Thoughts on FluentU?

[neofight78]

I was wondering if anyone had used FluentU and could share their experience? Is it a good resource? How did you use it? What results did you see? I am especially interested to know if it's useful at a higher level i.e. B2 or higher. I know there is Yabla as well, but they don't offer Russian. Although perhaps some commentary on Yabla might equally well apply to FluentU as the core concept seems the same.

[Speakeasy]

I just conducted a quick search of this forum and of the HTLAL and I noticed that most of the comments on FluentU and Yabla were recorded in logs, challenges, et cetera. Virtually without exception, the comments were quite positive and many members reported using these services at the Intermediate and Advanced levels. My own experiences with Yabla mirror these comments.

I subscribed to Yabla German for a six-month period a couple of years ago and I was quite satisfied with the quantity, quality and variety of the videos. Although I found the grading of the videos somewhat inconsistent, this posed no genuine problem in actual use. My approach to using these materials varied. Initially, I treated the videos as Assimil-like dialogues to be practiced/shadowed intensively and repeatedly. As I became increasingly familiar with a particular video, or small collection of them, I began to suspect that I had gone as far as I could and that my approach incurred the risk of my simply memorizing the materials without further benefit. Subsequently, I switched to an alternating pattern of concentrated practice as just mentioned and binge watching. All-in-all, I was quite satisfied. However, as for everything else in life, I reached a saturation point and moved on to other materials.

FluentU was not available at the time I was working through the Yabla videos. When I visited their site some time later, it seemed to me that the services offered by both companies were quite similar. I will admit that the FluentU website is more polished than the Yabla website; however, their respective potential for assisting the independent-learn seems to be next-to-identical.