experience with unlimited tutoring services?

[Cavesa]

Hi,

I've noticed several services offering "unlimited" tutoring online and the prices make it tempting to try this for fun or improvement. I would like to just speak and I definitely don't have the time and mood to look for language exchanges, which I am highly unlikely to find at all.

There are several such services offering Spanish lessons, and they trully seem to be unlimited for your fee per month (ok, one has a limit of 8 hours per day). Baselang and Spanishplusweb are the examples I've found. Do you have any experience with them?

For French, which I'd enjoy to speak regularily, to have other contact with it than just medical textbooks, I've found only Rypeapp. It offers five languages, their "unlimited" means either 30min or 60min per day, but the price is not bad with their June sale, and if someone can trully get online everyday to have their lesson.

Do you have any experience with these or others of similar kind? I am more in need of French maintanance and work on my accent and writing corrections.

When it comes to the Spanish ones, I also like the aspect of basically giving more jobs to venezuelan teachers, which I somehow prefer over classical charity. I've read of a similar program for Arabic learners btw, just with the classical pay per lesson structure. So, if you'd like to contribute a little bit to such struggling economies without risking that your money won't arrive to the people or without priving the people from their dignity, this may be one of the ways.

Have you tried any such program?
Do you know how flexible these programs trully are, when it comes to making the lessons based on the student's needs and wishes?
Do you know, whether they can teach advanced students as well? Are they strict enough?
Are the sites reliable? After all, I'd be sending money and my card details to the other side of the planet.

[Arnaud]

I checked out the French one - prices are ridiculously expensive.

Really ? It's 10$/h, if you take a month program.
In france, any lesson of anything costs 20e/h minimum (count 14e for the teacher and 6e for the french tax system).
So the real question is: what do you have for 10e/h ? Who is the qualified french teacher who will accept to be payed so badly ? (if the platform takes 25% of these 10e, the teacher lives probably in South asia or Siberia...)

[aokoye]

I checked out the French one - prices are ridiculously expensive.

Really ? It's 10$/h, if you take a month program.
In france, any lesson of anything costs 20e/h minimum (count 14e for the teacher and 6e for the french tax system).
So the real question is: what do you have for 10e/h ? Who is the qualified french teacher who will accept to be payed so badly ? (if the platform takes 25% of these 10e, the teacher lives probably in South asia or Siberia...)

The French language service that was referred to in the OP, Rype is 7.80USD a day if you take advantage of all of the lessons AND if you're willing to sign up for the 12 month contract. Given that life does get in the way, I highly doubt that anyone is actually going to do that. Additionally you have the issue of verly likely not having any sort of real continuity in tutors.

I agree with your question of who is actually willing to be paid that badly? That's well below minimum wage in Oregon and likely in any EU country as well. Another more individual question is would I really be willing to pay someone that little for an hour of their time?

[the1whoknocks]

I used Baselang for about three months last year, and my experience was mostly positive. To your questions:

Do you know how flexible these programs trully are, when it comes to making the lessons based on the student's needs and wishes?

Baselang is pretty flexible. Students have the option of following their ‘optimized curriculum’ or planning their own sessions. At the time there very few tutors that I felt were truly experienced enough to really plan a session the way I’d like. In fact, there is only one I could ‘maybe’ recommend. To be fair, that would be demanding on their time, and I don’t think Baselang really incentivizes their tutors to do this.

The ‘optimized curriculum’ is basically a collection of pdf’s like documents that try to teach the things students would most like encounter while travelling; directions, voy +a, some basic subjunctive work, in the hospital, etc. Frankly, past an early B1 stage, you’re not going to benefit much from it. You specifically wouldn't benefit much from that curriculum. However, it does serve it’s intended purpose well; to get those who can’t talk, talking.

I usually arrived with things I wanted to work on, and this was never a problem; writing, grammar questions, podcasts, videos etc.

It was US $99 when I first tried them. How I think it's US $129 and US 199 for their DELE course - I haven't used Baselang since they started offering DELE practice or raised their prices.

Do you know, whether they can teach advanced students as well? Are they strict enough?

I plan to try them again because all the tutors were very nice, and I truly enjoyed getting to know them and speak with them. Most Baselang teachers are not naturally strict enough for my taste. For consistent feedback, among other things, I continued booking sessions with my tutors from italki while using Baselang.

I say that with a few caveats:

-1. I wasn’t an advanced student at the time, and it may have been that tutors just saw it more beneficial to prioritize fluency over accuracy.

-2. There was one Baselang tutor who I think would be great for more advanced students. She even went above and beyond what he job called for and gave homework (not from Baselang curriculum) and sent articles to read for us to review. She was like my italki tutors, but not from italki. The thing is, this made her popular, and it was very hard to book a session with her. She was one of the few who was a career teacher, and I think that made a difference.

-3. Teachers were being added all the time, and there I many I did not try.

I want to reiterate that Baselang tutors are very nice, and great to speak with. Many sessions were spent laughing. However, I still felt I was one of many students. One of the reasons I never let Italki go completely is because our sessions had better continuity and they seemed overall more invested in my performance.

Are the sites reliable? After all, I'd be sending money and my card details to the other side of the planet.

Baselang’s site is very reliable and well designed. I haven’t used it in a while, but I understand that each teacher now has a video introduction and a bio. If this is true, it would be a great improvement from when I used the site.

Customer service is good, but the internet in Venezuela can be spotty sometimes. It's nothing that would stop me from signing up again. The good thing is that Baselang they will find a replacement in the event that the tutor you booked a session with couldn’t make it. Sometimes this meant working with someone who you may not have otherwise chosen, but everyone I’ve worked with has been pleasant, so wasn’t usually a big deal for me.

I felt comfortable providing credit card information, but did so knowing the card I provided to them was connected to an account with a minimal amount of cash. It would also have been fairly easy to be reimbursed by my credit union in the event of an unauthorized transaction, although a lengthy process. Things like this are always a judgement call, but I haven’t had any issues and I’d feel comfortable doing it again given all I know about Baselang now.

Bottom line:

From a customer's perspective, I found Baselang to be a professional and well run business company. All their tutors have been great to speak with, but one will need to do some searching to find someone strict enough. For conversation practice, you're bound to find someone you mesh well with. At the time, I was able to choose from 35 tutors, but now a user has about 100 to choose from (according to recent reviews I've read).

Their 'optimised curriculum' provides good structure for the sessions if you're at a low to mid B1 level learner. However, this might have improved since last year.

I plan to give them a try again late the year to get some conversation practice in, but I have no illusions about finding someone who I consider to be strict enough. I would have preferred that tutors write in the Skype box as I'm talking, or suggest ways I could re-phrase things. Even when I asked for this to be done, only few two tutors really seemed to understand what I was asking for.

Reviews on their site:

I think that the reviews here are fair. I'll add a few comments.

-1. Booking sessions – One thing that really grinded my axe is the fact that I’d have to wait until midnight to book a class (three days out) with a preferred tutor. I mean right at midnight! Everyone knew who the ‘best’ tutors were and if you didn’t book early, you were out of luck. I sometimes wouldn’t be able to book sessions because all available slots with a particular tutor would be full by 12:01 AM. Annoying.

From e-mails I’ve gotten, they’ve fixed this problem by making the time slots for the following day available to everyone at the same time. Before, it was only available to you at midnight so those in ‘earlier’ time zones got the best selection of time slots.

-2. One reviewer said someone made fun of their accent– I don’t deny that this may have happened, but it has not been my experience. I found most tutors to be so genuinely encouraging and nice that I have a hard time imagining this being more than someone poking fun. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t care if they did make fun of my accent anyway, as long as they told me what I was mis-pronouncing.

-3. Very few tutors would correct me – Admittedly, my lack of fluency could have played a part in this; I was a mid B1 speaker at best. Perhaps it was more prudent to just let me speak. I personally don’t like talking for an hour with absolutely no feedback when I’m working with a professional, and is not a problem I had with my tutors from italki.

4. To give you an idea, I ended up withing pretty consistiently with four people:

- A college student, mid-twenties – She was fantastic at tutoring as someone without formal experience. We role-played, reviewed my writing, and shot the breeze. She offered a fair amount of feedback but was mostly focused on just talking. Talks were informal.

- A programmer who lived and went to school in the US, but had returned to Venezuela to live. We mostly just shot the breeze and talked politics. I truly enjoyed our conversations but he wasn’t keen on corrections, or offering better ways to phrase things. We didn’t use the Baselang curriculum. Informal talks about fairly in-depth topics.

- A career Spanish teacher who had years of experience in the field. We reviewed my writing, resolved any doubts I had about grammar or a way something was phrased and reviewed articles. Often, we would just talk and she would correct me as she saw fit. In terms of offering feedback, she has been the only one on Baselang who has come close to my tutors from italki. We didn’t use the Baselang curriculum. Our talkes tended to be formal.

- Just a regular guy. Again, we usually just talked about whatever, but would occasionally run though their curriculum. We were the same age, give or take a year and had similar tastes in music and hobbies. His experience learning German and English was useful for me, and might have been why he was fairly keen offering corrections. I learnt a lot of colloquialisms during our conversations.

[Arnaud]

It's all well and good saying it's only 10 per hour, but when you're forced to sign up for hundreds of dollars then it's irrelevant what it works out to per hour. Most people aren't going to get a private tutor every single day of the month for 12 months so the per hour price is largely irrelevant. It would cost much more than the $5-10 you can get an hours' conversation for on italki when you take everything into account.

Lol, who is forcing you ? If you sign, you do it freely after evaluating the advantages and inconvenients of such an offer.
And try to find a good french teacher on Italki for 5-10$ and come back to me. Good luck...

[Cavesa]

If you also take into account the fact that with a little effort you can actually get this for free, it becomes not worth it.

It would be much better if they would allow you to take smaller numbers of lessons but obviously their mark-up is in offering them in bulk hoping people don't use all their allotted time.

No, I cannot get this for free. I don't live in France and my native language is absolutely worthless on the language exchange market. It would be worth more, if I was learning Russian, but I am not, there are almost non French natives looking for Czech natives.

And I cannot get corrections. Not even most professional tutors are capable of giving good corrections, so searching for the exceptions is quite complicated. Plus I could do with talking about stuff that is neither medecine nor smalltalk.

What got my attention were exactly the large amounts of time needed to make it a good price, that would be a good motivating factor for me. Normally, you pay more with every hour spent. This way, you basically pay less with every hour (or in my case I'd opt for half hour) spent. Plus I definitely wouldn't sign up for a year. The most useful way for me a month now, and another month a few months later (with other languages and stuff in between).

But the price is by far not the most important factor. Even one euro spent on a bad tutor is wasted money. And no practice is better than bad practice with strenghtening of bad habits.

I signed up for the free trial lesson on Rypeapp. I think I can judge enough based on that, so I'll see in a few days and let you know. You know I am rather sceptical, when it comes to tutors, but why not try a free lesson and see.

I used Baselang for about three months last year, and my experience was mostly positive. To your questions:

Thank you! This has been extremely useful, exactly what I hoped for. It is a bit disappointing in the sense of baselang not being such an interesting choice anymore, but you probably saved me some money and time.

Obviously, their descriptions of careful teacher selections are a bit far fetched. And it was a bit suspicious that they offered DELE preparation only up to B2.


What is interesting about this model is the schedule freedom of the student, which is something I'd appreciate. Better price than that of individual Italki lessons. And their supposedly carefully picked teachers. Well, no harm done, if this kind of services doesn't fit my expectations, no change.

[the1whoknocks]

[...]It is a bit disappointing in the sense of baselang not being such an interesting choice anymore, but you probably saved me some money and time.

Obviously, their descriptions of careful teacher selections are a bit far fetched. And it was a bit suspicious that they offered DELE preparation only up to B2.

What is interesting about this model is the schedule freedom of the student, which is something I'd appreciate. Better price than that of individual Italki lessons. And their supposedly carefully picked teachers. Well, no harm done, if this kind of services doesn't fit my expectations, no change.

I want to be careful, because I don't mean to suggest that Baselang is all bad. Comparing them to, say, italki's community tutors, the quality control is evident. They offer a one week trial for $1. You could always sign up, try them out, and cancel within 6 days to see what you think. At the very least, it would be conversation practice. AnaMaly was the professional teacher I was talking about, but I'm sure they've hired more like her by now. There were others with great potential, they just lacked experience.

I would say their claim of 'carefully selected teachers' can be interprited many ways. I had the impression that all of their teachers are professionals trained in the field, and have varying amounts of experience. The reality, as I see it, is that while all their tutors are engaging conversationalists and familiar with the Baselang's curriculum, many lack relevant experience to teach outside this curriculum. This experience matters for an advanced student, such as yourself. There were a few that were good, but it was hard to book sessions with them consistiently. I look forward to trying them out again to see if this is still the case.

If they'd allow it, I'd also like to try their DELE course for a week (it might only be open to new members). I too am wondering why only up to B2 too. A while back I asked them if these teachers are different than their 'regular' tutors, and I was told yes. That seems promising.

Once I found people I meshed with, I just had to be prepared to find out what they were willing to talk about, search for articles and the like myself, and figure out how to best solicit their help; ask for examples, rather than grammar explanations etc. For those who are not conversationally at B1, Baselang is worth considering for the amount of time one can get interacting with enthusiastic native speakers. Beyond that, I'd say good conversation about 'deep' topics can be had, but more searching will be necessary. If you're searching for detailed feedback outside of writing practice and targeted practice, choices for a good tutor are slimmer still. However, this is the case with any platform.

I'd really love to hear from someone else with more experience with the service - I happily stand to be corrected.

[rdearman]

No, I cannot get this for free. I don't live in France and my native language is absolutely worthless on the language exchange market. It would be worth more, if I was learning Russian, but I am not, there are almost non French natives looking for Czech natives.

I never said you could get an exchange for free. But you can most certainly get someone to speak with you in a TL for free.

I don't know about the free part. But perhaps it might be better to advertise for a professional to speak with you? I'm sure it would be possible to pay someone to speak with you who isn't a tutor or on iTalki, or language exchange. For example if I put an advertisement in a newspaper for a French native speaker to talk to me I could get one.

Or am I just dreaming?

[Cavesa]

No, I cannot get this for free. I don't live in France and my native language is absolutely worthless on the language exchange market. It would be worth more, if I was learning Russian, but I am not, there are almost non French natives looking for Czech natives.

I never said you could get an exchange for free. But you can most certainly get someone to speak with you in a TL for free.

Well, it is not that easy. Especially as what would help me would either be very strict corrections and just some native won't do, if even most teachers are incapable of that. And the other option would be dozens of hours speaking, and even then I don't think I would improve that much beyond the level I have now, at least when it comes to French.

And I cannot see a native who would just spend dozens of hours with me for free, clearly providing me with a service. I am not looking for a boyfriend (and native language would not be the main criteria anyways). And with anyone else, I wouldn't probably spend enough time to get past the hypereasy smalltalk. Especially as I've noticed that it takes a bit of time (at least to me) to make friends with French natives than with the Spanish ones. I think the Spanish nature and tradition makes it easier for people to speak about a lot of interesting stuff very early in a relationship (I mean a friendly, coworker, classmate, etc.). That doesn't necessarily mean personal stuff, but it includes stuff where opinions and personal tastes matters and where it is not improbable that the people talking will disagree, which is enriching. With many French, I find it harder to get past some barriers, and curiously, even the sense of humour is a more tricky thing. At least some parts of the French society, such as medicine students (confirmed by some medicine students themselves) are quite reserved. This is not a complaint, this is a fact I need to take into account, and which makes "just find a native to talk to" much harder.

The option to try a lot of teachers in a short period of time with very easy scheduling, that is very appealing about the concept. However, if most teachers are not suited for me, how likely I am to find the good fits in the huge pile. Unfortunately, Rypeapp, the only such service for French learners that I have found, doesn't offer even that. In not that old reviews, people speak about three trial lessons with three different teachers being offered during the free week. Now, there is only one. So, I can only learn a limited amount of stuff during the thirty minutes. I can probably judge a bit based on the teacher, and I can ask her directly questions like "would you be willing to teach this or that way".

[zenmonkey]

No, I cannot get this for free. I don't live in France and my native language is absolutely worthless on the language exchange market. It would be worth more, if I was learning Russian, but I am not, there are almost non French natives looking for Czech natives.

I never said you could get an exchange for free. But you can most certainly get someone to speak with you in a TL for free.

Well, it is not that easy. Especially as what would help me would either be very strict corrections and just some native won't do, if even most teachers are incapable of that. And the other option would be dozens of hours speaking, and even then I don't think I would improve that much beyond the level I have now, at least when it comes to French.

And I cannot see a native who would just spend dozens of hours with me for free, clearly providing me with a service. I am not looking for a boyfriend (and native language would not be the main criteria anyways). And with anyone else, I wouldn't probably spend enough time to get past the hypereasy smalltalk. Especially as I've noticed that it takes a bit of time (at least to me) to make friends with French natives than with the Spanish ones. I think the Spanish nature and tradition makes it easier for people to speak about a lot of interesting stuff very early in a relationship (I mean a friendly, coworker, classmate, etc.). That doesn't necessarily mean personal stuff, but it includes stuff where opinions and personal tastes matters and where it is not improbable that the people talking will disagree, which is enriching. With many French, I find it harder to get past some barriers, and curiously, even the sense of humour is a more tricky thing. At least some parts of the French society, such as medicine students (confirmed by some medicine students themselves) are quite reserved. This is not a complaint, this is a fact I need to take into account, and which makes "just find a native to talk to" much harder.

The option to try a lot of teachers in a short period of time with very easy scheduling, that is very appealing about the concept. However, if most teachers are not suited for me, how likely I am to find the good fits in the huge pile. Unfortunately, Rypeapp, the only such service for French learners that I have found, doesn't offer even that. In not that old reviews, people speak about three trial lessons with three different teachers being offered during the free week. Now, there is only one. So, I can only learn a limited amount of stuff during the thirty minutes. I can probably judge a bit based on the teacher, and I can ask her directly questions like "would you be willing to teach this or that way".

Something to consider:

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.
- Voltaire

(perfect is the enemy of good enough)