Lingoda Review: A Quality Online Language School

There are also the Lingoda language marathon packages that work similarly to the language sprint. The only difference is that Lingoda Marathon has a duration of three, six, or twelve months and up to 200 language classes. The purpose of the Lingoda sprint and marathon classes is to motivate students to continue with language learning without any unnecessary breaks.

Lessons Quality

Lingoda has its own in-house digital education team whose job is to create high-quality and up-to-date lesson material. Priority is to provide qualified teachers for all language learners. The teachers are native speakers, experienced, and possess the necessary teaching qualifications. The teacher’s quality is maintained through the rating students leave after each class.

After all private or group classes, you may do so by clicking the notification bell at the upper-right corner and clicking on “Rate Class”. At the end of each month, every teacher will receive an email with anonymous feedback to help them improve their shortcomings. 

The rating system includes an intuitive emoji scale to make the feedback easy for students (Awesome, Good, Ok, Bad, Horrible). Most Lingoda teachers have a 4.7 out of 5-star rating. The online language platform monitors these ratings.

After selecting the emoji, students can further specify the reasons such as, ‘not engaging enough’, ‘unhelpful feedback’, ‘teacher was late’ etc. Unlike some other language learning apps, students can also write down their own customized reasons as well.

Grammar Instruction

Students at Lingoda are expected to gain a solid foundation in grammar because the teachers follow a structured curriculum. The language learning app offers detailed grammar explanations and examples, which are helpful for students who struggle with understanding grammar concepts.

After booking a class, students can see the Practise tab and find detailed learning material. Students can also read the annotated lessons with notes and highlights from the teacher, which were marked during the class. It is especially beneficial for Lingoda group classes when you can’t follow along with everyone.

For example, if the lesson is ‘expressing cause and effect in a sentence,’ the sample exercises discussed during the lesson will be marked with the solutions. A lesson summary is also provided to review what you have learned. It’s a great way to learn grammar for those with a solitary learning style.

Verbal Practice

Lingoda lessons contain no direct translations of your target language. Instead, all speaking and listening is done in that language, and all the teachers are native speakers.

For example, a student taking Spanish classes will be communicating with the instructor in Spanish throughout the class. This communicative approach will help students to get verbal practice in real-time with the teacher and other students if it’s a group class.

Lingoda’s group class feature solely focuses on conversational skills and pronunciation practice. The group lessons provide speaking practice as part of their lesson materials. Therefore, Lingoda is well-equipped to help learners improve their speaking skills through verbal activities.

Reading and Writing

Lingoda’s reading tasks are designed to improve vocabulary, comprehension, and overall reading proficiency. Reading materials, as prepared by the in-house digital educational team, are diverse and engaging, including articles, news stories, and literary texts, all of which are selected according to the learner’s language level. 

Lingoda offers engaging activities such as reading comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, and writing tasks. Additionally, learners can receive comprehensive feedback under the Review Tab, which helps them improve their reading skills more effectively.

Vocabulary

Lingoda’s learning materials help language learners build and extend their vocabulary. Each lesson includes vocabulary exercises, and students are encouraged to use newly learned words in context throughout the lesson.

The Lingoda platform has pre-made vocabulary flashcards for every class, which can be viewed before and after the class. There are 20-30 flashcards for each class, and they help to understand difficult words beforehand.

For each word, the basic information is mentioned, such as, if the word is a noun, verb, etc. However, we think Lingoda’s vocabulary exercises could be more challenging, and some content is sometimes lacking in business English and some other classes. Still, Lingoda provides a good foundation for building and extending vocabulary.

Lingoda Review: Ease of Use

Lingoda doesn’t have an app and can only be accessed through a web browser. Still, the website’s interface works well on mobile, and the website is convenient for taking private or group classes. Website’s white background and blue color theme project a clean and organized appearance.

The use of feedback is effective, with timely notifications and reminders for upcoming Lingoda’s classes or assignments. Loading times are quick and reliable, making the platform easy and fast. We see Lingoda’s design as a great asset to the platform, ensuring pleasant and user-friendly language learning.

Recently, Lingoda has introduced orientation lessons for new users to ensure you can make the most of the language learning experience. The objectives of the orientation are to understand the Lingoda method, the structure of the module, and how to book your next class.

Lingoda Competitors and Alternatives

Lingoda vs Baselang

Baselang provides structured and affordable one-on-one tutoring with native speakers. It’s a close competitor of Lingoda, but the latter offers tutoring for small groups. The benefit of this is a cheaper price tag and a possibility to converse with other learners. If that doesn’t bother you, learn more about Baselang in our Baselang review.

Lingoda vs Babbel

Babbel is a premium-feel language app with interactive exercises, podcasts, voice recognition, games, and more. Babbel Live gives a possibility to purchase live lessons, but it isn’t a tutoring platform like Lingoda. We recommend Babbel as a starting point before diving into tutoring with Lingoda. Find more information in our in-depth Babbel review.

Lingoda vs Pimsleur

Pimsleur is an audio-based app tasking you with listening and repeating foreign language words and phrases. Compared to Lingoda, Pimsleur provides a self-paced learning environment without aiming for a traditional classroom experience. We recommend learning more about this auditory learning method in our Pimsleur review.

What Could Be Improved?

The major drawback of the Lingoda platform is the limited language availability. Currently, Lingoda offers German, English, Business English, and Spanish classes only. Adding other languages, such as Mandarin or Arabic, could be beneficial. 

Lingoda’s classes do not allow students to choose their instructors. Instead, they are selected randomly. Moreover, you can not request the same teacher next time. It might confuse an absolute beginner learning a new language for the first time.

Another area of improvement is the booking of classes. While Lingoda offers flexible scheduling, there have been issues with cancellations and rescheduling. Some students have been complaining about the high penalty fees for changing times. Alghtou, this might just be a rumor, as we haven’t stumbled upon such issues.

Lingoda Pricing

There is no cost-per-language but a flat fee for all languages. The subscription ranges from $75 to $850 per month. The plans come with different numbers of private or group classes, ranging from 30 to 150 classes per month. You could also take a look at cheaper alternatives like Mondly or Busuu.

Lingoda also offers corporate packages for companies. Moreover, students with monthly subscriptions can also pause their subscriptions for a predefined time interval. During this break, they cannot book classes, and their payment date extends till the end of the pause.