Fluent City

I loved my French 1 class with Fluent City! Sam is an awesome teacher– I always thought I was bad at learning languages, but he proved me wrong. I also happened to be in a class with a really great group of people, and many of us are moving on to French 2 together. Cannot recommend Fluent City enough– if you want to be able to converse in another language quickly, it’s a great program!

I wholeheartedly love Fluent City for so many reasons! My teacher (Carlos) leads with passion and energy, keeping the class engaged and fun. The customer service of the FC staff is kind, helpful, and genuine, making my signup and one-​off requests a super positive experience. Finally, I’m getting out of it exactly what I wanted: the ability to speak a new language. I’ve already recommended FC to many friends, and will continue to spread the word! :)

Took Arabic at Fluent City. Selling the textbook if anyone’s interested!

I had a blast taking French 1 with Fluent City this fall. My instructor was Sam, and he was a delight. He was such a great person and an even greater instructor. He did a great job with what was one of the larger classes — getting everyone involved and keeping everyone’s attention. It was so great that I am enrolled in French 2 and have just purchased a gift card for French 3.
The times and locations can’t be beat, especially for someone like me who works in Midtown and lives in Hoboken/​Weehawken.

Fluent City is great! I’m so glad I decided to take my first French class ever with them. They put a strong focus on speaking and pronunciation, which are key when learning a new language. I was lucky to have Sam Maher as my teacher. He is wonderful! He gives each student individual attention during class and is very patient, kind, and encouraging. I am excited to start French 2!

I just completed my French Level 2 class with Sam Maher! I attended F. C’s french workshop and from there I knew I had chosen the right school to continue practicing and learning French. The class was taught in French and although that sounds frightening it was actually really beneficial. Sam is a fabulous professor and is really passionate about the language and teaching it! I am so pleased with the class and the way that it was taught and will be signing up for French 3 soon!
Highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a new language or continue learning!

I recently concluded taking French 2 at Fluent City, taught by the very cool Sam Maher. If Sam is representative of the other teachers at Fluent City (I’ll soon find out, as I wasted no time signing up for French 3 which begins tomorrow!), you would be foolish not to sign up with F.C. over their competitors.
The class is in the popular immersion style; though Sam will of course take pity and speak a little English every now and again, when the entire class seems just lost, still virtually 90% of the class is conducted fully in French. This can be a daunting prospect, and I had my doubts going in, but Sam is a terrific teacher; his style is alternately chill and challenging — when you’re in panic mode (you will be from time to time, trust me), he very calmly talks you down, and assures you that you’re doing just fine. He does not do this, however, at the expense of moving the class forward; you leave every class knowing far more than you did the previous. You need to bring a genuine commitment and desire to learn to the class; do that, and Sam will help you from there!

I’m in my second French class with FluentCity, and I’m so excited about everything that I’ve learned, and the people I’ve met! My teachers have been great (especially Thibault), and it’s been such a rewarding feeling to learning a little more French every week and follow-​through on my New Year resolutions. Convenient locations and times are helpful, too.

Thank you Camille! You can tell the difference between a native french speaker and a learned speaker. She was the real deal! I love the fact she would write as she spoke, and ask us about her day. It’s the small things that counted. Now, I have a non native french speaker I think about Camille.
Merci Camille! J’apprend francaise ici plus que ma université maintenant. Je vais France année prochaine pour visiter ma famille.
Bonne Santé!
Noushky

I just completed my Russian 2 class with the brilliant Ivan Savvine. if you don’t know already, Russian is a HUGE challenge for nonnative speakers. This is my fourth language, this is by far THE hardest. Ivan made the enormous complexities of Russian grammar understandable by breaking them down into smaller manageable chunks. He has a thorough understanding of the language which is evident in the way he teaches and handles with ease the often confusing aspects (confusing even to native speakers) of Russian grammar. Interestingly enough, though he is from Russia he has a better grasp of English than people born here!
Before this course I understood very little of what I was reading in Russian. By the end I my reading and writing had improved tremendously. (Thanks Ivan) and Fluent City! !

I’ve been super happy with taking Spanish 2 and 4 here. Fluent City was actually my plan B after Instituto Cervantes, but the class I signed up for there got cancelled due to lack of enrollment. I took Spanish 2 here thinking I’d try again for the other school afterwards, but Fluent City won me over and I’m already signed up for my third class.
I wanted classes that would have as much conversation as possible. My only disappointment going in was that I wished classes were 3 hours long instead of 2, but they do a great job with the 2 hours we have. It’s got as much conversation as I think they can reasonably fit in, having to also balance it with grammar and culture.
You don’t know who your teacher will be before you sign up, but I will say that I had Victor for Spanish 2 and Janeth for Spanish 4, and they are both awesome teachers. Victor is really funny and he brought a fun cultural edge to the lessons that made me feel like we’re getting a much more authentic take on the language than we could get from any book. Janeth is a super strong teacher and I like that she puts a lot of extra work into giving us as many extra opportunities for learning as she can. She offers a lot of optional homework and she will read any writing practice you do over the week, which I wish I had more time to take advantage of.
As far as the administration, I’ve had to ask them two questions and got helpful email responses within 24 hours. They seem to really care about making it a good experience for people.
Also you can’t make up missed classes for free, but they set up an email chain for each class, so you can get that info from your teacher or fellow students. When I’ve had to miss a class, I felt like I had the opportunity to keep up on my own.
Fluent City is solid and everyone I’ve interacted with there seem to really care. I would definitely recommend it.

The pros are the classes are fairly cheap compared to other academic language classes in the city, the locations are convenient and close to the subway, and apparently if you get a good teacher your experience will be amazing.
However this was not my experience. I ended up with a teach that clear was not a teacher. He was a native that just spoke the language. Therefore we would ask questions and he would not know the answers. There was almost no speaking, nothing was prepared for class ahead of time. It was a simple read from the book and do exercises in the book during class. There was nothing to enrich us about the language, no cultural discussion, no handouts or games or anything. This sounds silly but I attended the Middleburry Immersion Program and these are the things that make you fall in love with a language and keep you interested. My class addressed our concerns to the people in charge and we had a person sit in on one class but nothing changed and the class remained dull and not helpful.
I don’t even have any advice because they will not tell you who teaches the class ahead of time so your basically crossing your fingers so you get one of the good teachers and not a dud.

I’m going back for my second set of classes. The real only downfall is having to purchase a book that we barely used. Although, I much rather preferred the handouts our teacher gave.
Our teacher encouraged conversation and gave adequate homework to help advance our language skills.

I said it before but I think Unilocal took it away– Fluent City is awesome!
I took both Arabic and Spanish there and I found all the classes entertaining, practical and engaging. Their beginners classes give both useful basics but also a solid grounding in the grammar rules that means I can keep studying without them (I’m coming back though).
Two for two I’ve had fantastic instructors too!

I took the Mandarin 10 week beginner course a few months ago and although I wasn’t able to finish because of some unexpected events, I really loved the classes.
The course was very fast paced so be prepared to take it when you have enough time in your life to do homework but if you truly want to learn the language, you will love it. I was amazed at how much I learned during just a few weeks and was thrilled to actually understand a few sentences in a Chinese documentary I watched. The teacher (Annie) was knowledgable, patient and fun. Highly recommended!

I don’t have the discipline to learn a language on my own. I tried Rosetta Stone for a while, and I just couldn’t make myself do it. So when I decided that it was time I learned a language properly (after having started and stopped learning French, Japanese, German, and Korean), I started looking for language schools that taught French.
Alliance Française was the first place I looked, naturally, because it’s a big name. It’s pricey though, and it seems that the quality really depends on who your teacher is. Even though they do classes twice a week (which is preferable to me over FC’s current model of one class a week), it seemed like too much of a gamble.
A Groupon for Fluent City helped me make a decision between a few other language schools, and I’m glad I started here. Fluent City isn’t perfect, but I like it enough to keep giving them my money, so take that for what it’s worth. Others have complained about their refund policy, but it’s quite clear that once you are within seven days, they have put in enough effort to set up the class that it would be a huge inconvenience to everyone enrolled if you dropped out and there suddenly weren’t enough people to hold the class. This happened for the advanced conversation class I had signed up for a few weeks ago. A few people changed courses right before the seven day deadline, and now there aren’t enough people in the class to make it worthwhile, so they pushed it back two weeks. I was a little miffed, but I would be much more miffed if this happened a day or two right before classes started. So I understand this policy.
I heavily vouch for Camille who teaches in Manhattan, and Julien, who I’ve taken workshops with in Williamsburg. They are both excellent teachers, and I would consider myself very lucky if I had either of them as a teacher in my next conversation class. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that FC makes these decisions early, so I never know who my next teacher will be until the class begins.
As far as cost, it’s not cheap, and they have raised the prices $ 10 since the start of 2014. However, they have also done away with that pesky service fee that is a percentage of whatever you’re paying, so I’m okay with it. I hated that service fee.
They often have referral deals, so if you are thinking about trying it, and have a friend who is already taking classes here, talk to your friend and see if there are any referral deals they know of (or you can message me, and I can keep you in the loop)! Once you’re in, they also have deals to get you to sign up for the next class ASAP, so you’ll only have to pay full price for a class some of the time.
My French has improved drastically since I started taking classes at the end of July, and I’m much more comfortable with the subjunctive, which strikes fear in the heart of most French learners. I’m happy here, so long as they don’t keep raising the prices.

I wish that I had found this place sooner! Actually, my boyfriend found it, but either way.
My mom is from Central America but I never learned Spanish growing up. I took Spanish classes in High School, but didn’t take it too seriously (and neither did my Spanish teachers!)
After (many) years of talking about learning Spanish, I finally took it seriously when recently due to so many of my clients speaking the language. We found this and its perfect. I started at level two, but my teacher (Janeth) suggested that I join the level 3 class in Manhattan. It was the right decision, and, because of Janeth’s encouragement and challenging teaching style, not only did I learn a lot, I decided to continue to level 4.
I think that I would have even more skills if I had stuck to practicing more outside of class and honing in on my vocab. But I have done more of that recently and its really paying off. I expect to continue onto Spanish 5 and beyond!

I have taken spanish 2 at fluent city in Manhattan. The class is good it is a little fast pace and the homework is a little more than I have time for. For the most part I am getting my monies worth. I am more of a visual learner so I wish the teacher used the board more to write things down and explain. The 2 hours goes by fast.
Based on the class description it seemed that I was on Level 2 but often times in class I feel lost so I am not sure if I picked the right level or if its the teacher.
I do a lot of business in a spanish speaking country and visit there, so it seemed that spanish 2 was the right choice, but I do struggle a little bit in the class.

I took German 3 with Chris (Feb-​May 2013) and have mixed feelings. (I should preface this with the fact that I took German 1 and 2 at Kings College in London in adult evening courses and the classes were phenomenal).
Pros: Chris is a good teacher, very patient and despite being a non-​native speaker, he knows his «local» language and phrases well. He is also continually teaching about the German culture which is a nice added touch. He is also great about sending you the class material if you miss a session.
Cons: there is no syllabus or real structure to the classes. I like to know what I’m going to learn so I can prepare and potentially dig up any old notes I may already have on the topic. Additionally, In 13 weeks (we had thirteen 1.5 hour classes instead of ten 2 hour classes b/​c of scheduling conflict), we learned (or reviewed) 10+ pieces of grammar but rarely did any new voculabary. Also, we never had a day to just review (i.e. the sixth or seventh session in) what we had done to date. Lastly, there were times when we were speaking English in order to explain easier some of the topics — for German 3, I would expect zero English to be spoken.
My final complaint is more of a personal one (others may have enjoyed this) — the last part of every class was reserved for reading articles from German newspapers. Maybe it was meant to give us exposure to the written language or to the culture or to current events but to be honest, I found it to be a colossal waste of time for a class at our level. Journalistic German is different than conversational German (for example, they use the preteritum instead of the perfect tense) and much of the vocabulary is specific to the topic of the article or media-​related and often quite advanced. I found that I learned almost nothing that last half hour of every class and would have prefered to use that time for other activities such as speech practice, interactive group work, or vocubulary.
At the beginning, I thought Chris taught well and we were all at the same level. As the semester progressed, I felt that we were getting ahead of ourselves (I checked other courses and some of the stuff we learned was in German 4 or 5 at other companies) and I started to lose the motivation to come to class. I spoke to two other students (there were only five of us) who felt the same way and also expressed my concerns to the adminstrators via a teacher survey midway through the course.
Overall, I’m sure Fluent City may work for others but it didn’t work for me. I will not be using FC again but rather will be trying Cactus or Rennert instead.

I’ve been taking Portuguese classes at Fluent City (used to be called Fluent Brooklyn) since January. I tried out the Portuguese 1 Class thanks to a livingsocial deal, I figured I didn’t have much to lose — but it turned out to be a great language school.
The facility is really cute, although some of the classrooms are a little sparse. They’re new and still adding touches to give it a homey feel. Every week, a class is held in another room as they rotate between the different class rooms. There is only one classroom that is really small — but I’ve only had to be in it once and who cares really. You’re there to learn a language and have fun, which is exactly what Fluent City is all about. Overall, the facility is clean and offers everything you need to learn in a nurturing environment.
My teacher, Erica, is awesome! She learned Portuguese as an adult, so she understands how difficult/​frustrating it is trying to learn something as complex as a whole other language. There are only a few students in my class, so its a very intimate classroom experience. Everyone here, both students and staff, is super nice and extremely patient.
I liked Fluent City so much that I signed up and started taking the Portuguese 2 class. It’s hard to find time to do homework and practice, but Erica is always patient and goes through the activities as a good pace to ensure we cover what we need to understand the material. I’m certainly not fluent or even close to it, but at least I’m trying and having fun while exploring a new language.
If you’re looking to learn a new language, I would definitely check out Fluent City! Hopefully before the end of the year I’ll be chatting away in Portuguese, Puxa!