Fluent City

The pricing policies are deceptive and the company is not client oriented. Overall, they come across as a bit unethical and a bit of a money making hack.
In comparison with other competitors, they charge you a relatively large amount for the inferior service they provide but then provide steep discounts to anyone who tries to negotiate online. They also have a very nontransparent policy on pricing for returning students, unless you ask, which when they drop the price by 50% if you push it – which tells you about their ridiculous margins. So in terms of the principles of conducting ethical business, you are not given any discounts for loyalty but instead for being shrewd – leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
In addition the reimbursement policies are exploitative and and morally reprehensible. As clearly stated in their Terms of Service, «Any fees paid hereunder are non-​refundable.» You can read them at
. How, I ask, is it ok for a service oriented business to say that any fees for services that it has not yet provided will be charged up front and will be non-​refundable?
If they stand behind their their service, they should offer an unconditional satisfaction guarantee provided that the student has done her part by attending the classes.
Further, they should make the service specific to their clientele. Most of their clientele are travelers. But rather than cater to this need by making the programs more flexible, they try to abuse this characteristic of their clientele to generate revenue without providing services.
What they should do instead is to create a set number of deferrals (a client would have only one or two opportunities to push their attendance to a future course and if they do it in the middle of the course then any warranty on service would be void as the intensity of the experience may be a factor that contributes to learning – although I highly doubt that their curriculum is that well thought out).
In addition, like any other decent service business, they should also offer an unconditional reimbursement should the client be dissatisfied.

Great choice. The classes are primarily taught with situation and immersive techniques and the instructor I had was excellent with handling a lot of students with varying ability.

Hola Me Llamo EJ. Me encanta Fluent City!
First of all, I have learned more than just that from Fluent City, but they have really helped me improve my Spanish skills tremendously!
After taking two courses here, I really appreciate how knowledgable and organized the classes are. With less than 12 students per class, the teachers really encourage students to get to know each other and really speak only the language. If you don’t like the class and/​or teacher within the first two classes, you can get a refund or switch to another class! I have tried other language courses in DC, but Fluent City really helped me learn and use my Spanish most proficiently.
It really takes a lot of extra time and effort to be more fluent on the language yourself, but in the city of DC, Fluent City tries their best to make sure that you are Fluent in your City!!! Offering a variety of languages other than Spanish, Fluent City is the way to go especially if you want to use it for employment, take up a new language, or just explore the world!

Fluent City isn’t always the most organized with things like sharing a course syllabus in advance, and the classrooms aren’t pretty. But that doesn’t matter to me because they hire awesome teachers who are genuinely committed to helping you pursue fluency in a foreign language. I’ve been taking Italian for a year and my progress has been fantastic, due in large part to Fluent City. The courses are comparatively inexpensive – which explains why the classrooms are a little run down – but the learning environment is a lot of fun and my skills have been developing quickly. I also appreciate that the people administering the program are pleasant and responsive. There are always going to be tradeoffs with something like this – and almost all of the ways that the programs could be better would likely entail substantially higher costs. The low tuition makes it easy to stick with the language learning through a series of courses, one after the other. Not only am I satisfied with Fluent City, I’ve made friends through my class and I look forward to the evening when I meet with them. This school has been a really pleasant surprise – I highly recommend them! :)

I have had three Spanish teachers at Fluent City that were both excellent! They made the classes interesting and fun and I can honestly say that I learned a lot from all of the classes that I have taken. However, I have had two teachers now that were non-​native Spanish speakers. In these classes, English was spoken frequently and the pace of the classes were very slow and boring. The teachers seemed to just read from the text that we were given. They weren’t bad teachers at all, but I prefer to take Spanish classes from a native Spanish speaker… just a personal preference. As such, I think I will try iTalki or some other language learning platform. With Fluent City, the experience that you will get seems to be luck of the draw; If I were basing my rating solely on the two teachers I had previously, I would have given Fluent City 5 stars hands down.
Also, Fluent City, at times the staff in NYC were non-​responsive. When I have managed to get ahold of them, the staff was friendly and very helpful.
The locations — one near Dupont Circle and the other near Thomas Circle — were also great. Metro accessible, spacious, really, no complaints.

Since writing my first review, I took one more class with the same teacher, and after she left, I took one more Spanish class (Advanced Conversation). The Advanced Conversation class was OK. We found our own articles to read and present to class, read stories, watched a movie, and spent a lot of time on conversation, but there wasn’t any grammar review at that level.
Teachers may or may not prepare very much outside of class. As is the case with any of their competitors, Fluent City doesn’t pay their teachers for any time they spend preparing for class, only actual hours in class. I haven’t confirmed this with them, but I also believe teachers are now required to let Fluent City own any materials they come up with for class, which probably further disincentivizes planning.
All the same, from my experience, I can’t really recommend any other private language class company that offers that variety of languages, especially since Fluent City is probably still the best deal. It might be worth checking out whatever local institution specializes in the particular language you’re trying to learn, depending on what that is. No matter where you take a class, it’s all going to come down to the teacher you get.

I highly recommend Fluent City. I took Spanish II with them and am planning on taking Spanish III in the next couple of months. The teacher is knowledgeable, the class is taught all in Spanish, and the course did not feel like the waste of time that it was in college: I felt like I was actually learning something.
When something came up in my scheduling after signing up for Spanish III (but before their 7 day window), they were great at immediately canceling and refunding my class and the tutoring catch up session I had scheduled. I’ve never had any bad experiences with them.
The things that knock off a star:
It is it hard to go to class in the second half of the sessions. This is largely because no one else shows up, and there’s something kind of depressing about sitting in a room with three other people. I’ve also experienced mixed things with their substitute teachers and I would also incorporate more games or dedicated periods of time for just practice and review. There’s not a lot of review in these classes — it’s just full speed ahead. And sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s sunk in at all before you have to move onto the next thing.

I’m taking a French I class with Fluent City and am very happy so far. This class is exactly what I have been looking for! Other classes I“ve tried just want to talk to you in French the whole time. I realize immersion is good, but I need you to give me some fundamentals such as how are things pronnounced, some grammar etc. Fluent City is doing exactly that. I really like the teacher she is very approachable and set the stage well saying we won’t be fluent, but may be able to speak like a kid and that’s awesome. The location is convenient in Thomas Circle (there’s also a Dupont location). It’s afforadable as far as these things go $ 300 and they give you handouts so you don’t have to buy books which is great.
The one downside I will say is the Fluent City woman running the site was REALLY rude. The class is held in a huge church and there were no directions in the email which door to go in which would have been helpful. I called the office in NYC which had no idea, but game me the cell of the woman in charge of the site. She responded «you should come in the way everyone else did.» HELLO… if I knew where that was I would have come in already. So rude. This also happened to one of my classmates so at least I know it’s not me…

I’m half way through my first Fluent City class and I have only good things to say about it! My Spanish teacher, Kasey, always has a fun and engaging activity for us to do each week. For example, we played Simon Says in Spanish to test how well we know las partes del cuerpo yesterday. So much fun!
I highly recommend Fluent City for anyone who wants to learn a new language or is looking to brush up on one.

I found fluent city on Groupon for half-​off your first language class. I’ve been pleased so far with my Spanish class.
My teacher is great. She has tons of energy and really emphasizes speaking and listening. In my Spanish II class the professor only speaks in Spanish, maximizing the short time we have. My only frustration was that she was unable to answer some of my specific grammatical questions. Perhaps she was keeping it simple for our class’s level.
The hours and locations are convenient, although to be honest, after working all day, sometimes the last thing I want to do is think in a foreign language for two hours. A Saturday or Sunday class would be a nice alternative.
Compared to language classes in high school, everyone is eager to learn However, I noticed that class attendance drops after the first few classes, so a initial class size of 15 may drop to 6. Good if you like individual attention.
Overall, I will be returning to Fluent City for Spanish III.

So far I’ve taken two classes with Fluent City and have really enjoyed both of them. The professor is great and attentive. The classes are challenging and welcoming. I highly recommend them!

I’m taking the Spanish 2 course, after taking Spanish courses in middle through high school. I started off enrolled in Spanish 3, but after the first course I decided to ask la profesora to move down, since the courses are taught completey in Spanish and I realized I needed a review of the fundamentals and common vocab, which I had by then forgotten for the most part. It was easy to move down and better for me to build on the basics.
I like that la profesora is fluent in Spanish and (although it’s challenging) uses only Spanish as she teaches us. It helps to train the ear and I never once second guessed her knowledge.
I don’t think this is a criticism about la profesora in particular, but it is difficult to make sure every student in the class is on the same page and really understands. Some are more advanced than others, and it would be nice to find some way to better help everyone progress. I think this has a lot to do with being forced to speak aloud in Spanish as much as possible, which we could do more of imo.
I am learning a lot, mostly by training my ear to listen to only Spanish.
My FAVORITE day was when we played a game in class. The game was in 100% Spanish and it was interactive and fun. The concept was the different «tener que’ idioms and the game required one person to sit in front of the board «blind’ to which idiom was written in a sentence. The rest of the class had to give the person clues (in Spanish) until they figured out what the saying was. This combined all my favorite elements: Spanish listening and speaking, and interactive learning.

I am currently taking French I through Fluent City. My professor is wonderful and I’m really enjoying the classes. Our professor is patient, meticulous about pronunciation (such a help for those of us starting at square one), and creative. The workbook they provide you with as part of the class has all of the lessons in it. The only thing you need to buy on your own is a dictionary (just download a free app!). The best thing about the classes is that they pushes us to speak. This can be daunting to beginners, but they create a welcoming learning environment.
The one thing I can think of that would make the class even better would be if the professor (or someone else) could record the pronunciation of words from the workbook. I find I often forget from class and my phonetic notes aren’t quite doing the trick. I mentioned this to the FluentCity team and they were immediately responsive and are looking into for future classes.
Off to sign up for French II!