Can you actually fix rusty Spanish with an online tutor in a month and a half? The couple behind travel blog Hopscotch the Globe decided to find out. Kristen and her partner, long-time Spanish speakers who have now built a house in Costa Rica, spent five weeks taking lessons on Preply and then filmed themselves using the language in real-life situations around their adopted hometown.
Their starting point wasn't zero. Both took high school Spanish, lived in Paraguay for a semester as teenagers, and pick up plenty through daily life in Costa Rica. But like many travellers and expats, they could mash words together without getting the grammar right — so they wanted structured correction without the classroom feel.
Their pick was Preply, a platform with more than 90 languages and over 100,000 tutors. The setup process is straightforward: you take a placement test, filter tutors by country, specialty and price, watch intro videos, read reviews, and book directly from a tutor's calendar. Choosing local instructors was a deliberate move — Costa Rican Spanish has its own slang ("mae" is the quintessential Tico word for "buddy") that you won't pick up from a generic textbook.
Pricing varies widely because tutors set their own rates. His tutor, Marcelo, charged $15 an hour; Kristen's tutor, Evy, cost $33. The lessons themselves sound more like friendly video chats than classes — conversations about work, family and favourite Costa Rican spots, with real-time corrections when tenses or gendered nouns go wrong. Between sessions, AI tools fill the gap: Lesson Insights recaps your mistakes, Daily Exercises offer quick practice, and Scenario Prep lets you rehearse situations before they happen.
The real-world test came when they ran errands speaking only Spanish: a car mechanic visit, a hardware store run, and a community garden exchange of homegrown produce. Their verdict after five weeks? Noticeable improvement in grammar awareness and sentence structure — not fluency, but a solid step up.
A few honest caveats worth knowing. Preply isn't free, and the lack of streaks and gamified badges means motivation is on you. Consistency matters more than intensity, so budget for several sessions a month rather than one-off lessons. And since everything happens over video chat, travellers need decent WiFi and a quiet spot — worth factoring in if you're learning on the road.
Who is this useful for? Anyone heading somewhere long-term — snowbirds, digital nomads, or slow travellers — who wants more than phrasebook Spanish. The expat angle is the key insight here: matching your tutor to the country you'll actually be living in or visiting pays off in local vocabulary and cultural context you simply can't get from an app. With trial lessons available and a 50% discount on the first session through the bloggers' link, it's a low-risk way to test whether live tutoring suits you before committing.
Note: the original post was published in partnership with Preply, though the authors say the opinions are their own.
Reported by Hopscotch the Globe.
