Student Success Story – Ricky

I’m Australian and I love Latin dancing, like salsa and cha cha cha. Three years ago I got invited to spend five weeks with a dance team in Colombia.

So when I received the invitation to go to Colombia, I merrily booked my flights and my accommodations. 

And then thought, what language do they speak in Colombia? Oh, no! They only speak Spanish! And I was leaving in two months.

So I found a Spanish teacher here in Cairns and I did two lessons a week for two months before my trip. I was very  motivated, playing Spanish music on my phone and talking to my teacher in Spanish.

Because when I got off that plane in Colombia, I had to be able to communicate in Spanish!

That got me the essentials so I could get around, order food and make myself understood.

But it was very basic. I could only express the present tense and simple past and simple future tenses.

There are nine tenses in Spanish and I only knew three. So there was no nuance or sophistication to my communication.

And as there’s no one to speak Spanish with here in Cairns, my Spanish has really deteriorated since I left Colombia three years ago.

These days with Covid, I haven’t been traveling, so I’m working from home a lot and taking the opportunity to improve my Spanish.

I want to go back to Colombia, and maybe spend time in Spain, so I want to really improve my understanding of Spanish grammar and my conversational skills. 

And I think learning a language is good for your brain.

So I started taking unlimited Spanish lessons with LingoToGo. 

I’ve been taking five lessons a week, and that has really improved my Spanish. 

I’ve learned about the other tenses in Spanish, so I can express a lot more of what I want to say. And speaking with your teachers almost on a daily basis has really improved my fluency.

I’m enjoying the process of learning with LingoToGo.

I like that it’s remote. I’m sitting at home on my computer, and I’m face-to-face with my teacher. I don’t have to travel for lessons.

The apps are all well and good, but there’s no substitute for face-to-face conversations. For example, a lot of the apps have you say phrases, and it’s using some AI in the phone to try to detect whether you’re saying it right or wrong. But it doesn’t tell you what you’re saying right or wrong. Whereas with a real teacher, you can correct my pronunciation, which is obviously very important.

One of the good things is that we keep lesson notes in Google Docs. I’m up to 27 pages now. When I look back at the notes, they tell me the story of all of the lessons. It’s my story of learning Spanish. That’s been much more useful than reading from a textbook.

We have a lot of fun in the lessons. Nothing is too serious in the lessons. 

We are going forward and learning things, but there’s no train crash if I get something wrong. There’s no tears.

We do our lessons for 50 minutes, and at the end, I’m happy and cheerful. 

My advice to anyone considering LingoToGo is to definitely try it out. 

I’ve looked at lots of different options for learning Spanish and LingoToGo is a very high quality service and very cost effective.

Ricky, Computer Company Owner, Salsa Dancer, LingoToGo Student

Check out our series of Complete Spanish Grammar articles – everything you’ll ever need to know about Spanish grammar.

Or, learn more about LingoToGo here.

(One Week Free only available to students in the Americas and Europe. If you’re outside these regions, check out our offers here.)