Dr Christopher N.
Good for absolute beginners only…
For basic vocabulary and structures it is excellent. The vocabulary is much more real world than, say, Duolingo and it is also less hung up than Duolingo on grammatical structures which you would never use on a bus or in a shop. Where it falls down badly, however, is in its poor differentiation between Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. As you mount the learning curve, the insistence on repetition rather than on development is very limiting. Now that I am at Advanced, I find myself simply writing out many times the phrases and sentences I mastered in Beginners and Intermediate. This is a time where I want to practise orally, the skills I have internalised in previous courses. But here such opportunities are no more than they were in the Beginners course.