Wanted to post about the course after running out of material in February. Despite many technical glitches with the app after Christmas the overall experience was positive and I am glad I did the course.
What I found was positive:
- The course has given me a good platform to take forward my Spanish and this includes many patterns, different tenses etc.
- The course is varied enough to keep it interesting and there are lots of useful verbs introduced and it does follow natural speaking patterns (i.e. use of Tomar)
- When the app works as it is designed, it is one of the best tools for learning a language, especially speaking. For me to go from no Spanish to being confident enough to speak it with fellow speakers and enough vocabulary to ‘survive for a day or 2’ in just Spanish, it shows how good it is. This all within 4 months. I am no language expert so that is down to the course not myself.
Improvements:
- The technical aspects to the app, but these appear to have been corrected in recent updates.
- If the app had slightly more ability to choose to go back to some old material it would make it even better, especially if there is a concept you struggled with.
- Some very basic grammar points that should only be accessed when 2 or so months into the course. Just to explain verb conjugation, what the subjective form is and use of reflexive verbs. This would just supplement/elevate the course so it begins to make more sense as you get advanced and prompt you to start conjugating verbs for different subjects that haven’t been learned. I am talking literally a 1-2 page document. By doing this myself, I had times when new patterns were introduced and I could predict what the Spanish would be, so it is helpful.
Overall though, the course is excellent for beginners to get started. I would love for more content to be added but understand that the business focus is currently to expand languages as well as revisit Welsh content and expand this. If the Spanish course is expanded at any point I would definitely come back for it.
Keep up the great work (special mention to Deborah for replying to email technical queries)
BW
Greg
(PS I will keep promoting SSI to all that are interested in language learning)