Language learning apps like Duolingo are useful, but they have their limits. They’re ideal for getting started with a new language, beefing up vocabulary, practicing skills, and even having fun playing the built-in games.
If they’re the only thing you use to learn a language and your goal is to become fluent, however, they aren’t efficient at all. To reach a conversational level or better, you need to sign up for classes, private tutoring sessions, or both. You can do so from the comfort of your home at a very decent price.
I’ve been reviewing language learning software and services since 2012 and have studied languages at the Foreign Service Institute (where ambassadors and diplomats learn), as well as universities, community college, grade school, and with private tutors. While I don’t have a background in pedagogy or linguistics, I can say from my own experiences and from watching others learn that the most effective language learning happens when you put several hours per week into small classes with fewer than six students, one-on-one tutoring, or a combination of both.
Apps are an excellent resource, but they aren’t a replacement for learning alongside other humans. Is it possible to achieve fluency using only an app? Sure, but anyone who can is an outlier. The majority of adult learners need human instruction.
The reason is you need to be pushed beyond your limits. Language teachers have told me that if students aren’t making mistakes, they aren’t learning enough. As a result, a good teacher will have you speaking and understanding at a 70 or 80 percent success rate—which can be deeply demoralizing! But that’s an instructional tactic the teacher uses; adult language learners have to struggle beyond their abilities to gain language skills. (Children, meanwhile, have the magical capability to acquire languages. There’s a joke that you don’t have to be a genius to learn a language; you just have to be younger than 10.)
Another bonus for having a human teacher is you never have to worry about AI infiltration. I’ve seen a few apps that run on AI translations that contain major errors. If you don’t speak the language or have someone who does on hand, there’s no way to know if you’re learning something wrong. That problem simply doesn’t come up with human teachers.
Here I want to share some of the best places I’ve found to get small group classes and tutoring online easily and at a good price. I include some immersion programs, which can be online or IRL—you can even bundle them into a luxury vacation!
Affordable and small online classes and tutoring.
Lingoda specializes in online language learning in the form of small group classes and one-on-one classes, both held via video call. Classes are available every day of the week at a variety of times, with teachers all over the world, though especially clustered in Europe, North America, and South America. The catch with Lingoda is it only has instructors for a handful of languages: French, German, Italian, and Spanish, as well as English and Business English. I’ve used Lingoda for months at a time to improve my intermediate Spanish while living in a Spanish-speaking country.
The 60-minute classes are very well structured, and you get PDFs of the material well before the class so you can prepare. If you have anxiety about one-on-one sessions, small group classes of three to five students are a superb option. Lingoda uses the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a standard that helps students know exactly what level of speaker they are to get them into the right classes. If you don’t know your level, you can take a placement test.
Prices vary by language and how many sessions you buy at a time, but it ends up costing $11 to $23 per class for small group classes and $23 to $48 per individual session. Compared to in-person learning, those rates are extremely attractive.
Preply
Online tutoring in practically any language.
Preply is a platform for online tutoring; it’s a marketplace for tutors to sell their services, and the tutoring sessions you buy are hosted right there on the same website. Its main focus is language learning, though you can find tutors for math, computer science, and other academic subjects. The most amazing thing about Preply is you can find people who teach nearly any language. I took a few sessions to reignite my waning Romanian.
The tutor I found was professional, organized, prepared, and appropriately hard on me every time I tried to switch to English. You can request a free short video meeting with a tutor before committing to them, and the site helps you switch tutors easily if your first pick isn’t a good match.
Tutors set their own prices and are located all over the world. You can find people teaching for as little as $10 per 50-minute session. When you search for a teacher, you can filter by price, other languages spoken, whether they have a verified teaching certificate, and whether they’re a Super Tutor, meaning reliable and rated highly by other learners.
Fluenz
Intensive Spanish online or on vacation.
Fluenz is a language-learning software company that also sells two kinds of intensive language courses: one online and one in-person at a destination. I’ve used the Fluenz app (it’s excellent) to study French and pick up a few phrases of Mandarin, though I haven’t taken any of the immersion courses, which are only available for Spanish.
The online course is taught over Zoom in one-on-one sessions. Ideally, you take one 90-minute lesson per day. The course comes in two flavors: Comprehensive Track ($3,277), which is 30 hours total, and Fast Track ($1,815), which is 15 hours. It’s pricey, but the cost includes a subscription to the Fluenz language-learning software (which is quite good), and the course is completely individualized. If you need to achieve competency in Spanish quickly or improve to another level quickly, the daily 90-minute one-on-one lessons are an excellent way to do it.
The destination immersion program is a weeklong trip to a Spanish-speaking city such as Bogota, Lima, Madrid, Medellin, or Quito, where you do intensive small-group classes, stay in luxurious accommodations, and have the surrounding context of Spanish spoken everywhere. Another option is “bootcamp” in Mexico City, the major differences being that you get one-on-one lessons instead of group instruction, and you can go almost any week of the year instead of waiting for a class. The cost is in the ballpark of $6,300 to $7,000, depending on the city and whether you choose a single or double occupancy room. Flights aren’t included.
Other Good Options
A few more good options include Berlitz, Rype, and in-person language schools in a country you want to visit that often have immersive programs.
Berlitz is a language school that has been around for decades and also has classes online. Two reasons I don’t recommend it more highly are the company’s lack of transparent pricing and the fact that I have not personally tested it. Berlitz teaches dozens of languages, including but not limited to Arabic, Dutch, French, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In-person schools are available around the world, and Berlitz has online small group courses as well.
Rype is an online resource for private tutoring in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. The reasons I don’t recommend it as highly as Preply are you must pay for lessons before you have a chance to learn anything about the tutors, and the lessons are only 30 minutes long. The last time I used Rype was several years ago when the enrollment process was quite different, and I found it a lot more freeform and loose than Preply, so if that’s your thing, then it might be a great option.
Lastly, you can find in-person intensive language schools all around the world. Again I recommend sticking with one that has a small class size so you can optimize your learning time. These are schools where you enroll for as little as a week and as much as a few months at a time to study and learn a few hours per day. Attending one of these schools in a country where the language is spoken gives you the dual benefit of intensive classes and an immersive living experience. Unlike the destination packages sold by Fluenz, these programs require you to plan the rest of your itinerary yourself and find accommodations on your own, and the cost is likely to be significantly lower that way.
