Are you thinking about doing the Lingoda Marathon?
Well, this is a complete and honest review by someone
who has actually done it. Empecemos. ¡Hola, amigos!
Jim here from Spanish and Go your resource
for learning real world travel Spanish.
And today I'm going to talk about my experience
with the Lingoda the Marathon and whether I recommend it.
I'm going to talk about their interface,
their teachers the material used,
tips for completing the Marathon,
what I think they could do better,
and some of my reflections on how I think the Marathon
went and if I think it's worth it.
For those of you who are unfamiliar
with Lingoda,
they’re an online language learning company that pairs
you up with native speakers in 1 on 1 and small group classes.
So, Lingoda offers classes in English,
Spanish, German, and French.
And they offer them in all levels from very
beginner to advanced. so,
Lingoda has become kind of famous for their incredible
promotion called the Lingoda Marathon
and the Marathon basically gives you 90 days of 1 hour
classes in your target language with a native
certified teacher and if you are able to complete
the entire Marathon —
every single day one hour for 90 days,
or their half Marathon which is half that —
they will refund you 100 percent of the tuition. Wow!
Who else does that? So,
I put them to the test I did the Lingoda Marathon in Spanish.
This channel is all about teaching Spanish of course,
and the culture and language and traditions surrounding
different Spanish speaking places.
And so I'm always looking to improve my Spanish to take
it to the next level.
Ever since I started learning Spanish at that one
day it would be incredible to achieve a near
native fluency. And I'm getting closer.
I've got some work to do for sure.
But I went into the marathon knowing that I was about
a C1 Spanish speaker.
And talking to the Lingoda teachers I was able to determine
that I was in the right place.
When I started doing the marathon. So,
if you're unfamiliar with what C1 means,
that is based off of the CEFR, the — what is it —
common European framework of reference for languages.
This is the higher end of language learning
this the more advanced stuff.
A1 would be beginner and C2 would be advanced.
It goes A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2.
I eventually want to get to see two but I did
the marathon mainly in C1 and I completed it.
I got my certificate.
In this review I'm going to assume that you have no
prior experience with Lingoda. So,
let's start with their interface.
The Lingoda the interface makes it really
easy to book your classes, to see what your syllabus is,
what classes you have coming up, which ones you've completed,
who you're going to have classes with, and at what time.
It's really simple and straightforward.
There are basically three main tabs: my classes,
book classes, and my course.
Your my classes tab shows you your upcoming
class Front and center.
And below that you can see your upcoming
classes after your next one, and the pass classes. So,
it's really easy to see if you have a class book
for every day which you're going to need
to do to complete the Marathon and make
sure that you have a class for every single day.
There's also a book classes tab which is where
you go to book your next classes.
And it's really convenient because you can select
the time frame range of when you're available
to take a class and then it'll only filter
out classes during those times.
And it also gives you the option to only show
the classes that are next in your
syllabus by being the next one, class next five,
and next 10 classes. So,
basically it just hones in on making sure
you are progressing through your syllabus more or less in order.
The syllabus is different for each level.
In my case for the C1 there is eleven chapters
so I could go through and see where I was at any point
during the Marathon in the syllabus.
And then there is the my courses tab which shows
you the classes you've completed,
the ones that you have scheduled but not yet completed,
and you also see if you just took a class
if it's pending for you to get your class
report from your teacher.
Another cool part of this section is not only do
you get to see your whole syllabus but you also get to see
how far along you are towards earning your CEFR certificate
which to me kind of game defies of the whole experience
and I got really excited just seeing the percentage change
every day getting closer and closer to
that CEFR certificate. So,
now let's talk about the teachers.
One thing I thought was really cool about the Marathon
is I got to talk to so many teachers from so many
different places.
If I remember correctly I had teachers from eight
different Spanish speaking countries: España,
México, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina,
y Uruguay. To me,
this was one of the coolest aspects of the Marathon
because I just love hearing different accents from different
speakers around the world.
It really opens up your ability to understand a variety
of people when speaking Spanish.
Pretty much all the teachers I had were super high quality.
We'd be having a conversation or going through the lesson
and they would be taking notes on what I was saying
as I was saying it and then we would revisit
that to correct my errors.
That's something I just don't get when I'm out
and about talking to Spanish speakers on the street.
Because for the most part no one's going to correct
you like that. So,
in my opinion they're doing a great job just by doing that.
All the teachers are obviously experienced and knowledgeable.
They all know their grammar.
If you have a question they're on top of it.
The only situations I experienced where
they didn't know something was when something in the lesson
material was from Spain which,
it usually is and we'll get to that,
and they didn't know what that phrase meant.
Spanish is a very diverse language and I wouldn't
expect them to know every single phrase from every
country or even just from Spain when they're
from Ecuador for example, or Mexico.
At the end of each class you also have
the opportunity to write your teacher and for the most part
I thought everyone was excellent.
There was only one situation out of dozens of classes where
I thought maybe the teacher could have been a little
bit better.
I wrote some feedback and I ended up
getting that teacher again.
I believe that the feedback system is anonymous,
but that teacher was much better, curiously,
in the next class. So,
the feedback system obviously works,
or I just got lucky. Now,
let's talk about the class material.
Every class you have has an accompanying PDF,
and for the most part you go through the PDA with your
teacher and the rest of the group sharing
different sections to speak out loud ask questions.
So on and so forth.
Now again to clarify I took the marathon at a C1 level,
and I heard that Lingoda is in the process
of redoing a lot of the learning material updating it,
and they haven't yet redone the C1 and C2 levels. But,
for the most part I've also heard that most
people are doing the Marathon at some of the lower levels,
so all of that's been revamped.
I haven't had a chance to check it out yet but in my opinion
the class material was pretty good.
It seemed mostly based on conversation
and writing about a variety of different subjects.
Literature, everyday things that you would eventually
have to do in a Spanish speaking country like go
to the bank and open up a bank account.
Some of the other classes that stood out to me
were late stages of life.
There was one about the economy which was really
difficult for me because I never talk
about the economy in Spanish with anyone
so I learned a lot from that class.
There was another class that was fun talking about
different types of diets. What is a healthy diet.
Obviously you end up going over just tons of different
vocabulary in different subjects. So,
now this is where things get really interesting.
I'm going to give you some tips for success
if you want to give the Lingoda Marathon
a shot and then I'm going to talk about some things
that I think could be better.
And then we'll follow that up with my reflections.
But before we go any further,
Don't forget to like and subscribe for more
travel and Spanish tips. Okay,
tips for success in completing the Lingoda Marathon.
Number one, this is huge: test your internet connection,
and have a backup.
May and I are living in Puerto Rico right now
and sometimes the electricity goes out. What do you do then?
I've had two Lingoda classes where the electricity
went out sometime before the class started
and I had to figure out a backup.
Here's how I did it.
I had backup internet with my cell phone. So,
I used my cell phone as a hotspot and I was able
to log into the Zoom platform.
That's the platform Lingoda uses for hosting their
classes and doing like the conference
room small group thing —
you can see everybody and talk to everybody that way.
And fortunately,
an LTE connection was strong enough to keep me going.
I was able to do this because my phone and my
computer were always charged; so make sure you have backup.
Another tip:
book your classes at least a week in advance.
Especially with the lower levels from what I hear you're
going to need to book your classes as far
in advance as possible.
For me the most useful way to go about this was basically
just to stick to an hour or two every day that I knew
I had reserved for the Lingoda Marathon. So,
pretty much every day at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. I knew I had a class.
So, I would only look for classes during those
times and then book in advance.
There was one time where I didn't book far enough
in advance and I didn't have any classes available.
I was panicking.
I reached out to Lingoda customer service. Unfortunately,
I didn't hear back from them right away,
and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get my class in.
Now, this is on me because I should have
given it more than a week,
which is why I'm telling you guys.
But I didn't hear back right away was panicking.
They hadn't put new classes out and fortunately
I think the day before I was supposed to have a class.
Some more classes showed up and then I heard from Lingoda.
So, it was all good.
I was able to book my classes but that was a close call.
And to Lingoda’s credit,
they got back to me and apologized —
told me know next time make sure that I have at least
a week in advance and they assured me
that they're working on amping up their customer support
during the Marathons to be able to get back
to students even faster.
And I spoke directly with the Lingoda to head
of operations,
and she assured me that they're working on this.
The head of operations at Lingoda also told me
that if there are no classes available at any
point that you can skip levels.
So in my case I could have gone to C2 to look
for classes or B2 to look for classes and that probably
would have solved my problem. I didn't know this at the time.
Another tip make sure you are syncing all of your
classes to the cloud.
That way you always can see on your calendar
on your phone or on your computer when you have a class.
I always made sure I had everything synced
up so that I could see no matter where I was, “OK,
what is my class today and what time
is it so that I can make sure that I have enough
time to get to my class?”
And make sure you have reminders on your phone
that are giving you notifications 10 or 15
minutes before your class.
You can check that Internet connection
and make sure you're ready to go.
Another tip that I mentioned earlier make sure you're using
that filter function under the book classes tab to make
sure that you're kind of going somewhat in order
of the syllabus.
I learned about this function way too late in the Marathon
and although it worked out it's probably a little bit
better if you kind of stick to the syllabus and go
from one chapter to the next rather than bouncing
around all over the place. Another tip:
download the zoom app which is the Lingoda
conferencing app so that you can get to your
class for more ever you are.
This saved me in a situation where May and I were taking
care of the two dogs that you probably heard
about if you've been watching our channel and we had them
at a Spayathon and I had to have my
class right when the dogs were going in for surgery.
I had to use the app and that was a lifesaver.
Another tip:
carry headphones with you because of my situation
I didn't have headphones with me and it was really difficult
to kind of be in my class reading content and listening
to my teacher in that kind of noisy environment. OK,
with all that said what could be better?
Although when you book a class Lingoda sends you a reminder
email with a file that you can download to basically
automatically add your class to your calendar
either Gmail or iCalendar.
I think it would be really cool if you could just book
a bunch of classes and download all those files at once.
It would save a little bit of time because usually
when I was booking classes I would book two weeks
in advance and it is just kind of tedious to go
through and add every single class one by one in that way.
Also, I think it would be really cool
if Lingoda added a Spanish from Latin America course.
That way the focus would mostly be on Latin America
and not so much Spain,
but pretty much all of the class material
is based on Spain Spanish which isn't a deal
breaker for me.
But there's a lot of phrases that I probably will never use,
but they were in the materials. Nevertheless,
it's good to know these things.
Especially if you're travelling a lot.
Another thing I think that could be better
is there's no real testing so you can get your CEFR
certificate because you put in the time
and went through all the classes,
but there's no grading.
You pretty much just have to show up to your classes,
and you will get better,
but there's no real measure of how
well you're doing.
The most feedback you get is basically from your
teacher at the end of each class where they give you tips
on what you can improve.
And at the end of the Marathon make sure
that you are cancelling any upcoming classes
or subscriptions with Lingoda if you don't
plan to continue forward.
I've heard some complaints about people not being aware of this.
And if you're done with courses with them
then you just have to cancel when you're done.
So here are some of my reflections on the Marathon.
Let's start with the big one: Did it help me? Yes,
that is the easy answer.
At first I didn't really notice that I was progressing,
but that's the case with small changes over time with anything.
I think with diets or reading a book, it's like,
little by little you don't really see or notice much,
but over time you look back and think, “wow,
yeah I've really come a long way.”
And May can vouch for this.
She's said that I am more fluent in Spanish.
And if she says it,
well I'm not going to argue with that.
Was it worth it?
Well this depends on your language learning goals.
But for me it absolutely was worth it.
My goal is to become as fluent as I possibly can in Spanish
and the Marathon helped me push myself to get better and better.
Would I do it again? Yes. Under one condition.
I need a break. It's a lot of work.
You have to be absolutely dedicated to showing up every
single day and 90 days is a lot. Things come up,
and sometimes it's just really hard to get to class.
But if you are determined and you pick a good time of day
to be consistent and show up to your class every single
day when you don't usually have anything else
going on you can absolutely conquer the Lingoda Marathon.
Some other reflections...
I really enjoyed the small class sizes.
All of the classes for the Marathon
are small groups.
And I believe they usually say it's like a small
group of three to five people.
Most of the group classes I had had three people or fewer,
but most of my classes actually were just
me and the teacher.
I talked to some of my teachers about
this and they said,
“well there's just not as many students taking the higher
level courses for Spanish” and I imagine
with other languages too.
Most people taking the marathon are beginners
or intermediates so there's probably going to be more people
in your classes with the lower levels but there's no guarantee.
I only actually had one class that was maxed out.
And it was one of the weird classes that I had to take
where there wasn't much availability and I ended up
taking a class at like 1:00 a.m.
and it was a class full of Russians
because it was like the morning there
and here in Puerto Rico is like one
o'clock in the morning.
This is the exception not the rule, but yeah,
when the classes are full it gets to be a bit much.
You have to really wait to take your turn to get to read any
of the activity or ask questions.
But most classes were small groups so guys if you're
interested in doing a Lingoda Marathon they have
another one right now.
This is their Marathon 5 and if you use the link in our
description you can sign up and use our voucher code
so you pay zero dollars for your entry fee and get
setup with the marathon to really help take your
language learning to the next level.
I can promise you if you stick to it you will definitely
majorly improve your Spanish. Thanks for watching guys.
Don't forget to like and subscribe for more
travel and Spanish tips.
And remember El Camino es el Destino.
The journey is the destination. Nos vemos pronto.