FluentU Review and Rating 2021
Welcome to our FluentU review, a platform that provides its users with videos sourced from the internet to assist in learning the language. Read ahead as we give you a thorough tour of what the site has to offer.
In this review, you will find sections dedicated to discussing how expensive FluentU is, the courses available, the quality of content, the duration of each course, and so much more. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced learner, FluentU caters to all your needs. Continue reading our FluentU review to decide ‘is FluentU worth it’ and ‘is FluentU legit’.
$173.99
Introduction to our FluentU Review
If you want to learn and practice a foreign language, then you should check out FluentU. This online language learning platform believes that the best way to learn and become fluent in a new language is by being exposed to engaging content. Even though using traditional tools such as textbooks and guides is helpful, nothing beats learning through rich experiences. This way learning becomes easier and ten times more interesting. And FluentU ensures that you will not give up learning until you can fluently speak the language of your choice.
Founded by Alan Park, FluentU was initially a Chinese learning service with its headquarters based in Hong Kong. Over the years, the company has expanded to Spanish, French, English, German, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Russian, and Portuguese. With over 10,000 videos and more added almost weekly, FluentU offers a plethora of content for you to use. The videos are categorized into 6 levels based on their difficulty. The learner level includes newbie, elementary, intermediate, upper-intermediate, advanced, and native.
The videos in these broad categories are taken from free publicly available sites such as YouTube and accurate subtitles are added to them. This allows you to know exactly how words and phrases are pronounced and used in realistic settings. Not only that, but the subtitles are interactive in the sense that you can individually view the dialogues and vocabulary. The video will automatically pause and you will be able to hear how the word is pronounced as well as know its meaning. This is a very learn as you go approach.
To familiarize users with the tone and kind of language used in different settings, FluentU has a broad range of lesson topics. For example, it includes content in arts and entertainment, business, culture, daily life, politics and society, health and lifestyle, and science and technology. They have a flashcard functionality that helps you recall and refer to your learnings at a later date. You can click on the loop option to have a certain clip in the video repeat over and over. This is a handy tool for difficult-to-understand or tricky dialogues.
To practice your learnings, after you have completed watching a video, the site allows you to partake in personalized video quizzes. The quizzes can be in the form of fill-in-the-blanks or multiple choice. You can watch the video for additional help as well as look at the English translation to test your understanding of the language. Although a little repetitive, this is a great way to improve your listening skills.
If you are a teacher, you can assign homework and tasks to your students and set a due date. Check their activities and track the students’ progress by checking their accuracy.
FluentU offers mobile applications for both IOS and Android devices. You can even access FluentU using their website. So, you know you can enjoy and learn while you are on the go from any and everywhere.
Now that you have a general idea about how the language learning platform operates, continue reading our FluentU review for more information and details.
FluentU: How Expensive is FluentU in 2021?
For individual users, there are two pricing plans available at FluentU. You can opt for the monthly payment option that will cost $29.99 per month or the annual payment option which will cost $19.99 per month. So compared to the monthly plan, you will have to pay a total of $239.99 per year with the annual plan. You will be saving almost a hundred dollars as the monthly plan totals $359.99 per year. They accept Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal as a form of payment. Aside from getting a receipt for each payment, the site allows you to cancel their subscription any time you want and they will not bill your card again. Being a Hong Kong-based company, if you are using a card to pay for their services, then you might be charged 1% to 3% Foreign Transaction Fee, which will inevitably increase the cost a little.
There is a 14 days trial period for you to explore and use FluentU to check out all the features and functionalities they have to offer. There are no commitments to the trial period, and as such if you feel like this language learning site is not meant for you, you can cancel any time.
If you are wondering whether there are any discounts available or not, then you will be pleased to know that FluentU has an academic pricing plan for schools and universities. The minimum number of users, whether it’s a teacher or a student is 10, and the price per user is $29.9. However, if the number of users increases, the annual cost will fall. All the users have unlimited access to video watching, audio listening, flashcard sets, learn mode, courses, PDF printouts, and any other features that they have to offer. Similar to the individual pricing plans, you also get a free trial period with the academic plan. But instead of 14 days to test and try everything out, the trial period will run for a whopping 90 days.
What Courses Are Available at FluentU?
At this point in our FluentU review, you already have an idea about how much the site is going to cost you. But what are the courses that are being offered and are available? Let us look more into it so that you can decide if FluentU is worth it.
You already know that you can learn up to 10 different languages using FluentU. Each language covers a wide range of topics, and they are:
Arts and Entertainment
This includes videos from TV shows, movies, and films created in the language. If you are looking for shorter videos, then you can even watch trailers under the arts and entertainment topic.
Business
If you want to learn professional vocabulary that will come in handy in the business world, then the videos under this topic include speeches, interviews, and the like.
Culture
For people who are interested in learning about the culture of the language they are learning, the videos under this topic revolve around shows and clips that showcase the cultural aspect of that country.
Daily Life
Similar to culture, if you are interested to know about everyday life and some vocabulary commonly used by the locals, you can surf through videos under this topic.
Health and Lifestyle
For some commonly used medical terms or health-related vocabularies and dialogues, you will find an ample number of clips under the health and lifestyle topic on the FluentU site.
Politics and Society
You can hear speeches from local politicians or hear news and interviews to familiarize yourself with all the political dialogues used in the language you are learning.
Science and Technology
Similar to all the other topics, if you are interested to know more scientific and technological vocabularies spoken in a certain language, then you can find several videos under this topic.
Content Quality at FluentU
You can find thousands of videos at FluentU and they keep adding videos to the site almost every week. The videos are taken from YouTube and other publicly available video streaming sites and are not limited to a certain category. You will find cartoons and TV shows as well as interviews and news reports on the site. So, you have an extremely wide and diverse selection of videos to choose from.
However, the videos for the lessons are arbitrarily organized. What this means is that there is no proper differentiation to categorize the videos according to their difficulty level. This uneven ranking and categorizing of videos can even be considered unnecessary. As such, a beginner could video an advanced level video and use it to learn and identify new terms. Instead of simple lesson videos, having access to realistic videos make learning much more interesting. In contrast, you can consider lack of boundaries to be both a benefit and a drawback as even though users have the freedom to choose which video to watch, it can also get confusing and overwhelming for some.
Course Length – Too Short? Too Long?
As previously mentioned, there is a lack of boundaries and proper classification on the site. Therefore, anyone can decide which videos to watch and from which difficulty level. Most of the videos available on the site are relatively short in length. They usually range from a couple of seconds to several minutes. The concise videos are extremely helpful when learning. As when the videos are excessively long, it can be tedious to learn. The small size of the content makes remembering and recalling vocabulary and dialogue relatively easier. The only way to measure your process is by looking at the accuracy level you have achieved after taking the quizzes at the end of every video. As there are no commitments, the course can end anytime depending on when you cancel your subscription.
The quantity of videos under each topic and category is plenty. One can consider the sheer number of videos available superfluous. Don’t get us wrong, having thousands of videos to assist in your learning journey increases your options to choose from. Users who are wanting to learn the language do not need many videos to master the language. In fact, it is almost certain that one will not be able to go through all the videos unless they are determined to do so and have enough time on their hands.
The Reputation of FluentU – What Are The Students Saying?
So far on our FluentU review, we have been talking about what the site provides and how we feel about them. But what about the actual users of the platform, the students? People who are better visual learners, really appreciate what the platform provides for their users. The ability to slow down, rewind, and play videos on loop gives you control over the speed at which you get to learn. Plus, while learning, if the user is unsure about a certain term, they can hover over it and the definition, as well as other examples of where the word can be used, appears. This interactive way of learning is unique to the site and extremely helpful. Plus, the quizzes at the end of the video are a great way to practice your learning.
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