I signed up for in the Lingoda sprint to improve my French in early 2025. My level was A2, which meant I could already engage in elementary conversations, enough to follow simple instructions given in French and answer simple questions in French. And this is exactly what I would be doing for the 15 classes in the sprint.
The main selling-point of the sprint (and the super sprint) is that if you manage to complete all 15 classes (30 in the super sprint) Lingoda will refund half of your money. However, if you prefer, you can get class credits instead if you want to keep going. There are some rules that you need to follow in order to get your refund or credits and you have to be careful not break any of them. Miss a class or book too many classes in the same week and you fail the challenge. No excuses. If there is a problem at Lingoda’s end, you will be fine but you’ll fail the sprint if your internet goes down, your laptop stops working or something happens (even if it’s beyond your control) and you can’t make it to your class. Lingoda are very strict on this.
I chose the sprint rather than the super sprint because (a) it’s cheaper and (b) I couldn’t commit to taking a lesson every single day for two months. When you sign up for the sprint (or super sprint) you don’t know if you’ll enjoy the classes and committing to 60 for the next two months seemed too much of a risk for me.
There were three things I wanted to get out of my Lingoda sprint:
- To improve my French.
- To have fun.
- To ‘beat’ the sprint challenge.
To judge the value of Lingoda and say how useful it was for me will depend on how well each of these three things worked out. If I didn’t improve my French or have fun but I won the sprint challenge then, all in all, I would say that it wasn’t worth it. It feels good to set yourself a challenge and complete it but I wouldn’t want pay much money for that simple satisfaction if that’s all I’m getting out of it.
Improving my French but not enjoying the process would put me off continuing with Lingoda. But the primary goal is to get better at French. Even if I didn’t really enjoy myself I would say the sprint was worth it if I saw a big enough improvement. I know you have be realistic, you can’t expect huge gains in just 15 classes over 2 months. However, even if I saw noticeable improvment but I really hated it doing the classes, if it felt like a slog or was too stressful, I wouldn’t recommend Lingoda.
Finally, if I had fun and enjoyed the classes but only made minimumal progress with my French, I would consider Lingoda worth the money. If you’re having a good time, you can’t really complain about the cost.
The best result, of course, would be if I successfully improved my French to noticeable degree and had fun in the process.
So, what was the result? Did I pass the sprint? Did I get my 50% refund? Is Lingoda worth it?
First of all, I did pass my sprint and Lingoda honoured the deal and refunded me the money. There were one or two moments when I thought I might mess up the sprint and forfeit the refund but I managed to do it.
The first thing to go wrong was entirely my fault. I got carried away booking my classes and failed to notice that I’d booked a class on Easter Sunday! By the time I’d noticed, it was too late to cancel the class without messing up the sprint. I ended up taking my laptop to my in-laws and doing the class in their spare bedroom after lunch. Fortunately, I didn’t miss Easter lunch with the family but I did have to sneak off for a hour shortly after the meal was over.
The second thing to go wrong wasn’t a problem really but it did make me a little nervous. In one of my classes the teacher incorrectly marked me as absent. If you miss a class you fail your sprint. I sent an email to support explaining the issue and they got back to me very quickly (probably within a few hours). The customer service representative said they would check with the teacher and sort things out. When I logged into the site the next time the error had been corrected. From my experience, Lingoda customer service is excellent.
A lot of people want to know how long you have to wait to get your refund after you finished your sprint. First of all, it is worth mentioning that it’s a bit of an anticlimax when it happens. There’s no fanfare, pomp or ceremony. You complete your final class and they send you an email saying:
Congratulations! You successfully completed the Sprint and you’re entitled to 50% cashback, or 30 group class credits.
You should also be aware that Lingoda will automatically keep your subscription active if you do not cancel. It is important to keep this in mind if you plan to leave after your sprint. In my case I knew I would be moving on and I made sure to cancel after my final class.
Lingoda don’t run their sprints continously but start them at certain times of the year. They wait until the sprint is over before paying out the successful sprinters. My sprint ended in June and my refund arrived in my bank account in early July.
What were the classes like, is Lingoda fun?
The structure of the classes are the same every time you log in for a lesson. There are usually two or three other students (although I was the only student in three of my classes) and no more than four. At the beginning of every class all the students will briefly introduce themselves. This is about as much interaction you will have with your fellow students. Over the 30 classes I completed it was very rare to log in and see someone from a previous class. The introductions are typically saying your name, the country you are from and very briefly why you are learning French. I ended up saying the same thing for every class and I suspect everyone else did to.
Before the class you have the opportunity to download the PDF of the lesson and familiarise yourself with its contents. I strongly advise you to do this. During the class, your teacher will take you through the PDF and you and your fellow students will be doing the exercises. It really helps if you already know what you have to do beforehand. This is especially the case with the grammar classes. These are the most challenging and it is very easy to get lost and confused during the exercises.
From what I remember, around 95% of the classes are in French. Only very rarely, if someone gets totally stuck or bewildered, would the teacher speak English. It’s worth bearing in mind that not all the students speak English. When I was doing my sprint most of the other students were from the USA but there were quite a few from the Middle East and Far East.
All of the teachers I had were very friendly and patient. They spoke clearly and slowly and I never felt that I was struggling to understand them. In addition, because the teachers are patient and kind, I didn’t worry about getting any of the exercises wrong or speaking French badly.
So, are the classes fun?
Fun might be a bit of stretch but I can honestly say that I enjoyed all of my classes and looked forward to them. Because I work from home, I had a lot of flexibility when it came to booking my classes. So I never felt under pressure to make time for a French lesson. I can imagine that for others who are more restricted in when they can do a class they might find it a bit more stressful. If you’re worried about setting aside time for classes or being interrupted then this stress will affect your enjoyment of the class.
The classes themselves are pleasant way to spend an hour and you feel like you’re doing something constructive with your time. Some topics are more interesting than others. It depends on your interest. You can choose the type of class you want to do and have a choice of topics. For example, you can pick classes based on food and drink or accidents and injuries. There are classes that are more reading based that have longer passages and then comprehension style questions afterwards. For me, these were the most fun. And there are pure grammar classes. These were my least favourite. The last fifteen minutes of an hour-long grammar class starts to feel like a slog.
On the whole, I would say that the Lingoda classes are a nice way to spent a hour. I would be happy to wake up tomorrow knowing I had a class booked in the afternoon.
Did I see any noticeable improvement in my French?
You cannot expect to see huge improvements after two months, even if you’re taking five classes a week. The most noticeable change, for me, was in my spoken French. When you take classes at Lingoda you speak a lot. The teachers have you read out the questions on the PDF in French and give all your answers in French. Depending on the particular exercise, your answer might be a single word chosen from a list or a few sentences expressing an opinion in your own words. Along the way, the teacher will guide you when you make mistakes in your pronunciation.
After Lingoda, I was more confident speaking French and felt my pronunciation had improved. I also use italki for conversation practice and my tutor commented on the improvement in my speaking which was great to hear.
Reading in French is my strongest skill. I had no problem at all understanding the texts in any of the reading classes. I can’t say that I noticed any improvements in my reading skills after the sprint.
There is some writing practice during the Lingado classes. The teacher will have you write a few sentences in the chat function. However, even though the teacher pointed out a few of my spelling and grammatical errors, I didn’t feel like I learned much or improved my written French.
Listening is a difficult one to judge. Someone else can tell me that my spoken French sounds better but they can’t really comment on my listening skills. I have noticed my listening has improved and I think Lingoda did help with this. I also watch a lot of French YouTube channels as well, so it’s probably a combination of these two. The teachers at Lingoda speak French and I did not really have a problem following what they were saying.
Grammar and Vocab. I don’t think that my grammar skills significantly improved but to be fair I stopped booking grammar classes on Lingoda because they were my least favourite. However, about six weeks after finishing my sprint, I had a lesson at a French language school that covered the same topic I had done a class on at Lingoda. I was surprised to discover that I had retained all the vocab and could talk much more fluidly about the topic than I would have expected.
Overall, I would say that my improvement in French after the Lingoda sprint was about as much as I expected. You cannot realistically expect massive improvements after 30 lessons. The biggest gain was in my confidence speaking and my pronunciation skills. But I think my listening skills improved as well. I did pick up some extra vocabulary and I’m a little bit more familar with the passé composé that I previously was.
Was the Lingoda sprint worth the time, money and effort?
I said above that my three criteria for judging whether or not Lingoda is worth it was:
- To improve my French.
- To have fun.
- To ‘beat’ the sprint challenge.
I felt that the improvement in my French was sufficiently good to say that I benefited from doing the sprint. After three months and 30 classes, I think that I made in the gains I could hope to gain. If the classes had been boring, unpleasant and something I dreaded then these gains would not have made up for having to endure 30 classes. Thankfully, this was not the case.
The classes were pleasant and engaging, I looked forward to logging on and getting started. While an online French lesson will probably never reach what I would called ‘fun’, I did enjoy the Lingoda classes. Offline, French lessons in a real-life classroom get closer to being fun. Face-to-face, it is possible to share a joke and chit chat during the breaks. You get to know people in the class and even make friends. This is not the case with Lingoda classes because you do not get the chance to socialise with other students. However, for some people this might be considered a plus. There are pros and cons with online classes. Overall, I enjoyed the classes and they were ‘fun’ enough to be worth the money.
The idea of getting a 50% refund was a big incentive for me when I was thinking about signing up to do Lingoda. I did manage to complete the sprint and got my refund. Having to attend every class or forfeit my refund was a great motivator to keep going and never skip a class. Apart from booking a class on Easter Sunday without realising it, I found it very easy to book classes that I knew I could attend without problems. However, there is always the worry that something might happen and I would miss a class. Before going to bed at night I would always double-check to see if I had a class that day. And then I would check again when I woke up in the morning. I definitely had a low-level of anxiety running in the background that I would accidentally miss a class and mess up the sprint. It is perfectly possible to sign up to Lingoda and do classes whenever you like instead of doing a sprint. But, even with low-level sprint anxiety, I think attempting a sprint and successfully completing it will be more satisfying. After then you can take the refund or take the credits for more lessons.
Overall verdict: Is the Lingoda sprint worth it?
If you’ve read this far then you’ll already know that I think it is worth doing the sprint. But if you’ve skipped to the end here’s what I think.
The classes are enjoyable and I found myself looking forwards to them. My French did improve, most noticeably in my speaking confidence and pronunciation. I managed to complete the sprint without much difficulty and Lingoda paid my refund into my bank account without problem. The teachers are patient and friendly and the customer service is excellent.
Yes, in my opinion, the Lingoda sprint is worth it.