About the courses
Free Language Courses offers structured courses for English speakers in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Chinese, from complete beginner to upper intermediate.
Who the courses are for
Anyone who speaks English and wants to learn one of these languages step by step: for travel, for family, for work, or for the pleasure of it. You don't need any previous knowledge, and you don't need an account.
How a chapter works
Every chapter follows the same four steps, and takes about 30–45 minutes:
- Listen to a short dialogue from everyday life, with a translation of every line.
- Understand the grammar and words it uses, explained in plain English.
- Practise with exercises that tell you straight away if you're right, and say sentences out loud.
- Check what you've learned with a five-question quiz.
When you finish a chapter, its new words go into your review deck. They come back after one day, three days, a week and so on. This is called spaced repetition, and it is one of the most reliable ways to remember vocabulary.
The four levels
Each course has four levels of twelve chapters. At the end of each level you'll be able to:
- Beginner (A1): introduce yourself, order food and drink, ask for directions and understand simple, slow speech.
- Elementary (A2): handle shopping, travel and everyday errands, and talk about your work, your home and what you did last weekend.
- Intermediate (B1): get by on your own when travelling, describe experiences and plans, and explain your opinions.
- Upper intermediate (B2): hold normal conversations with native speakers, follow most films and news, and write clear, detailed texts.
The codes in brackets are from the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), an international scale used by many schools, employers and language exams around the world. You don't need to know it to use the courses. Hindi has no official CEFR exams, and Japanese, Korean and Chinese exams use their own scales (JLPT, TOPIK, HSK), so for these languages the levels simply describe what you can do at each stage.
All four levels are available in all nine languages.
Audio
Words and sentences in the language you're learning can be played aloud, at normal or slow speed. The recordings are made with neural speech synthesis in the standard accent of each language. Your browser's own voice is never used, because its pronunciation varies too much to learn from.
Reference pages
Besides the chapters, each language has pages you can look things up in:
- Spanish: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- French: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- German: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Italian: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Portuguese: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Hindi: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Japanese: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Korean: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
- Chinese: grammar, verb tables, phrasebook
Why it's free
Everything on the site is free, with no paid version and no limits. Running it costs money, so some pages show a small number of ads. Ads are never placed inside exercises or quizzes, and they don't appear in the review deck or on your account page.
More questions
Which Chinese do you teach?
Standard Mandarin (Putonghua), the official language of mainland China, written in simplified characters. Words that differ in Taiwan are pointed out where it matters.
What do Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate and Upper intermediate mean? And A1 to B2?
They're the four levels of each course, from a complete beginner to someone who can hold normal conversations with native speakers. The levels section explains what you can do at each one.
The codes A1, A2, B1 and B2 are from the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), an international scale used by many schools, employers and language exams around the world. We show them for people who know them; you don't need to. Hindi has no official CEFR exams, and Japanese, Korean and Chinese exams use their own scales (JLPT, TOPIK, HSK), so for these languages the levels simply describe what you can do at each stage.
What language are the courses taught in?
English. All explanations and translations are in English.
How is this different from language-learning apps?
It's a structured course, similar to a textbook. Grammar is explained step by step, and you can see the whole course, go at your own pace and jump to any chapter.
How does the audio work?
Words and sentences in the language you're learning have a play button, and words in explanations can be clicked. Recordings are made with neural speech synthesis in the standard accent of each language, at normal and slow speed. You can replay them as often as you like.
Can I use it on my phone?
Yes. It works in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to install.
Mistakes and suggestions
The courses are checked carefully, but mistakes can slip through.If you find one, or have an idea, we'd like to hear about it.