Pros & Cons
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- Comprehensive core content
- Appropriate for beginners
- Uses a helpful building block approach
- App design prevents distractions
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- Limited number of languages
- Only basic voice recording
Fluenz Specs
| Average Duration of Lesson (Mins) | 45 |
| No. of Languages Offered (Not Incl. English) | 7 |
| Price Includes | 1 Level |
| Style of Program | Exercises |
Fluenz is an online language learning program that feels like a private class. You learn by watching videos of an instructor who teaches you new vocabulary and grammar, and then you complete exercises to practice. It's a thorough program and long enough to keep you busy for months if not years. It's also well-rounded for beginners. Fluenz is a wonderful choice for instructional learning and an Editors' Choice winner alongside Duolingo for free daily practice and Lingoda for intermediate and advanced students looking for live online classes.
Which Languages Can You Learn With Fluenz?
Fluenz offers programs in six languages: Chinese (Mandarin, with Pinyin only), French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), and Spanish (Latin American and Spanish). They all use English as the language of instruction. It's not a huge selection, but it does cover some of the most popular languages that English speakers learn.
If you're looking for a different language, try Duolingo, Pimsleur, or Rosetta Stone. For hard-to-find languages, try Transparent Languages or, as a last resort, Mango Languages (which I don't recommend unless you're desperate—you're better off finding a private tutor).
Who Should Use Fluenz?
Fluenz works extremely well for beginners eager to learn how to say and understand a little of a language quickly. It emphasizes that its courses are designed for English speakers. Its goal is to teach you useful building blocks (words or phrases) that you can put together in many different ways to say a variety of things. The early content sticks to words for ordering in restaurants and phrases, such as "this one" or "that one," which are certainly useful for travel. It's not for people who want to say a handful of niceties before a business meeting or for anyone who needs life skills vocabulary, like things to say at a grocery store, in a hospital, or to a landlord (though you get a little bit of that later). Still, for quickly developing a basic understanding of the language, it's very good.
Pricing: Somewhat High, But Still a Good Value
Fluenz costs anywhere from $187 to $408 per year, depending on the package you choose. Those prices are for one language. Another option is to buy access to all the languages for one year for $2,698, which is usually discounted to $548.
All the prices below are for one year of access only. Fluenz breaks every language down into levels. French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish each have five levels. Mandarin has just three levels (with 75 lessons total).
The options to purchase are:
- Level 1: $187
- Level 2: $187
- Levels 1+2: $258
- Levels 1+2+3: $308
- Levels 4+5: $258
- Levels 1+2+3+4+5: $408, typically discounted to $398
When you buy Fluenz, you get access to it on the web and through apps for Android and iOS. No free trial is available, which is a shame because the high up-front cost might discourage many potential learners.
Compared with other language learning services, Fluenz's prices are a little high. That said, every level comes with a lot of material, making them an excellent value. In general, online language apps cost between $12 and $20 per month. Even Rosetta Stone, once among the most expensive language software products, has moved to a subscription model that charges $159 per year or $19.99 per month. It's a great value as long as you like Rosetta Stone's teaching style. Not everyone does.
Check your public library for language-learning programs (not to mention other amazing resources). As a library patron, you might very well already have free access to Fluenz, Rosetta Stone, and other language apps.
Language Content: Hours Upon Hours of Learning Material
I've used Fluenz to brush up on French and learn a few phrases in Mandarin, with no prior experience, picking it up every year or so to see what's new. The Mandarin course has only Pinyin instruction, so you don't learn the native writing system.
To give you an idea of how much content Fluenz offers, each lesson takes about 45 minutes, sometimes longer. French has five levels, each with 30 lessons, so that's well over 100 hours' worth of learning. Mandarin has 75 lessons, totaling more than 50 hours of learning. The lessons are meaty and sometimes a little slow. If you study consistently, you might spend four to six weeks completing a single level. That's a lot.
Course Structure: Straightforward Progression, But You Can Go in Any Order
Structurally, Fluenz is very clear. Progress markers show exactly where you left off and what you've completed. You're meant to move through content sequentially, though you can jump around if the current lesson seems too easy or difficult. More experienced speakers might have trouble figuring out where to start because there is no placement test available. Not all language courses let you move around at will. With Duolingo, for example, you must progress sequentially or test out of levels.
Levels break down into lessons (or sessions). Every lesson starts with a video of a real teacher who frames the upcoming content. After that, you run through a series of exercises, called Workouts, to practice reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The Workouts that follow then introduce new material and help you review it. Between workouts, you watch more videos of your instructor breaking down words and phrases and further explaining the concepts you just learned. Fluenz emphasizes writing more than speaking, especially in the early units, but it blends listening, reading, speaking, and writing well overall. The instructional videos give lessons a classroom-like feel.
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Workouts: The Drill-and-Kill Learning Method Suits Beginners
Fluenz starts most of its exercises with a dialogue you play three times: once with subtitles in both the new language and English, once with subtitles in only the new language, and once with no subtitles at all. Then, the words and phrases you heard from the opening dialogue appear in listening, speaking, and writing exercises that follow.
In the exercises, you might hear a word or phrase and have to type it or translate it. Or you might see a list of words, phrases, or sentences in two languages and have to match up the translations. It's similar to what you see in many other language-learning apps and classrooms.
Fluenz has mastered the art of repetition. When the program introduces a new word or concept, you see, hear, and write it many times over in both the current lesson and future lessons. The drill-and-kill method is highly effective for beginners, as long as you study consistently.
In typing exercises, Fluenz gives you the option to use Challenge Mode, which means you have to be perfect in your spelling, accent marks and all. If you disable it, you get some leeway. I like this option. Fluenz doesn't reprimand you for commas or even leaving a word lowercase when it should be capitalized. The app could do a little better at giving you hints when you get an answer wrong. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't, in which case you have to reveal the answer to know.
Fluenz does not repeat questions that you got wrong at the end of the lesson. I can't say whether it truly matters, but some people might prefer to go over questions they missed.
Video Lessons: Instructor Explanations Make All the Difference
What gives Fluenz a unique feel is the video lessons it intersperses among some exercises. It's in these videos that your guide breaks down what you just learned. You learn both the literal translation of words and their meaning. You never guess a meaning from context, pictures, or process of elimination, which is how Rosetta Stone teaches. In Fluenz, you get a teacher who explains the subtleties of the language, like the difference between an and année; both mean "year" in French, but they have different uses. And in the Mandarin course, for example, the videos explain tones and how to answer yes/no questions in Mandarin, which is quite different from how you do it in English. That's the kind of material that's difficult to get across in a program in which there's no English instruction.
Since Fluenz first launched, all the videos have been rerecorded and improved. In particular, the Mandarin teacher appears to be fluent in both Chinese and English, whereas previously the company's founder (who says she is not a fluent Chinese speaker) taught the early lessons. The French teacher likewise speaks both English and French at a native level.
The videos are staged and scripted. They're crystal clear in delivery, and the production value is high. They feel slow at first, but once you get into more challenging content, the pacing feels designed to give you time to absorb what you're learning. The material is excellent, and there's value in seeing the face and mouth of a person who's teaching pronunciation, something you don't get from Duolingo or Rosetta Stone.
One good design feature of the web app is that if you leave the window while a video is playing, it stops. In other words, you can't passively listen to the video while reading your email. The video has to be the active window for it to play. It's an anti-distraction feature, and a great one.
Speaking and Writing: Basic Speech Tools
For the speaking portions, Fluenz doesn't have an advanced speech-recognition system, but it does have recording and playback capabilities. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, and Transparent Languages do an impressive job of rating how well you speak, though whether this is actually helpful depends on the individual. My experience with high-tech speech recognition tools is that they pale in comparison to having a native speaker tell you whether they can understand you. You get that from tutoring and live classes, not an app.
Immersion Program and Live Courses: A Real-World Test of Skills
Speaking of live classes, Fluenz sells them separately from the app, for Spanish only. You can also take an online immersion course or a travel immersion course.
The online immersion course is essentially a high-intensity tutoring program. It's designed to give you individual attention and get you to speak and understand Spanish quickly. A 30-hour Comprehensive Track option costs $3,277 (which works out to $109 per hour), while a 15-hour Fast Track package costs $1,815 (or $121 per hour). If that's not in your budget, go to Lingoda for small group classes instead. They work out to around $11 to $23 per hour, depending on the package you buy.
The travel immersion program involves living in a Spanish-speaking destination for about six days with a small group of other learners and an instructor. The immersion trips sound pretty luxurious, with retreat-style activities and meals. The prices vary but can be several thousand dollars. I've never done one, but I'd be up for it! If they are outside your budget, you might consider self-funding a trip to a major Spanish-speaking city and enrolling in a school that offers the same kind of intensive, week-long program. Many cities have them.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: FLuenz)
Fluenz
Fluenz uniquely recreates aspects of classroom learning and provides lots of focused material, making it an effective option for beginners who want to learn a select few foreign languages.