Review: Babbel helps users learn local languages for business travel and beyond

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Planning for business travel is a lot more involved than booking flights and packing your laptop — you also need to prepare yourself for optimal communication with partners, colleagues and locals. Recently, I was in Florida and was surprised by how many people spoke Spanish. Now, I know that figure is nearly a quarter of their population.

With an upcoming trip to Quebec on my calendar, and knowing that almost everyone there knows at least a little French, I decided to take the time to study some of the language beforehand. I tested out Babbel and this was my experience.

What: Sale on Babbel When: Now until Oct. 27 Price: $249 (down from $829) Where to buy: Babbel Language Learning: Lifetime Subscription

The reason I decided on a Babbel in the first place was that I’d heard so much about this particular app online and through friends. Trying to find free language resources wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, and I didn’t want to commit to expensive, in-person courses.

Babbel also made it easy to set up realistic goals. Becoming fluent in French before my upcoming trip didn’t feel like a realistic goal. Now that I have a lifetime subscription, I may want to learn other languages in the future or brush up on my French. I selected my reason for learning, my desired proficiency and my target deadline, then the app set a weekly goal for me.

In just the first course, I’ve already learned how to greet people and say goodbye, introduce myself, share where I’m from and which languages I speak, order at restaurants and ask how much something costs, talk about my profession and say my age and ask for contact details.

Babbel does a great job in explaining the informal and formal differences between different pronouns and terms. For instance, I already know that I should address clients and those I don’t know with “Bonjour!” and my familiar colleagues with “Salut!”

Each lesson also prompts me to practice my pronunciation, usually after seeing and hearing a new term. This remedies a common concern with learning a language through an app — Babbel calls it speech-recognition technology.

While the software will let you know if you completely mispronounce a word, it’s not foolproof. One of my favourite features is that it motivates you to actually say the words out loud because that’s what you’ll be doing in the real world.

There is also an entire course titled “Listening and Speaking” where you can sharpen more of those conversational skills. After taking a few lessons, these tend to focus on vowels and consonants.

A big concern I had, with my Quebec trip still being quite a few months out, is that I would forget a lot of what I learned if I started now. But that’s no real reason to put aside language-learning goals and the app had a way of accounting for this.

Babbel keeps track of each new term you learn and how many times it’s been reviewed, ensuring that you only see it as often as you need. You even get to choose the review method between flashcards, writing, listening, speaking, or playing a mini-game.

The review sessions have their strengths and weaknesses. A huge advantage is that their system seems to work, though a disadvantage is that if you take a break from the platform, it doesn’t seem to factor that in and you may get some difficult prompts in the mix.

While I chose to study French, Babbel has 13 other languages to choose from and you can easily switch between them at any time. Whether you’re u sing it for business or pleasure travel, or simply to pick up a new and marketable skill, learning a new language is a fun and rewarding experience.

I recommend Babbel for anyone looking to learn a new language for travel. A lifetime subscription is currently on sale for $189 (down from $808) until Sept. 3.

What: Sale on Babbel When: Now until Oct. 27 Price: $249 (down from $829) Where to buy: Babbel Language Learning: Lifetime Subscription

Prices subject to change.