Growing up in Hong Kong under the former British Rule, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by many people with accents, not just only Chinese. As our family traveled around Asia over the school holidays, my taste for travel and adventure started to form.
First, it was family trips to Asia, and then it was trips to Europe and beyond. I was always fascinated with accents and the stories I could imagine people would tell. Then I became a teen and believed in the truth that Italian and French were the languages of love. Full of passion, emotion and something I deeply wanted to know.
I heard about Babbel through a friend who was an app fanatic. I downloaded the free trial and had my first beginners’ lesson in French. Although I had studied it in school, I could remember some of it, so for me, it was wonderfully nostalgic to go down that road yet again. In fact, I loved it so much that I started a year-long subscription! What sold me on the app was how easy it is to use, and how I can go at my own pace, or even set an in-app alarm to remind me that class is today. Currently, I chose Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 pm. Now If I want to go ahead and go faster, I am able to keep going.
The features that I love:
- There’s a solid foundation of correct grammar and spelling.
- There is a lot of positive repetition to allow the words and pronunciation to sink in.
- I get quizzed with multiple choice
- I’m tested how to spell words
- At the end of each lesson, I’m able to see how I did. I’m averaging an 85% pass rate!
- Lessons are built on real-life conversations that you are likely to use in real life
- Good quality audio
- Grammar is explained clearly with lots of examples.
25% subscription discount by using HERE
As a great first step to learning a new language, courses range from beginner to intermediate and are pretty straightforward. 1 lesson takes around 10 – 15 minutes and is extremely user-friendly. I felt confident that after 2 weeks of study, I could practice with my French-speaking friends. Funny how I just came back from Paris and then learned to speak the language! But no worries, now I have a learning app to keep me going.
So when I think back to the French lessons I learned in school, it was very rudimentary and very one-note. That’s the problem with learning languages in school, they are not practical – whereas all of Babbel’s lessons are designed and created by linguistic experts with the emphasis on real-life conversations.
I’m happy to say that the Babbel team is offering everyone a 25% subscription discount by using HERE
**Thanks to the team at Babbel for sponsoring this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
