BaseLangReviews of baselang.com

It’s fine, the actual lessons are pretty limited. If you are starting at zero you made need to find ways to supplement. Teachers are hit and miss but you eventually find some that you mesh well with.

I did find some teachers I really liked on the platform but they were always booked up and then the other teacher's quality varied a lot. I think more observations are needed and teacher training. The curriculum is not engaging and tedious to use on your own time. Need a lot more corrections which many teachers failed to give.

She was getting distracted by her own thing at some point

I want to be clear this is specifically about the Boot Camp program, not BaseLang as a whole. I actually like the concept behind Boot Camp and think it makes a lot of sense, but the execution and standards weren’t consistent in my experience. For the first 4.5 weeks, my professor barely spoke to me in Spanish. There wasn’t much real conversation or even attempts at it. It was mostly reading, fill in the blank, and grammar work, and he just wasn’t very engaged. I realized I wasn’t improving much, and since I’m living in a Spanish speaking country, I knew something needed to change. I emailed the Boot Camp team, explained my experience, and they switched my teacher pretty quickly. My second teacher was definitely better. We spoke a lot more, and I think I would have made significantly more progress if I had her from the beginning. That’s why I think the program could be really good, but it needs stronger training and clearer standards to make sure it’s run the way it’s intended. It’s supposed to be conversational and in the first half of the Boot Camp that just wasn’t my experience. I started at level 1 and I’m around level 3 now, so there was some improvement. I may meet BaseLang’s definition of conversational, but I can’t confidently hold a real conversation in the actual world yet. The program is also mentally draining, even doing the semi intensive version. Based on my experience and results, I wouldn’t personally recommend Boot Camp, but I can see how it might work better for others. I’ve also heard a lot of good things about their other programs, like Real World, which I’ll be switching to now.

You need a 45 min time slot

The teachers are pretty good. I enjoy working with people from different countries and sharing cultural knowledge etc. I like how easy it is to sign up for classes, great user interface. Very disappointing almost insulting curriculum! This is your biggest flaw by far. There are short texts that use advanced grammar and then, as a quiz, it asks you to identify like a horse or a helicopter ??? (unit 6 I think) I learned horse in spanish 38 years ago in kindergarten along with the colors and farm animals growing up in California. It needs to be removed and completely revamped as it makes no sense whatsoever.

I've taken 350+ classes this year in BaseLang, and I have very mixed feelings about the platform. The good: The curriculum is truly excellent—this is the way to actually learn Spanish. Instead of stupid AI-driven apps, BaseLang lets you speak 1:1 with a real teacher, and fluency is actually possible. I also love the opportunity to try out many teachers and find the ones you sync with in personality and teaching style. I currently have two primary teachers whom I adore! The bad: Speaking of teachers, I am very concerned about the teacher experience side of the business. Aside from my husband and maybe my virtual teammates, I see my Spanish teachers more than anyone else, so of course I've gotten to know them and am genuinely invested in their wellbeing too. I do not believe BaseLang pays their teachers a livable wage, and I can't help but believe we are all exploiting them and cheaper labor. For me, personally, I would be willing to pay more for my teachers to get paid more. I even suggested to BaseLang that they give us students the opportunity to "tip" or "buy a coffee" for our teachers. Of course I received no feedback or even acknowledgment of receipt. I also believe BaseLang ultimates punishes the best teachers and pushes them into burnout. My first long-term teacher was one of the most popular in the platform, but BaseLang fired him anyway. I'm worried that some of the other best teachers are headed in the same direction. The other thing I really hate is the electives. A gross number of electives is required for each level in order to officially progress to the next. In theory, electives make sense, but in practice, they're actually miserable. I believe electives should help me live and travel in Spanish-speaking countries, but these courses are essentially useless and a complete waste of time. For example, I took an elective for "at the mechanic" because I assumed it would help me go to the mechanic for basic things: my tire is flat, I need an oil change, something is working correctly. But no—instead, it was teaching me very in-depth vocabulary for intricate car parts, as if I were studying to be a mechanic. Literally every elective is a waste of time. Imagine needing 15-20 H O U R S of these for each level that you complete! I recently sent a detailed feedback about the electives and I purposefully marked the note as "response required." I'll give you one guess if I actually got a response from BaseLang. To be honest, I will continue my course curriculum with BaseLang, but I will not continue my subscription past that. I also will no longer recommend this platform to anyone who's looking to learn Spanish. One final note: There is a BaseLang physical school in Medellín that is a separate entity from the online school. BaseLang Medellín is a wonderful experience full of the best staff and teachers. If you're interested in in-person classes, do not hesitate to go there.

Overall this is a great program in general in terms of curriculum, though the teaching side could use some work. These are not always trained teachers and it is very clear in classes where the teacher is just there to read off a script and not really be there for the student. Of course, they're also not paid well either, which from a moral side of view eventually put me off using the program altogether. I was also told by a teacher doing my mandatory placement exam that I should be B1 in the curriculum, even though 2 weeks later I passed the C1 DELE exam, so I'm not sure why the teacher was so off point.