Coffee Break Spanish

Summary

Coffee Break Spanish offers some really good free lessons available as podcasts. Additionally, they sell premium courses with extra materials on their website. For most people, there probably isn’t enough extra material included in the premium lessons to make it worth paying for the courses as they’re pretty expensive. This review will look at the free audio lessons, as well as the premium content.

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I Like

• They offer a comprehensive, well-structured, and free audio course.
• Lots of detailed explanations of vocabulary and grammar with lots of explanations.
• The lessons start fairly slowly but build up to where a lot of Spanish is used in later seasons.

I Don’t Like

• I wish there were more extra materials included or the price were lower for the paid courses.
• It’s primarily an input based course and you’ll need to practice speaking and writing Spanish more on your own.
• It doesn’t have a lot of the interactive exercises as some other resources.

Price

The audio for all of the lessons is completely free but the extra materials cost money. The 40 lesson package is $124.

Find all of the audio lessons for free on Itunes.

Fluencia

Summary

Fluencia is one of the better online Spanish courses I’ve come across. The course content is very well designed including tons of detailed explanations and exercises to practice what you’ve learned. While some similar courses are more gamified and less challenging, Fluencia is more challenging and less game-like. While I like Fluencia quite a bit, you’ll probably want to get more speaking practice elsewhere.

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I Like

• You’ll have actually needed to have learned the content to answer the exercises correctly.
• Everything is explained clearly with a lot of attention spent on the details.
• Recordings are done by native Spanish speakers with various accents.

I Don’t Like

• You’ll want to get more speaking practice by working with a tutor.
• You may also want to supplement your learning by listening to Spanish podcasts.

Price

1 month costs $14.95 12 months costs $95.40 24 months costs $166.80

Synergy Spanish

Summary

Synergy Spanish is an often-recommended course, but I found it to be old, overpriced, boring, and not as good as competitors. The good side is that their lessons force you to start speaking right away. Even with a limited vocabulary, you’ll be able to express a lot of different things. Still, I wouldn’t recommend using it.

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I Like

• Start speaking Spanish from the first lesson.
• The content builds upon itself pretty well.
• If you use it, you’ll learn quite a bit.

I Don’t Like

• The platform and some of the content taught in the lesson feels outdated.
• The content is among the most boring I’ve seen.
• It’s more expensive and not as good as competitors in my opinion.

Price

Synergy Light costs $67 and includes the audio lessons. Synergy Video costs $97 and adds in video lessons and email coaching. Synergy Video + CDs costs $145 and adds in CDs and printed out pdf.

Baselang

Summary

Baselang offers unlimited Spanish classes for $179/month. It’s much more than just a tutoring service though as they also have an excellent curriculum, along with elective lessons and assessments. I was really impressed with Baselang. Anyone with enough time and money to fully utilize the service should strongly consider using it.

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I Like

• The classes are truly unlimited.
• Scheduling lessons is extremely flexible. Several times I schedule a class less than 5 minutes before it began.
• The curriculum is well-structured and extensive.
• The teachers were good and catered the lessons to my preferences.

I Don’t Like

• There aren’t any teachers from Spain.
• The internet connection could occasionally be a problem.
• If you don’t have enough time to study, it’d be a poor choice.

Price

There are two programs – one for learning Real World Spanish and the other for intensive accelerated course Grammarless. The Real World program costs $179 per month, and the “Zero to Conversational in a Month, Guaranteed” Grammarless course is $1200. You can try Baselang out for one week for only $1. If you sign-up using the link below, you’ll get $10 off your first month.If you end up purchasing a plan and later decide that it’s not for you, Baselang will pay you $20 as an apology for wasting your time.

ALR Readers receive $10 off first month.