Babbel - Language Learning

I went to France last winter & enjoyed listening to the language and getting a feel for the local culture in Paris. So I decided to get this app and committed to 6 months of full access (probably paid ~$30) After 3 months I have been able to converse and understand fluent/native speakers for the most part. Of course there are many more words and verbs to learn and understand, but it comes with time. I am on beginner course 4 and feel that I have made great practice, the recorded speakers allow you to hear the accents used and are much better than an automated version (computer voice). It is nice to be able to learn a new language on my own time, and even better when I can see the results pay off. I have received compliments on my accent and the amount of vocabulary I have learned in only 3 months. Would recommend for anyone trying to pick up a little French or other languages before a vacation, or just to try something you have never done. It can be frustrating learning very basic phrases at first, but if you practice them and look up words/phrases on your own you may be surprised how much you may learn. Peut-être devriez-vous l’essayer!

Through 16 lessons at this point, and overall enjoying Babbel. I formerly used Duolingo, which seemed too vocabulary based. I'm happy I switched to Babbel for building conversational experience. I appreciate the tooltips differentiating European/Spain Spanish and Latin American words. Those are helpful distinctions I didn't get in three years of in-person classes. Also, I appreciate the variation of native speaking voices. It's helpful to hear varying genders, vocal tone/pitch, correct emphasis and pronunciations. My criticisms regarding the app and the experience follow: 1) There's zero forgiveness for slight misspellings/typos. A flag /warning before counting it against the user would be nice. We're learning here. 2) The matching games/exercises have a confusing UX. It's unclear where to drag and drop and the color selections are all gray, which is not helpful in guiding users through the exercise. 3) While I realise Babbel isn't aiming to gamify language learning, it could benefit from incentivizing users somehow. This could be as simple as congratulating or tracking your progress or improvements. It's very boring to see the simple fact I've completed x/100 lessons. Make it a little fun, and I will be more likely to renew my subscription. Without these improvements, I'm likely to head back to Duolingo.

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So far I’ve been using Babbel for a few months. It’s a nice addition to Duolingo but I have a few complaints. One is the app’s recognition of pronunciation. If you pause to take a breath between saying the imperfective and perfective form of the verb it doesn’t recognize it as correct. The audio recognition is immensely time sensitive, meaning if you say the word too early or too late it won’t recognize it. For example, you press the voice button, it says the word and if you don’t repeat it in less than a second it marks it as wrong. Duolingo’s voice recognition is better than Babbel’s. Babbel also dumps a ton of vocabulary on you and doesn’t include it in subsequent lessons which even when you’re doing the vocabulary review daily like I am, makes learning new vocabulary difficult. It’s also giving words I wouldn’t normally use in conversation like hexagon and mold, etc. Would like more common language lessons. Update: So I just used the new speaking portion of the vocabulary review and I have to say it is a vast improvement! So congrats to the developers. It makes a lot more sense to hold the mic button while you’re talking and then release it when you’re done. I’m getting almost no answers wrong when I pronounce the word correctly now which is awesome and a whole lot less frustrating. I actually really enjoyed using it!

I’ve been trying to learn Swedish for almost 2 years. I live with a native speaker and have picked up a few phrases here and there but was far from fluent. I used Duolingo for about a year off and on but their sentence construction was absolute garbage. Duolingo had me saying things like “Sköldpaddan älskar fålgarna” (the turtle loves the birds). I understand learning basic vocabulary and everything but these sentences got really ridiculous at times; not to mention boring and redundant. Babbel on the other hand provides real examples of phrases one might encounter in Sweden. And I love how they make me work for it. In later lessons, when teaching new words, it will bury the new word in a sentence full of words I’ve never heard or seen. This was confusing at first but really introduces the context of the language as a whole and after a month of this I started picking up whole sentences that my partner would say on the phone to her parents. Well done Babbel, would highly recommend to someone who is actually trying to learn a new language. But just remember you have to be willing to try and fail along the way. My partner makes fun of me all the time😘

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So, I know passable french, but I wanted to improve more. I thought to myself “oh every ad is pretty much Babbel and I have nothing to lose” so I downloaded the app. I was so excited to learn more french. I opened the app, filled out the beginning question and was presented with a challenge “beginner or advanced”. Now, I know I went to france and did a decent job of understanding and speaking so how hard could it be? Well, I chose advanced. The first question- my mind finds the answer to “what time is it” a phrase I leaned 4 years ago. Perhaps it’s just getting a feel for where I am... I click the right answer. It repeats the phrase in french. This is it, I think, I’m finally going to get another question and go back to learning! So I wait for it to load... and I wait... and I wait some more. Maybe it froze? I closed the app and opened it back up. I went back through the same survey thing and finally back to the question. I have this one under control now. I click the right answer. It doesn’t repeat the phrase. Okay, weird. I go to my home screen, open another app, and come back. I try the question again. It took half an hour and I’m on good wifi and service this is an issue with the app I couldn’t do anything why the hell did I think it would work? Everyone else said you get 6 free words but hey at least you got words all I got was a haunting reminder of the passage of time