Wednesday, December 4th
2024 Spanish Lesson Reviews
Memrise
- Free access
- Monthly Plan: $22.99 per month (equalling $275.88 annually)
- Annual Plan: $7.50 per month or $89.99 per year
- Lifetime Plan: $249.99 one-time fee
- Fun, game-like learning
- Interactive learning
- A large video content library with real-world speakers and situations
- Interactive lessons
Memrise was created by three friends who were studying neuroscience and psychology at Oxford University. Being fascinated by the way humans learn, they wanted to help people learn more effectively, so they studied memorization techniques. After graduation, Ed Cooke became the US Memory Champion two years in a row, Greg Detre earned his Ph.D. in neuroscience, and Ben Whately traveled to Qiquhaer to see if he could teach himself Chinese by applying his theories on second language acquisition. With all their knowledge and experience, the three friends came back together to create Memrise, a platform that delivers research-based methods for learning Spanish or other languages.
Snippets of real people in a Spanish-speaking country
When you hear your new Spanish phrase, you'll both see and hear a real person pronounce the phrase. What's nice with Memrise is that you'll see these people on location. Although here and there you might hear birds or light traffic in the background, it's authentic and how you would hear someone in the real world when you travel. To hear and understand precise and specific pronunciation of words, you can choose a male or female voice and hear the isolated word so you know how to say it.
Authentic gestures
No, we're not talking vulgar gestures, ha ha, we're talking about subtle differences in culture. For example, if someone in a Memrise Spanish video says they don't really like soup, you'll see their facial gestures and body language as they say, "No me gusta la sopa”. If you really want to assimilate into a country or culture, imitating the gestures is one step closer to fitting in.
Excellent writing recognition and correction software
In a Memrise Spanish lesson, you'll be a part of a virtual conversation, and the prompt may ask what you do for holiday traditions. You can give your own answer in Spanish and Memrise will analyze what you wrote and make appropriate corrections. This is huge. Memrise offers true feedback with up-to-date software, including AI conversations you might encounter in a real-world setting. On the contrary, most writing recognition programs are primitive, needing you to utter exactly what they want, no personal changes at all; and if so, they won't recognize them and call your whole sentence wrong. That's not real feedback.
Are you busy and need a reminder?
Hop on your Memrise app, go to settings, and set reminders. You can choose the days, dates, times, and time of day to take your Spanish lesson.
A lot of features on the Memrise Pro version
When you pay for a subscription, you unlock all the vocabulary, lessons, videos by native Spanish speakers, and conversation practice. And you won't get any ads.
It's fun and helpful even if you're not a beginner
Because of the creative content including idiomatic phrases plus native-speaker gestures in the snippets, even the intermediate to advanced Spanish learners are bound to enjoy the content as they brush up on their skills. If your passion is to intensely improve your advanced Spanish skills, though, you'll need to scroll through some of the native content videos, especially the ones included towards the end, and see how you do. You could spot clips from the BBC in Spanish or even Telemundo.
The free version has quite a bit of material
When you hop online, even with Memrise's free version of Spanish lessons, you can get the video clips and lessons, quizzes in the form of games, and personalized review plans, and your program will sync across your devices. But with the free access you will get ads and you will only have access to some of the learning features.
If you're going to subscribe, we recommend the Annual Plan
If you were to purchase Memrise's monthly plan for learning Spanish and ended up keeping it for a year, you'd pay more than three times what you would have for the annual plan. Even the Lifetime Plan is cheaper than letting your monthly plan go for a year. Our advice would be to try the monthly plan if you really want, but be sure to decide if you like it or not quickly and if you do like it, get the annual or lifetime plan.
There's more learning material with a subscription plan
When you pay for your subscription, you'll of course get more Spanish content. You'll also be able to have Memrise's speech-recognition feature which lets you know how well you would be understood by a native speaker. You'll also get to use their Mems, or additional mnemonic devices to help you better commit your vocabulary to memory.
30-day money-back guarantee
If you want to try out Memrise's paid subscription, you have 30 days to determine if the additional access to Spanish materials plus lack of ads is worth it. Note that you can only get a 30-day guarantee with the Annual or Lifetime plans, not the monthly plan.
We're huge fans if you're a beginner
The research that went into Memrise's language-learning programs is clearly top of the line. The huge quantity of videos for hearing more Spanish is amazing and you get quite a bit of material without paying a cent. The subscription prices are most reasonable with an annual or lifetime plan, not the monthly plan. Where Memrise could improve would be to add material for the intermediate and especially the advanced learner, but we're already seeing things rolling out that can accommodate higher fluency levels, after Memrise changed its platform in early 2024.
More Spanish Lesson Reviews
The 12 Best Spanish Lessons
Who Offers the Best Spanish Lessons Online?
Have you ever wanted to learn Spanish? Maybe you would like to interact with native speakers while traveling. Or perhaps you would like to speak Spanish with your contractor or other people you do business with.
Here are some fun facts for you to consider. According to a recent US census, Spanish is the most common non-English language spoken in US homes, 12x greater than the next four most common languages. The US is the world's fourth-largest Spanish-speaking country. And, as such, jobs in the US are always looking for bilingual (English-Spanish) speakers.
Spanish Lesson FAQ
Continued from above...
No matter why you want to learn Spanish, the real question is which online Spanish lessons are right for you. With so much of our life being digital and using apps regularly if not daily, it's only natural to want to explore apps or online methods for learning Spanish. There are many to choose from, and we can help you sift through the options.
The first thing to consider is how much Spanish you already know. If you're just getting started, your choices are almost endless, as many programs have an abundance of material for beginners. In fact, some of these programs focus so much on the beginners that they seem to run out of steam when creating material for the intermediate students, and then there's none if you want to hone your advanced Spanish with them. There are those who cater to all levels of proficiency, but it's certainly not all, and you have to know which is which. No worries - wherever you are on your Spanish-learning journey, we have excellent online programs and apps to recommend for your needs.
Another consideration is your learning style and preferences. Some learners need motivation through lessons with animation, gamification, and prizes. Others find animation and gamification overwhelming and would rather get straight to business, preferring the old-school grammar lessons and vocabulary flashcards. Consider if you want your Spanish curriculum to tell you where to start and then follow those lessons in a linear fashion. If you do, great. However, other people want to choose their own path and select lessons where the theme is of interest to them. Either way, there are plenty of online Spanish lessons that will suit you.
Once you're more aware of why you're learning Spanish and how you want to learn it, there are a few more aspects you should consider as you choose where to take lessons:
- The right fit. Consider a trial period or the money-back guarantee period of time to try out the Spanish lessons to see if it delivers for you. Maybe you thought you were self-motivated, but instead you actually want animation and gamification to give you that little push. The trial period can shed some light on your fit with the program.
- Live tutor. Some online Spanish-learning programs offer a live tutor so you can learn all on your own with the tutor, or at least can be in a small class setting of 6 students or fewer. Or you can get a tutor to help you when you're stuck with the material you're learning. Sometimes it's nice to have a live person to help out.
- Value. Once you give a free trial a chance, believe it or not, sometimes the month-to-month price can be more expensive in a year's payments than the whole lifetime one-time-payment option.
- Refund policy. Once you've committed to an online Spanish program, is there a money-back guarantee? If so, how long do you have to decide? Some offer 60 days, 30 days, and some offer only 7 days to try it out and get your money back.
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have evaluated, rated, and ranked the best choices for online Spanish lessons. We're sure that with this information, you'll have what you need to make the right choice for your goals in learning and becoming fluent in Spanish. ¡Ya vamos!
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