StartSpanish.com Reviews 42

I signed up with StartSpanish before the trial ended because I have thoroughly enjoyed the quality of classes and resources that you provide your students.

These are some of the BEST teachers that I have ever had and they literally leave me feeling motivated that I can finally check becoming fluent in Spanish off of my bucket list. Keep up the great work! :)

I have to agree with my fellow students. The very concept of a website where you can take your Spanish lesson at any moment you want or at any moment which suits you, talk in small groups with professional native speaking teacher for more than a reasonable price is great. However, it gets even better. Thanks to the all the people who work for startspanish.com. The lessons are very interesting, the content varies from day to day (focusing on all the aspect of a language- listening, speaking, grammar, reading...), the teachers are just fantastic, very nice, patient and helpful. The tech support service is impeccable, when the serious problem occurred, they called me from headquarters and helped me resolve it in 5 min so I could continue in my lesson without any trouble. You can do a writing exercise after each class to strengthen new vocabulary and follow "My Course" which is an intuitive learning of the grammar rules throughout the stories of a funny fictional family "Los Reyes".

To be honest, I had not been learning Spanish before I started with startspanish.com (all those free and payed web programs and books are not enough). Now I can feel I progress with each week and each day. The community is also great, full of welcoming and open minded people from all around the world and we have our private version of "facebook" too! Startspanish.com is doomed to a great success! :)

With no doubts StartSpanish is the best course I have ever tried to learn Spanish. It has a thoroughly elaborated concept, the teachers are wonderful and very encouraging, all of them offer a high quality of teaching standard and have a world of teaching experience. I am new to the program but over only a couple of days I have already become "addicted" to it! Lea Duffell

I have been on-line with this program for nearly a year and have purchased another year's worth of pre-paid lessons. This is a wonderful site for learning Spanish. As well as self-study material, daily on-line group classes with teachers are excellent opportunities to practice listening and speaking. The teachers speak to the student's level, following structured outlines available which are available for pre-class preparation. Writing exercises are also available after each class, as well as private lessons which focus on your area of interest. Excellent resource.

The beauty of StartSpanish is at any hour on the hour during each day (14 hours of the day), I can jump in and take a lesson and have a discussion with a native-speaking Spanish professor . . . after dinner, before work, during lunch . . . completely at my leisure, convenience, and comfort. I don’t have to schedule it ahead of time, so when a free moment comes up, I take advantage of it. And . . . you may do it as many times as you want each day.

And this discussion is supported by a well-designed easily digestible curriculum that is a small set of several slides delivered daily that cover a vocabulary set, a grammar instruction, and a cultural reading . . . all in a convenient package that acts to encourage and support your speaking, listening, and understanding in Spanish while enjoying a live class.

Further, the technical and educational support is impeccable. The professors are the nicest people you’d ever want to meet – friendly, attentive, caring . . . they seem to really want you to learn their language. And if you ever have any question or issue, there’s someone online helping you right away. I highly recommend this program to anyone, whether their interest is serious acquisition of a language . . . or they just want to have fun.

I have been taking classes with StartSpanish for just over two years. I have even been to Cordoba and met the founder and several of the teachers. They are WONDERFUL people! The teachers are very well qualified and knowledgeable. They are patient and kind. It is hard to choose a favorite because they all bring different ideas and information to the classes. Actually, I feel like they are my friends. I have become friends with some of the other students as well. I have studied with Pimsleur and Rocket Spanish. StartSpanish has an advantage because it has live teachers and one can practice speaking with native Spanish speakers who will correct and help whenever help is needed. I really like the flexibility of taking classes when it is convenient for me. I can even take classes no matter where I happen to be in the world.
If you are serious about learning Spanish, then I suggest you give it a try. You can even try out the lessons for FREE!

I have tried numerous classes on line and in person, StartSpanish is far the best course I have taken--ever. I am super impressed with the teaching staff. They are very knowledgeable, friendly and very patient. Each one remembers me and my skill level and common errors and makes great suggestion on how to improve. I also love the fact that there are so many times to log on and learn.

The class sizes are great, the optional homework assignments are fun and challenging.

Their IT Team also knows what they are doing if there is ever a problem getting on.

I love StartSpanish.

This is an excellent and affordable way to begin Spanish lessons for anyone. I began lessons with Start Spanish in November of 2013 and stayed with them for 6 months until my trip to Guatemala for full immersion as a test of my skills in speaking and audio comprehension. The first 8 minutes of speaking with the professors about your day or anything else, as well as, making corrections while speaking about the subject of the day, really helped me to become more comfortable with speaking Spanish. The professors in Guatemala said that I already had some good Spanish speaking skills, which is a reflection of my lessons and practice on the website.
There are many advantages on this website. There are three packages that you can choose so that you can take a 45 minute class anytime every hour for at least 14 hours weekdays and 7 hours on the weekend. There are packages for 15 lives sessions per month to unlimited live sessions per month. After each live session, there is a review and writing exercise. The professor also sends you feedback notes for review as well through email. The professors are patient in answering questions during class. There are private lessons as well, however, due to the time schedule during the day, most live sessions become private lessons. There are many different professors with their own style of teaching and speaking so you are constantly being challenged, and lessons do not become monotonous.
The only critique I have is about the audio and headset technology. In the beginning, there is a tester for audio and microphone usage, however, like with any computer technology today, it does not work all the time for students and sometimes professors. Investment in a good headset that can be used with computers, tablets, and smartphones (standard, wireless, or bluetooth) is essential for this website. I am glad they are sending headsets as a part of the sign up package for a short time.
I plan on returning to StartSpanish.com after my trip ready for more opportunities to speak with and learn from the professors. I am looking forward to achieving fluency by the end of the year.

I've been taking classes at StartSpanish.com for over 2 years. I really like the format of the classes because they give me many opportunities to speak and practice my new language. I've progressed a lot, and while I don't always have much time to sit and study, this interactive format is fun and very effective at improving your abilities. I highly recommend this school as a resouce for people who have used audio courses like Pimsleur, Learning Spanish Like Crazy or Rocket Spanish to immediately start applying their speaking abilities. I have been sitting in classes with people for the last year who I've watched make a lot of progress in their speaking abilities and pronunciation. My only complaint is selfish in that if too many of you sign up, I might not get much class time. Ah that's right, I have some included private lessons I need to use.

Startspanish has proven to be the most comprehensive Spanish course online. The professors are always well prepared, ready to help, and very invested in your success .

I was a teacher and I owned my own business for 20 years, so I'm an expert in rating this company as one that knows what they're doing. Startspanish continues to improve, update and deliver their promise.

I was so excited when I discovered this web site. The classes are offered on the hour all day long and offer both beginning and intermediate levels. The content of the classes is varied and super interesting. So, it is more than just learning the language... it is also about learning about culture, places to visit, philosophical discussions. For me the most challenging part of learning Spanish is to SPEAK it.
With Start Spanish, students are encouraged to speak free style during the first 8 minutes of the class, and then there is a more structured lecture with grammar points.

The teachers are all wonderful and the advantage of trying different ones is that one can hear different types of speaking as well as different approaches to teaching grammar points. I think that to teach a foreign language is very difficult and takes a lot of patience from the instructors. There is however one instructor who intimidates me because I sense impatience at times.

Also, another great point with this program is that many of us get to know each other as we take classes together, so it gives a personal touch.

I have had so much fun using Start Spanish to strengthen the little bit of Spanish that I know. The units are VERY interesting, the private lessons are well taught and the daily live sessions are a FANTASTIC way to practice speaking the language. NOWHERE else will you have the opportunity to immerse yourself in the language EVERY DAY like you can by using Start Spanish.
I would recommend it to anyone who has a strong passion for learning the language!
My ONLY wish is that there were more than 30 units!!

The course is comprehensive. The 45 minute sessions with a teacher are excellent with each daily session having a combination of new vocabulary and some grammar review. The professors are superb at assuring a normal flow of the class and encourage continuous dialogue. All are native speakers and also have a very good knowledge of English when the Spanish explanation is not understood. Their use of English is always as minimal as possible. The course also includes a variety of written exercises that provide instant feedback about errors. There are periodic examinations to test ones progress. There are exercises in writing that follow each live (via Adobe Connects) session and these are corrected and sent back to the student. I doubt that there are any other Spanish courses that are of such high caliber.

I decided to try Spanish again after a year of high school Spanish many years ago. For me, StartSpanish was really successful! The opportunity to speak Spanish every day, live, with an instructor, has made it possible for me to actually be able to carry on a conversation in another language. While I often have a lesson with just myself and the instructor, on other occasions there are students from all over the world--Jamaica, Italy, Norway, Japan--as well as students from the United States. After a year with StartSpanish, I enrolled at the local college in an advanced Spanish class and got an A in the course!

All the instructors that I have worked with in StartSpanish are fully-qualified with advanced degrees from University of Cordoba, Argentina. I can take a class at my convenience, anytime from early in the morning to 7 p.m. I love the live format with some structured reading/listening/speaking. Usually the class includes a grammar point that is easily learned in the 45-minute class. And there is an accompanying optional writing exercise. After both the live class and the writing exercise, I receive a personal review and critique.

In addition to the live classes, there are many other features of the program, including a blog, grammar and dictionary aids, illustrated lessons which include reading/writing/listening/speaking. And I have used their private classes to clarify questions.

It's a fabulous program, and I would recumbend it to anyone who is serious about learning Spanish.

StartSpanish was awesome for me. I live in an area where talking to native speakers is not very easy to do. StartSpanish is a great way to get daily speaking practice and is really economical compared to traditional Skype style lessons. I learned a ton of spanish and enjoyed the interaction with both the teachers and the students.

Excellent place to practice Spanish! The tutors are very nice!

This site has been really great (and FUN) to help take me to the next level. I do self-study (Practice Makes Perfect books), hour-long one-on-one classes (via a school in Nicaragua, for now), and Start Spanish. With SS, I use the daily 40-minute lessons most often (though lesson time is only about 30 minutes; the first 8 are spent waiting for other students & chatting).

In Intermediate classes, you learn some vocab, but the lesson isn't a strict vocab or grammatical focus, usually (thankfully!); it's reading a passage fully in Spanish, discussing it, answering/asking questions about it, and doing activities related to it. It forces you to listen in Spanish and respond in kind, which of course quickly improves your level and ability to talk with natives.

They've recently implemented a pre-window allowing you to test that your audio is working BEFORE the class, which has seemed *really* helpful. (That was [and still is, sometimes] really annoying, to lose several minutes dealing with people's audio too loud, too soft, choppy, broken connections, etc. Those 30 lesson minutes are precious! Hopefully they can implement something that will normalize volume across the mics of all participants, including the instructor. It can be quite distracting to have to turn up and down your volume each time different people speak just to keep up with what's going on and learning a language is challenging enough without having to deal with not hearing it well, lol.) But like I said, they've made improvements just in the short-ish time I've been there, which is inspiring! I like to see that they're aware of certain issues and care to improve our experience.

The only negatives are that one of the instructors has seemed a little gruff and rather impatient with questions, particularly for those who don't understand every single thing or aren't able to exactly follow the fast pace of their particular lesson. This means that you don't get quite as much out of the lesson (and it can be, of course, rather frustrating). However, the last time I had this person, they were more relaxed and nicer. Maybe they were having a difficult month/week before... Of course, my level has improved quickly though, and I'm better able to follow, which also makes things go smoother with that instructor now.

Everything else is fantastic. I just love Los Reyes, the little cartoon all in Spanish! It's cool to notice my progress in terms of whether I'm able to follow/understand exactly what's going on without rewinding a lot or using the subtitles. The Facebook-like social network is cool for practice when you have a few extra minutes to socialize with others, though the software has a couple of bugs.

What I love most is that EACH instructor has her or his own strong points that allow you to get a lot out of the instruction they provide, in the way that they provide it. Interestingly, I don't have a "favorite" because they're each so strong at what they do! Some classes move slowly, some move just right, and a couple of them move quickly: this allows you to adapt to different styles and keeps the variety in what you're learning. After all, every Spanish-speaking person you meet isn't going to speak slowly, repeat themselves endlessly, or be patient with you, and so I appreciate the real-world TOPICS and writing/speaking experience that SS provides.

Tips: Remember to do the writing exercises after the lesson; read over the lesson PDF beforehand (if you can); and if you want to study the lesson further afterward, save it beforehand. Have fun!

Really enjoyed the class and learned a lot in a short-period of time. I think the platform is easy to use and my teachers were very helpful and personable.

For me I don't really have the dedication for an online class so I ended up not renewing but I can see this being a great solutions for others who are a bit more disciplined.

My only other critique is that at times I felt the class moved too slowly but that is probably a good thing for new learners.

I´m very surprised to find an online class so catchy and useful. I was kinf of exceptical but I found out that it is worth to take the course and I fell pretty good about my Spanish now.