storylearning uncovered course review

[@paulwalther5237]

There goes your chance at a Story Learning sponsorship. 😂. I really appreciate the honest review. My mind just hit a wall when comparing the prices of his books and his courses. I wasn’t sure if the courses used the same stories even. You would think for the money you would be getting a series of books worth of material but it doesn’t seem to be the case.

[@joreneelanguages]

whoops!! 😆 yeah same, I would think for the price you’d be getting at the very least a book length story along with the explanations…

[@CGohStudio]

Very helpful.. I was about to buy german bundle but then I stopped and thing that 397 usd was a lot of money for something that I hadn’t even see how it worked … thank you for saving me money

[@theoraven]

Wow. I have always seen so many people/ads boosting this course. It isn't at all what it claims to be. I assumed that each chapter/lesson was the equivalent of a short story, like the books. I have read the beginner and intermediate short story books in two languages now. The stories were ok, though not engaging for the second time since they are the same in each language. They were definitely basic learner content. However, the fact that the $300 course is only one 20 minute (or less) story is wild. The disconnect between someone who makes books of short stories that are comprehensible input and an entire course of traditional instruction called Storylearning is so weird. I'm glad I've never had the money to try it.

[@joreneelanguages]

That’s what I expected too! $300 would still be steep but it would at least be consistent with the philosophy and more unique value…

[@bzylarisa]

Wow, I didn't know it was that expensive. I was never interested in the product, but it's good to see how it is like.

[@MissaOftheDawn]

Wow the stories are shockingly short. I'm working on an audiobook course for Italian from someone else and it has 12 chapters and each chapter is between 15-18 minutes each, so nearly 12x the length lol. I really enjoy learning this way and was eager to look into more but now that I know his stories are only about 17-20 minutes in total I won't bother, $300 is waaaaaay too much for that little. Thank you so much for giving an actually honest review. I nearly bought it after watching a review but thank goodness I watched yours too first just in case

[@joreneelanguages]

i agree, I was shocked! I kept clicking around thinking I was missing something 😅

[@MissaOftheDawn]

@@joreneelanguages I don't blame you, it seems very misleading to advertise a multi chapter story but the total run time isn't even a full 20 minutes 🙈 I was trying to find out how long the stories were and looks like I was right to be suspicious about how vague the description was on the site!

[@loloi]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for steering me away this Black Friday!!! I'm more of the Dreaming Spanish camp, and my comprehension has been improving, but I think I'm ready to be more structured, and get more into grammar. I've been looking for a more structured course in Spanish for a while now. Do you know of a better course that does not depend on English too much. I'm trying to find a neatly packaged course that is in Spanish. I was considering Cesár Rodriguez's Español Claro, but it's currently closed for new enrollees.

[@joreneelanguages]

I've been using Lengalia, which I just reviewed recently. I like it quite a bit. You can switch the interface into Spanish and all of the content is in Spanish. There's also free textbooks that I just recently found on the website marcoele.com, they look good and are fully in Spanish, but I haven't played around much yet.

[@zacharygoldstein3665]

Very helpful review

[@tbenavente]

Interesting! I have tried his graded readers for Korean and Italian and couldn’t finish either one because I found them so boring (and I’m usually a fan of graded readers). But now I’m starting to think they weren’t so bad, considering the price of these courses 🙃

[@joreneelanguages]

I know, right 🙃 I had the same journey

[@paulwalther5237]

They’re fairly priced at least even if they’re not your cup of tea.

[@mfc4655]

300 has always felt like a tall order

[@Frag_Limit]

Absolutely right. I made the mistake of purchasing Russian Uncovered. Deeply regretted it.

[@joreneelanguages]

oh no! did you try to get a refund?

[@Frag_Limit]

@@joreneelanguages I didn't. Thought i would like it after a few days and then 30 days have passed.

[@charliethechaste]

I was just considering that course! Thank you for sharing and I'm sorry for your loss.

[@VivianCastillo]

Thanks for sharing.

[@vivaobento]

You are so right about how so many KZbinrs push these courses. But tbh, most of them only use the Short Stories books (which are useful) and not the Storylearning courses themselves. I feel it is a bit dishonest, but okay, some people do want to get affiliate commissions or something.

[@joreneelanguages]

Yeah the books are really popular & very well-priced! I wonder how many people who market the course have really seriously tried it...

[@SomedayKorean]

When you first mentioned the unbalanced course content, I automatically assumed Chinese would have less content, since romance/European languages often seem to have more materials available than Asian languages, so I was surprised when it was the opposite. I never considered these courses because of the price tag, but I assumed it would at least have quite a substantial amount of high-quality content at that price. From what you showed here.... color me unimpressed. There are so many other resources that offer so much more value at a cheaper price. No wonder I rarely hear about it outside of sponsored videos or affiliates...

[@joreneelanguages]

I would have expected the same & it actually would have made sense potentially - more instructional content but less story because the story “requires” more explanation to understand. but nope lol.

[@johnsch8634]

I have told a twenty minute story in Chinese to people who were Chinese beginners without them having trouble. So, to me the idea that you need a 15-20 hour course to be ready for a 19 minute story... well it's just another way of saying "I don't really trust comprehensible input as a way to acquire a language"

[@joreneelanguages]

that does feel like the message of the course as a whole. I could see working up to a nice satisfying 20 min story at the end with shorter/simpler stories, but the onlyyyy material in the class being a 20 min story is rough

[@johnsch8634]

@@joreneelanguages If you wanted to be "fair" you could suggest that they're just giving people what they want. I think you mentioned that the course seemed to have a sense of giving everyone a little bit of what they wanted, so that may be the exact case here. I feel like if it was 20 hours of high quality stories with accompanying videos of skilled storytellers telling the stories with illustrations to help you understand it, as well as mp3 files of the story being read. Then the value in rewatching, relistening and rereading would begin to approach $300. But just a few hours of ordinary language lessons and one story? I have google and youtube, you're not offering a unique value proposition for that price. I could see it if it was cheap and you're just paying for the convenience of not having to find everything yourself, but this is ridiculous. It actually reminds me of my time teaching at EF, they would have a "story" or reading (depending on level) but we would spend the majority of our time circling around grammar and vocabulary. Then the actual "story" time would be the worst part because it was just a boring story played back from a CD, or I'd have to ask students to take turns reading the text or dialogue out loud. The worst part is that despite the "preparation" for the story/reading the students mostly wouldn't understand it and the ones who did would find it boring. So we'd spend most of the time playing time-wasting games, I really don't know how anyone learns English like that, or how companies like EF stay in business delivering such a "product" year after year.

[@Mrs.SaturnX]

I agree... bought the Turkish Uncovered and deeply regret it. Not that it's terrible, I do get something out of it, but it's way way overpriced. It's basically a graded reader with a few videos which, at least for Turkish, aren't even great but very random and unstructured.

[@kimincoree]

Great review! I am glad I got your channel recommended ^^ Quick question, was there things you couldn't access with the free trial? Because if one could manage to get the whole course done in 7 days (albeit it would be intensive but possible), why even pay for it?

[@joreneelanguages]

I don’t think there’s anything to prevent that, other than most people not wanting to do that 😆

[@kimincoree]

@@joreneelanguages hahaha! And did the website let you register for 2 different trials for 2 different languages and cancel both without an issue? if so it's good but surprising

[@joreneelanguages]

@@kimincoree it did! The trial/purchase of each language seems to be totally separate

[@kimincoree]

@@joreneelanguages good to know!! 😊

[@YnEoS10]

It’s such a bad deal compared to most language resources.