Learning Languages Together, Apart: How Our Family Uses Preply

4 min read

This isn’t a sponsored post. Preply is a partner I use myself and recommend; the links are my affiliate links, and they save you 70% on your first session.

I speak Spanish well. I speak Korean proficiently, and I’m still working on it. So when I say a language is the one subject I don’t teach at our house, it isn’t because I can’t hold a conversation in one. It’s because someone can teach it better than I can, and I’d rather my children learn from that person.

Here’s the honest version of how that happened.

My own tutor came first

Mandy on a leather couch working on her laptop

For a while now I’ve been working toward something specific: a bilingual home. That had to start with me. I use Preply myself, two lessons a week with a tutor who speaks Korean natively and corrects the things my family is too polite to. Proficient is not the same as fluent, and those two hours are where I keep growing instead of coasting.

My children were already on Preply before I was, for other subjects: the things someone else teaches better than I can, one-on-one, at each child’s level. Once my own lessons had been this much of a success, the next step was obvious. If this home is going to be bilingual, the children have to catch up, and this year their language lessons start too.

Real language, where each child actually is

That’s what a one-on-one tutor does that no app or workbook can. A four-year-old will get songs, games, and the words for the things in his hand. A thirteen-year-old gets conversation about the things she actually cares about. A fifteen-year-old gets the grammar she can put on a transcript and a person she can argue with. Same language, three different lessons, each one meeting the child exactly where they are, which is what their tutors already do for them in everything else.

The part I love most is this: we are all learning apart, and then we come back together. Dinner is where it shows up. Somebody tries a sentence. Somebody corrects it. Somebody laughs. A bilingual home isn’t built in a lesson. It’s built at the table, and the lessons are what give each of us something to bring to it.

We learn apart, and come back together.

Goal: a bilingual home starts with Preply — Mom takes Korean twice a week; the kids learn language at their pace; the table is where it comes together

How Preply works

Preply is one-on-one online lessons with a live tutor, over video, at a time you choose. It began with languages and languages are still its heart: Korean, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Japanese, English for learners, and dozens more. It now covers more than a hundred subjects, math included.

You choose the tutor, not the algorithm. Every tutor has a profile: a short intro video, their background, the ages they teach, their price, and reviews from other families. You can filter for tutors who teach children and teens, and for native speakers. For every tutor my children have, I let them watch the videos and pick. They chose people I wouldn’t have, and they were right, because they wanted to show up for them.

The schedule is yours. Lessons book against the tutor’s calendar, so a homeschool family can put Korean at ten on a weekday morning when the rest of the world is in school, and move it the week you’re traveling.

If the fit is wrong, you try someone else. Preply’s guarantee is that if the first lesson isn’t a good fit, you can try another tutor for free. That mattered to me. The wrong tutor is worse than none; a child who is nervous about speaking needs someone who makes it safe.

It’s conversation, not a screen. This is the difference from every language app we tried. An app rewards tapping. A tutor asks what you did this weekend, and waits.

How to start

Go to Preply through my link; it saves you 70% on your first session, and that first session is the whole test. Does your child talk more at the end of it than at the start? Pick the tutor together. Book the same time every week. Then leave the room.

How Preply works at our house: pick the tutor together; make the schedule work for you; the first lesson is the test; practice between lessons; growth at the table; stay a student yourself

A few things I’d tell a friend

Let the child pick the tutor from the intro videos. It matters more than the price.
Start with the language your family actually speaks, or wants to. A child who hears it at dinner will do the practice.
Book the lesson at the same time every week. Routine is the whole secret.
Get your own tutor. Your children will take it seriously the day they see you doing your homework.

Ready to try it? Save 70% on your first Preply session with my link, then come tell us in the Homebuilt Community what your family is learning. Mine is at the table, arguing about verb endings.

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