mind adds, which I didn't mind. But I actually started Duolingo when it was still old school and you would get 5 hearts a day and they would refill slowly after a few hours or you could do practice lessons to keep going, so I was able to hold on. But then they changed the format, again, and there were quite a few of these changes that could be confusing or shut down the app while the app was integrating the changes...somewhat annoying, but still, something I could deal with. Their latest change to an energy shift. however meant that no matter what, I would be out of energy very quickly and with that out of being able to do lessons, unless I upgraded. So, I gave in and upgraded to premium, and all looked well again. Until the competition league became too much for me to ignore. I am clearly way too competitive 😁 and my little owl friend kept giving me weekly reminders of the league, and if I didn't have enough points that week, I would drop down a league. And that was just too hard to ignore for my competitive brain, and suddenly I was working for points and not lessons. I kept that up for quite a while and then decided it was time to walk away. Which was surprisingly hard to do! My streak was 1428 days!! I am not going to say I cried deleting the app, but there might have been some sniffles. But at the same time, I live in a city where I can hear Spanish around me everywhere and could practice in many stores. Yet even with 1428 days, I still couldn't get myself past "Hola". So off to a new friend.

Busuu

Hallo

I wasn't sure where to go next. I had heard of Babbel and Rosetta Stone, but they were asking for a commitment right from the get-go and I really wanted to get to know a new language friend first before making any new commitments. And that's where I found Busuu. I tried out their free version, immediately liked it, and immediately upgraded. What I love about Busuu and always missed about Duolingo is that Busuu also goes through the grammar section. And I am not at all a fan of grammar! but I do think they matter. When I started Busuu with Polish lessons, I not only understood the lessons, but actually enjoyed them too. The lessons are quick lessons, so you don't get overwhelmed. There is a streak just like our green owl friend and even a league. But none that has me keeping a competitive eye on it. More one to motivate you to do a lesson a day. Busuu also has a community that you become a part of. I wasn't sure how I felt about this when I first read about it and actually planned to ignore it 😁 But some of the exercises require you to send in a lesson to the community. And I actually really appreciated hearing back from Polish speakers and them helping me with things I could have done differently. I also enjoyed helping others with their learnings. Of course, most of us are not actual teachers, so here's hoping we're giving the right feedback, or at least, I know I hoped I was with my Dutch language skills being somewhat questionable after having not spoken Dutch myself for so long. But even if our non-teacher answers were not a hundred percent grammatical accurate, I know that my first polish lesson, everyone was giving me a different answer than the one I had cheated with my looking it up on google translate. Google translate no doubt giving me the more polite answer, whereas the Busuu community was giving me the more day to day answer. So, I really loved Busuu and for learning a language from scratch, they would be my first choice. The reason why I also left them though is because I wanted to really tweak my German skills, a language I already understand pretty fluently. Busuu lets you do more than one language so that wasn't a problem. My problem was that they were teaching me words that I felt were getting a bit too much beyond words I would need to know on a day-to-day basis, so time for another app search.

Vocabuo and Falou

Guten Tag

As I write this, I am in day three of Vocabuo, and still getting the hang of things, but thanks to my little robot dog friend there, already appreciating what it is giving me. The app seems to still be in a start-up mode, which means there might still be some little tweaks happening. But none that in any way bother me, and I really appreciate how inviting the app is. I was giving a really good deal to sign up for a year that amounts to just a few dollars a month. But even that was offered to me with zero push whatsoever. I myself had already decided I really liked what they were offering me which is mostly flash cards. Words the app has figured out for me based on my language level, or words I can add myself from German articles, books, movies...either found by me, or given by them as suggestion. I can ask cute robot dog for further explanations; I can chat with him. And I get to decide the layout of all of this. And in a, to me, really cool vintage looking look. The app maybe isn't all flashy with a cute talking green owl, but I actually appreciate that. A simple app letting me do exactly what I'm hoping to do.

I also just recently started Falou because I realized my speaking skills were very much lacking. Though the app does also address grammar if so needed, it mostly invites you to practice speaking. I immediately. upgraded to a year plan because they gave me a huge deal that seemed too good to ignore, but from what I understand they also have a free version that seems to have the same heart system Duolingo was using, where once you run out of hearts, there is no more learning that day, and I am making quite a few mistakes 😁so the upgrade seemed useful and fun.

Final thoughts

I think I have rambled on for so long now, my final thought should be how to stop rambling on for so long, lol. Honestly, I also don't think it's up to me to tell you what I think you should or should not do. This was just me rambling my thought process because I happen to be in the middle of all these apps and I hope in the end you find the app or book, or movie...or whatever you find that gets you to get to learn a new language, or learn anything that you find fun to learn 😊