Exciting Update to BaseLang’s Curriculum

We’re constantly working on improving how we teach Spanish here at BaseLang. It’s one of the reasons we don’t do any other languages – we are 100% focused at being the best for Spanish.

So we listen to your feedback, and constantly test out new innovative methods ourselves (most of these other methods aren’t any better than what we are currently doing, so they get scrapped).

This update is a combination of both.

There are no new lessons in this update. We’ve just changed how we handle some of those lessons.

And, this is now live, so if you’re reading this, these changes are in place already :)

Updates Based On Your Feedback

First, if you’re a student with us, we LOVE feedback on how to improve. It’s our lifeblood. Email us.

No (or Less) Grammar Speak

Many of the explanations used grammar terms and techinical names for tenses. Which requires you to even know what the heck those are in English first, let alone in Spanish.

So, where possible, we’ve removed the grammar speak and tried to just explain the English equivalent, which is much easier to wrap your head around.

English Explanations For First Levels

Up until now, all lessons have been completely in Spanish, including the text explaining how something works and labels in the slides.

Even for Level 0, when you don’t know anything!

We decided that until you are comfortable with Spanish, it’s best to have you focused on the lesson content, not figuring out the Spanish explanations.

So, levels 0-6 now have non-lesson-specific content in English. The three advanced levels, 7-9, will remain in Spanish.

Vocab Has Been Double-Checked

We had some issues where we accidentally included vocab in a lesson that you hadn’t already seen.

Obviously, that’s no bueno.

So, we quadruple checked everything, and now you not only won’t see vocab you haven’t seen before, but we’ve generally prioritized the most recent vocab you’ve seen, so that you get practice using it.

That way, grammar lessons not only give you a building block of Spanish, they help you practice the vocab you recently learned.

No More Creating Sentences Out of Thin Air From Images

In the first lesson for each grammar concept (not the “practice” lessons), we formerly had images and had you come up with a sentence using that lesson’s grammar relevant to the image.

This caused the issue of you using your brain power to come up with a sentence, instead of just using that brain power for using the Spanish. And oftentimes, you’d get caught there and not know what to say.

This was frustrating, and made it so you got in less repetitions with the grammar you’d just learned.

So, now the images have example sentences below them, and for the practice, we’ve brought in something completely new…

The Matrix (Or, “Mix and Match”)

Adrian and I (Connor), the founders of BaseLang, are constantly testing out new methods to see if they should be added to how we do things.

One such method was so promising that we decided to really put it through the wringer by learning a whole new language with it. So, we flew down to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the challenge of learning Portuguese in a single week using this new method, introduced to use by Tony Marsh.

It worked, and the documentary about our experience is now live:

However, after some reflection, we realized that there were only two real things that were truly different and/or better from what we were currently doing.

Said another way, there was a lot in the method that we didn’t feel was necessary.

So we took the two things that were better, and have now included them in BaseLang.

“Mix and Match”

Or, as it’s called in the documentary, the “Matrix”.

The film describes it best, so jump to 7:08 in the video to watch it:

In BaseLang, this is being used after the images for a fast way to practice making sentences. We leave some parts un-conjugated where relevant to the lesson, so you have to do that.

This way, you can get in a bunch of repetitions using the new grammar in real sentences, without having to come up with things off the top of your head.

So, Is BaseLang Going to Teach Portuguese Too, Now?

No.

Portuguese was merely the language we chose to test out this methodology. In the future, we may learn more languages to test out other methods/tweaks as well.

But BaseLang has zero plans of expanding to other languages. We are, like I said at the beginning of this post, 100% focused on Spanish.

Sorry!

Now, if you’re reading this and want to learn Spanish and still aren’t a BaseLang student, signup here.