I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for nearly a year, yet one app has given me more confidence to speak the language after just one 50-minute sessionThis article contains affiliate links, we will receive a commission on any sales we generate from it. Learn more
One app has helped me to improve my Spanish more than a year of learning elsewhere
Ever since secondary school, I have seen the appeal of learning another language – although I wasn’t very good at it. To be entirely frank, I achieved a “D” grade in French – equivalent to a level three in the current UK education system.
My great-aunt owns a holiday home in the south of France, but whenever I stay, we resort to speaking English with each other. When Duolingo emerged in 2012 as a language-learning app, I was eager to join – and I continue using it today.
In fact, last year (unintentionally), I purchased an annual Super Duolingo subscription, which set me back roughly £55.
Shortly, on March 23, my membership expires, and it’ll cost £68.99 to renew for another year, though there’s now a superior alternative available.
For those familiar with Duolingo, you may recognise it as an excellent resource for vocabulary acquisition, and it has genuinely improved my ability to read and write in French and Spanish – the latter, for me, being easier to learn.
I have been using Super Duolingo for nearly a year now
Despite my growing knowledge of vocabulary, I would still struggle to have a basic conversation in French or Spanish.
In the beginning of my Duolingo journey, I would learn phrases such as “I eat apples” and “the dress is red” – it’s not exactly a conversation starter.
And, in fairness, a year into using Super Duolingo (having switched to Spanish), I’d be astonished if I could manage anything beyond pointing out what objects are – rather like a toddler who’s learning to speak.
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A constant source of amusement is that my partner and I say numerous Spanish words totally differently, yet Duolingo insists we’re both correct – it was clearly time to explore a fresh approach.
Learning online can be useful
Following just one Spanish lesson through the Preply app, I discovered how to pronounce the vowels properly and picked up some fundamental conversational phrases, such as “¿cómo estuvo tu semana?”, which translates to “how was your week?”.
Getting started with Preply is incredibly straightforward. I simply downloaded the app onto my mobile, and was immediately presented with thousands of (human) online tutors to select from.
When I first looked, there were 13,356 potential teachers to choose from, which felt rather daunting; that’s when I put the filters to good use.
“Super Tutor” restricts the criteria to those who are “highly-rated… reliable tutors” and the additional “Professional Tutors” filter further refines who I saw even further to those who are “highly-qualified” with “verified teaching certificates”.
This narrowed down the selection to 918 tutors, and when I ticked “view only native speaker tutors of the language you’re learning”, and those who speak English, the options reduced to 884 individuals.
That still leaves plenty of tutors to select from, so after viewing several self-promotional videos the teachers uploaded (they all have a video), I bit the bullet and chose Diana.
Whilst I used the app for booking the meeting, I used the Preply website to have a video call with Diana for the actual lesson.
I felt assured that if the £22 lesson didn’t work out for me, I could try out another tutor for free but, thankfully, she was great.
Diana enquired about my learning objectives and preferred learning method (I’m a visual learner). The following 50 minutes flew past, and I was at last pronouncing Spanish words correctly.
In that one session, I learned how to sound vowels with the correct Spanish pronunciation; she also explained to me that you don’t pronounce the letter “h” in Spanish, nor does the sound of “v” exist; so for vino (wine) it sounds like “bino”.
And I’ll be savouring plenty of those on my forthcoming holiday to the Spanish-speaking Dominican Republic, por favor.
I now have a subscription-based programme, where I receive eight sessions with Diana for £189.81, though the cost of tutors differs on Preply.