Our Review of Busuu
Busuu offers a substantial amount of learning material across 13 different study languages, with lessons that are engaging and easy to complete. There are notable errors, though. An integrated community of language learners around the globe offers a great way to connect with a global perspective. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced learner, Busuu has a course for you.
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Ease of Use10
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Content Quality6
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Flexibility7
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Engagement and Motivation10
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Price6
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Value for Cost8
Busuu is a language learning platform that teaches you vocabulary and grammar through short, bite-sized lessons that take between 5-15 minutes to complete.
The lesson content includes native-speaker audio, high-quality images and a spaced-repetition review tool to help you better retain what you’ve learned.
Table of Contents
- What is Busuu?
- What languages can you study on Busuu?
- Our experience using Busuu
- Language placement tests
- Complete courses on Busuu
- Errors in Lesson content
- Busuu’s Travel phrases course
- Reviewing vocabulary on Busuu
- Business courses (and McGraw Hill certificate)
- The bottom line – can you learn a language with Busuu?
What is Busuu?
Lessons on Busuu begin by introducing you to a handful of new vocabulary words and helping you practice them through speaking, listening, reading and writing activities. At the end of each Lesson you’ll usually see a conversational dialogue or a speaking/writing prompt you can have graded by another user.
Busuu has an active community engagement feature that allows you to connect with native speakers of your target language to give and receive feedback.
Busuu offers different curriculum paths depending on your language learning goals.
- Travel courses are designed for users who want to learn a few phrases but not necessarily aim for total proficiency. Lessons focus on everyday situations and have less of an emphasis on grammar.
- Complete courses are for users who want to become “fluent” in their target language. Lessons are more broad and include more in-depth explanations of the language’s grammar.
Busuu has several other useful courses for commonly studied languages (such as Spanish or French), for example:
- News courses that offer lessons based on articles and videos (English, Spanish).
- Business courses with the opportunity to earn a McGraw-Hill Education certificate (English, French, Dutch).
- Pronunciation courses (English, French, Dutch, Italian).
How much does Busuu cost?
Busuu costs $13.95 for a single-month subscription. They offer steep discounts for longer subscriptions, such as:
- 6 months for $55.70 ($8.45/month)
- 12 months for $83.40 ($6.95)
Busuu frequently runs discounts for their 6-month and 12-month subscriptions. We were able to get a 12-month subscription for 50% off ($39.99) during their winter sale, which is a great deal considering how much learning material is included in Busuu’s unlimited plan.
If you’re not sure what plan to choose, you can try all of Busuu’s language courses for free with their 7-day trial.
What languages can you study on Busuu?
At the time of writing this article, Busuu offers 13 study languages for English speakers:
- Arabic (Modern Standard)
- French
- Turkish
- Dutch
- Spanish (Spain)
- Russian
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- German
- Japanese
- Italian
- Chinese (Mandarin)
- Polish
- Korean
The amount of learning material available for each language varies. Usually the more commonly-studied languages like Spanish or German have the most amount of course material.
For example, Busuu has the following learning paths available for Spanish learners:
- Complete Spanish
- Spanish for Travel
- Learn Spanish with El País
- All about Spanish (podcast)
Meanwhile, only two learning paths are available for Mandarin Chinese:
- Complete Chinese
- Chinese for Travel
Our experience using Busuu
We tried out the “Turkish for Travel” course to learn some basic Turkish phrases as well as the “Complete Russian” and “Complete French.” We found Busuu to be overall a well-developed program with high-quality lesson content. The short and engaging lessons made for an enjoyable learning experience and the interface is simple and easy to navigate.
Busuu is a solid resource both for beginners looking to explore a new language for the first time as well as advanced learners seeking to expand their vocabulary.
Language placement tests
Starting at an intermediate or advanced level? Good news – Busuu has a placement test you can use to find the right starting point, but you aren’t bound by the results.
When you first begin studying a language on Busuu, you’ll be asked if you’re an absolute beginner or if you have previous experience learning your target language. If you’ve studied your target language previously, Busuu will ask you to take a short placement test to determine your proficiency level.
We completed the placement test for French. It took about 10 minutes and our proficiency was determined to be about B1 (on the CEFR scale), or Upper Intermediate.
Complete courses on Busuu
Busuu’s Complete French course has tons of lesson material. The Upper Intermediate B2 course alone has six chapters with a total of 44 Lessons spread between them. Lessons take roughly 10 minutes to complete and you can start wherever you want (unlike on Duolingo where you’re limited to your current proficiency level).
Each Lesson covers a specific topic and we noted plenty of cool and useful topics, such as:
- Describing your relationship with languages: Learn vocabulary to describe your relationship with a language
- Reading about a famous murder: Discover one of the most famous cold cases in France
Reporting gossip or rumors: Talk about gossip using reported speech in the past
The type of activities you’ll encounter varies from one Lesson to the next. There are writing exercises, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and sometimes exercises where you work through a conversational dialogue. The screenshot below features a conversation between two people scheduling a meeting:
Each Lesson introduces you to a handful of new vocabulary words, then helps you memorize them through a variety of study activities. For example, the “Reporting gossip or rumors” lesson begins with a mini-interview where we listen to a French woman talk about some celebrity gossip (un potin) she read in a tabloid (la presse people). Busuu then helps you memorize the key vocabulary words through various study activities and drills.
We really liked that at the intermediate level, most of the tips and cultural notes were written entirely in French. This cultural note talks about reality TV in France and lists some of the shows that are popular these days:
Busuu’s vibrant language learning community
At the end of each Lesson you’ll be asked to complete an exercise to be graded by a native-speaker user. You’ll be given a choice of writing or speaking your response; we like to speak our responses.
We can speak or write our response, then a native speaker will grade it for accuracy.
We had to record our prompt response a few times, but we were pleased to find that Busuu lets us listen to and re-record until we’re satisfied with our response.
Within about 45 minutes of submitting our answer, a French-speaking user commented on our exercise to let us know we had completed it perfectly.
The platform will also encourage you to grade other learners’ exercises. We spent about 15 minutes providing feedback for users learning English and got some responses and friend requests from other users.
We enjoyed having the opportunity to write a few sentences and get immediate feedback from other users, which is something we haven’t seen in any other language app. It creates a sense of community by making us feel like we’re part of a larger, international group of language learners.
Busuu regularly encourages users to complete community-engagement activities at the end of Lessons. To access even more activities, navigate to the “Community” tab and select “Conversation.” You can choose a topic and either speak or write about it.
Errors in Lesson content
We really enjoyed using Busuu but will note that we found a number of errors in the course content.
For example, we encountered three errors within just two lessons of the French course: two misspellings and a bug, highlighted below along with screenshots:
- “Pourions-nous” should be “Pourrions-nous”
- “Elle seront” should be “Elles seront”
- We’re not sure what happened in the third picture but we weren’t able to click anything. This bug prevented us from completing a Lesson, meaning we lost all of our progress.
We found a handful of errors in Busuu’s French course.
We also found a mistranslation in the Turkish for Travel course, where a British term “bank holiday” (meaning “public holiday”) was translated literally into Turkish as “banka tatili (banking holiday).” The term “banka tatili” is not used in Turkish and therefore incorrect.
Overall we would recommend Busuu for many kinds of language learners, but keep in mind you might find errors or incorrect translations throughout the lesson content.
Busuu’s Travel phrases course
We decided to try out Busuu’s “Turkish for Travel” course in preparation for an imaginary trip to Istanbul. From the main page, you can see that the course is relatively short – just 9 lessons – which looks like the perfect crash course before a trip overseas. If we decide we want to continue learning more afterwards we’ll be directed to the “Complete Turkish” course.
We started out with “Lesson 1: Travel Essentials,” which has three activities:
- Vocabulary: Use flashcards to learn new words.
- Memorize: Repeat and recall what we just learned.
- Dialogue: Learn how to put our new vocab into context.
We really liked Busuu’s lesson previews, which offer a glimpse into what we’ll be covering in the lesson. We were happy to see that the first lesson included phrases like, “I don’t understand,” and, “Do you speak English?” Many language learning apps jump right into vocabulary and grammar, neglecting important beginner phrases. If you learn nothing else in your target language, you should at least know how to say “I don’t understand!”… and perhaps also “Where is the restroom?”
As we worked through the lesson we noted that the interface overall feels crisp and clean. The photos are clear and unobtrusive and the audio sounds authentic – not incredibly fast and also not agonizingly slow.
One thing we did find a bit confusing, however, is that sometimes Busuu provides two translations for a given phrase. For example, “I’m sorry” can apparently be said in two ways: “Üzgünüm” or “Özür dilerim.” There wasn’t any clarification as to why two forms were given so we weren’t quite sure which one to use.
As complete beginners in Turkish we felt it would be easier if we just focused on one form (whichever is most appropriate for a tourist to use).
The Lesson content feels too advanced for beginners
After introducing us to a handful of phrases, Busuu had us work through a variety of practice activities to help us memorize the course material. We appreciated the immediate reinforcement, however the material quickly became too advanced.
For example, one activity asked us to “put the words in order” for a phrase we had never seen before. We ran the phrase through Google Translate and learned that it means, “I know very little Portuguese.”
We weren’t sure why this phrase appeared in our Turkish course but it kept popping up throughout the lesson. We found it a bit annoying since there wasn’t any audio to help us pronounce this phrase, nor was there a way to “hide” or “block” it. This phrase felt way too complicated for the first lesson and stood out as a distraction since we had to click through it (and get it wrong) several times before being allowed to continue to the next section.
The final section of the lesson focused on a conversation between two people. We’re supposed to listen to a dialogue and correctly place a handful of phrases based on what we hear. We appreciated the focus on conversation and context, but we felt it was much too advanced for the first lesson. Our only experience with the Turkish language was the last eight minutes we spent working through flashcards, so it felt overwhelming to be launched into an intermediate-level conversation.
Lesson content is somewhat unrealistic
We clicked the “Show translation” button so we could at least get an idea of what we were studying, however the conversation itself appears a bit confusing and unrealistic. It focused on someone asking to buy a city tour ticket and being told that there are no tours because of “the bank holiday.”
We weren’t sure what a bank holiday is and if it’s something specific to Turkey, since no context was provided. When we searched the internet for a definition we learned that it’s a British term that means, “A day on which banks are officially closed, observed as a public holiday.” We messaged a Turkish friend to ask if “banka tatili (bank holiday)” is a common term and he responded, “We don’t say banka tatili in Turkish. I don’t even know what that could mean.”
Additionally, this isn’t a conversation we could picture ourselves ever having while on a trip to Istanbul. We’re much more likely to order a coffee or ask for the bill at a restaurant, so we weren’t quite sure why this particular conversation topic was chosen for the first lesson.
We moved on to the next lesson, “Lesson 2: I’m Here on H inoliday,” but ran into the same problems as in the first lesson. It appears that the rest of the lessons follow the same structure – the content is a bit too advanced and the topics aren’t incredibly realistic. The course will teach you how to ask for directions and recommendations but fails to cover some of the most important basic travel interactions.
Busuu is definitely moving in the right direction by making the distinction between Travel and Complete courses, however we didn’t find the Travel course incredibly useful. We felt the lesson content was largely unrealistic for travel situations and too difficult for absolute beginners. We learned a few useful phrases but felt overall that the course could use a lot of improvement.
Reviewing vocabulary on Busuu
Busuu’s “Review” feature helps learners learn and retain new vocabulary through regular practice and repetition. Every time you complete a Lesson, the newly introduced vocabulary will be added to “Your vocabulary” under the “Review” tab. Busuu uses a spaced-repetition algorithm to help learners review and commit vocabulary to long-term memory, mostly through flashcards as well as various practice exercises. You’ll periodically be reminded to study vocabulary using the Review feature so you don’t forget what you’ve learned in your Lessons.
Busuu’s Review sessions include multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions, as well as occasional writing prompts. It seems the Review feature is much better suited for intermediate and advanced-level learners, however. We tried to use the Review feature for our Turkish travel phrases but found them much too complicated.
For example, it wanted us to type “Do you speak English?” in Turkish. The answer, “İngilizce biliyor musun?” was way too difficult for us to be asked to type. Plus, we don’t know how to type Turkish accent marks!
With Russian, however, we have a stronger grasp of the language already and can therefore practice our new vocabulary more easily.
Business courses (and McGraw Hill certificate)
Busuu has business-focused courses available for French and Dutch. These courses are great for learning professional vocabulary not typically found in other apps, plus each Lesson contains interesting and useful cultural tips. At the end of the course, you have the opportunity to take a test and earn a certificate from McGraw Hill – Definitely a resume booster for anyone interested in working in an international setting.
The lessons cover a variety of topics, such as “Talking about your job,” and “Writing your CV.” We completed a handful of Lessons within Busuu’s “Dutch for Business” course.
One element we found particularly useful was the focus on email etiquette. The Dutch for Business course has four Lessons focusing on writing emails. Email-speak can be a bit tricky for us even in English, so we were excited and pleasantly surprised to see it included in this course.
Busuu’s curriculum is chock full of helpful tips and cultural notes. For example, in the Dutch for Business course we learned quite a bit about the differences between Belgian and Dutch working culture. Apparently, work culture in Belgium is a bit more formal than in the Netherlands, so Belgians might be more inclined to use a formal tone of address when speaking to coworkers or a manager.
We really enjoyed the Business Lessons and hope that Busuu continues expanding them to other languages.
The bottom line – can you learn a language with Busuu?
Is Busuu worth your time and money? Can you really learn a language with Busuu? The short answer is: yes, absolutely!
Busuu offers a substantial amount of learning material across 13 different study languages, with lessons that are engaging and easy to complete. Lessons are short and straightforward, usually taking just 10 minutes to complete. Within each Lesson you’ll be introduced to a handful of new vocabulary words, which you’ll then practice by completing a variety of study activities. Lessons usually culminate in either a conversational dialogue or a writing/speaking prompt.
Busuu has a highly-engaged community of language learners from all over the world who can help you make progress in your target language. Busuu gives you the opportunity to have your speaking and writing exercises corrected by native speakers, usually within an hour or less, so you can incorporate feedback into your language study. It’s a great way to connect with other learners and feel like you’re part of a global community.
Whether you’re an absolute beginner or an advanced learner, Busuu has a course for you. Give it a shot today and see if it’s right for you!
– written by Drew Grubba for Smarter Language. Drew has ACTFL-certified proficiency in Swedish, German, Portuguese, French and Spanish. He’s also studied Mandarin Chinese, Norwegian and Dutch, and is currently learning Russian.
