StartSpanish.comReviews of startspanish.com

I was so excited when I discovered this web site. The classes are offered on the hour all day long and offer both beginning and intermediate levels. The content of the classes is varied and super interesting. So, it is more than just learning the language... it is also about learning about culture, places to visit, philosophical discussions. For me the most challenging part of learning Spanish is to SPEAK it. With Start Spanish, students are encouraged to speak free style during the first 8 minutes of the class, and then there is a more structured lecture with grammar points. The teachers are all wonderful and the advantage of trying different ones is that one can hear different types of speaking as well as different approaches to teaching grammar points. I think that to teach a foreign language is very difficult and takes a lot of patience from the instructors. There is however one instructor who intimidates me because I sense impatience at times. Also, another great point with this program is that many of us get to know each other as we take classes together, so it gives a personal touch.

Una gran manera para aprender a hablar espanol. Empecé con dvd's entonces recientemente fui a los clases intermedios de Start Spanish. Todavia tengo mucho para aprender pero estoy satisfecho con las lecciones y los profesores son muy buenos y util, y divertido trabajar con ellos. Recomiendo StartSpanish a todo!

I have had so much fun using Start Spanish to strengthen the little bit of Spanish that I know. The units are VERY interesting, the private lessons are well taught and the daily live sessions are a FANTASTIC way to practice speaking the language. NOWHERE else will you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the language EVERY DAY like you can by using Start Spanish. I would recommend it to anyone who has a strong passion for learning the language! My ONLY wish is that there were more than 30 units!!

The course is comprehensive. The 45 minute sessions with a teacher are excellent with each daily session having a combination of new vocabulary and some grammar review. The professors are superb at assuring a normal flow of the class and encourage continuous dialogue. All are native speakers and also have a very good knowledge of English when the Spanish explanation is not understood. Their use of English is always as minimal as possible. The course also includes a variety of written exercises that provide instant feedback about errors. There are periodic examinations to test ones progress. There are exercises in writing that follow each live (via Adobe Connects) session and these are corrected and sent back to the student. I doubt that there are any other Spanish courses that are of such high caliber.

I decided to try Spanish again after a year of high school Spanish many years ago. For me, StartSpanish was really successful! The opportunity to speak Spanish every day, live, with an instructor, has made it possible for me to actually be able to carry on a conversation in another language. While I often have a lesson with just myself and the instructor, on other occasions there are students from all over the world--Jamaica, Italy, Norway, Japan--as well as students from the United States. After a year with StartSpanish, I enrolled at the local college in an advanced Spanish class and got an A in the course! All the instructors that I have worked with in StartSpanish are fully-qualified with advanced degrees from University of Cordoba, Argentina. I can take a class at my convenience, anytime from early in the morning to 7 p.m. I love the live format with some structured reading/listening/speaking. Usually the class includes a grammar point that is easily learned in the 45-minute class. And there is an accompanying optional writing exercise. After both the live class and the writing exercise, I receive a personal review and critique. In addition to the live classes, there are many other features of the program, including a blog, grammar and dictionary aids, illustrated lessons which include reading/writing/listening/speaking. And I have used their private classes to clarify questions. It's a fabulous program, and I would recumbend it to anyone who is serious about learning Spanish.

StartSpanish was awesome for me. I live in an area where talking to native speakers is not very easy to do. StartSpanish is a great way to get daily speaking practice and is really economical compared to traditional Skype style lessons. I learned a ton of spanish and enjoyed the interaction with both the teachers and the students.

Excellent place to practice Spanish! The tutors are very nice!

This site has been really great (and FUN) to help take me to the next level. I do self-study (Practice Makes Perfect books), hour-long one-on-one classes (via a school in Nicaragua, for now), and Start Spanish. With SS, I use the daily 40-minute lessons most often (though lesson time is only about 30 minutes; the first 8 are spent waiting for other students & chatting). In Intermediate classes, you learn some vocab, but the lesson isn't a strict vocab or grammatical focus, usually (thankfully!); it's reading a passage fully in Spanish, discussing it, answering/asking questions about it, and doing activities related to it. It forces you to listen in Spanish and respond in kind, which of course quickly improves your level and ability to talk with natives. They've recently implemented a pre-window allowing you to test that your audio is working BEFORE the class, which has seemed *really* helpful. (That was [and still is, sometimes] really annoying, to lose several minutes dealing with people's audio too loud, too soft, choppy, broken connections, etc. Those 30 lesson minutes are precious! Hopefully they can implement something that will normalize volume across the mics of all participants, including the instructor. It can be quite distracting to have to turn up and down your volume each time different people speak just to keep up with what's going on and learning a language is challenging enough without having to deal with not hearing it well, lol.) But like I said, they've made improvements just in the short-ish time I've been there, which is inspiring! I like to see that they're aware of certain issues and care to improve our experience. The only negatives are that one of the instructors has seemed a little gruff and rather impatient with questions, particularly for those who don't understand every single thing or aren't able to exactly follow the fast pace of their particular lesson. This means that you don't get quite as much out of the lesson (and it can be, of course, rather frustrating). However, the last time I had this person, they were more relaxed and nicer. Maybe they were having a difficult month/week before... Of course, my level has improved quickly though, and I'm better able to follow, which also makes things go smoother with that instructor now. Everything else is fantastic. I just love Los Reyes, the little cartoon all in Spanish! It's cool to notice my progress in terms of whether I'm able to follow/understand exactly what's going on without rewinding a lot or using the subtitles. The Facebook-like social network is cool for practice when you have a few extra minutes to socialize with others, though the software has a couple of bugs. What I love most is that EACH instructor has her or his own strong points that allow you to get a lot out of the instruction they provide, in the way that they provide it. Interestingly, I don't have a "favorite" because they're each so strong at what they do! Some classes move slowly, some move just right, and a couple of them move quickly: this allows you to adapt to different styles and keeps the variety in what you're learning. After all, every Spanish-speaking person you meet isn't going to speak slowly, repeat themselves endlessly, or be patient with you, and so I appreciate the real-world TOPICS and writing/speaking experience that SS provides. Tips: Remember to do the writing exercises after the lesson; read over the lesson PDF beforehand (if you can); and if you want to study the lesson further afterward, save it beforehand. Have fun!