Review: Lalia German courses

I wanted to share my experience with Lalia since I couldn't find much information about it before I joined.

I enrolled in the "Lalia: Intermediate Low 2" course in September 2023. I already had a Goethe B1 certificate from 2020. But aside from a certificate, I did not have much to show for it in terms of actually being able to converse beyond ordering food or coffee.

My goal in enrolling with Lalia was to overcome my hesitation in speaking German, so I could use it in the real world.

After 4 weeks, I can say I really love it. Lalia delivers on its promise to help its students learn to speak German.

They do 5 things right:

1. Placement: They placed me at the perfect level, where my fellow students spoke at the same level as me, drastically reducing my insecurity (which I felt in other language schools, including Lingoda) and increasing my confidence to speak
2. Productive use of class time: We spend 60-80% of the time actually talking and conversing, and not listening to a lecture
3. Weekly Themes: They introduce a new theme such as friendship and sports every week. Through these themes, they introduce new vocabulary and grammar. This is great to help build vocabulary and 'attack' a topic from different angles (e.g. music - genres, instruments, how we feel about music, what music we liked as a kid)
4. Teacher: My teacher (Stefanie) is great. She gives us the time and space to formulate sentences, uses words and explains things at our level, and gives just the right amount (not too much) of grammar corrections
5. Homework: The homework is realistic for people like me who work full time. I can complete them in 10-30mins.

Results?

• A personally amazing success story for me: I had to call the Chilean embassy in Berlin to inquire about the visa. Of course I started with my standard, "Sprechen Sie Englisch" and to my great surprise, they said, "nur Spanish oder Deutsch" So we did the conversation auf Deutsch. It lasted about 1.5 minutes, fully in German. I'm sure I made a lot of grammatical mistakes, but it was quite smooth. I'm super happy about it.
• I am now able to more frequently chat and have longer conversations in German with my German colleagues. I already had the ability even before, but I only grew enough confidence to actually speak with the help of Lalia.

A caveat: Personally, I create and review Anki flash cards of vocabulary, phrases, and sentences I learn during the class. I learned this outside Lalia, but I believe this helps me immensely in remembering and using the lessons I learn in class.

So thank you Lalia, and I'm happy to continue my German learning journey with you.