BeFluent 2.0: What’s New in Our Russian Course and Apps

BeFluent 2.0 is here. For the past few months we’ve been rebuilding the platform around one idea: you should never have to wonder what to learn next. Open BeFluent, do the next lesson, and you’re moving forward.

Here’s what changed: our main course, Russian Step-by-Step, is now interactive; there’s a new Skills section for grammar practice; your vocabulary now grows level by level, with words picked for you; and there are new apps for iPhone and Android.

Try the new BeFluent free for 3 days

Russian Step-by-Step: Learn a Rule, Use It Right Away

Russian Step-by-Step used to be a video lesson with exercises underneath. You watched, then practiced on your own, without feedback. A lot of people watched and moved on, and knowledge without practice doesn’t stick.

Now every lesson works in three steps:

1. Theory. Short slides with audio. A rule or a few new words, explained simply.
2. Practice. Right after each new idea, you use it in a task and see straight away if you got it right.
3. Word practice. You review the new words from the lesson before you finish.

There are new kinds of tasks too. You build phrases and short dialogues instead of just picking the right word.

At the end of each lesson you get a review. It shows all your answers and puts your mistakes in a separate tab, each with the right answer, so you know exactly what to go over again.

What’s ready now: the new interactive format is live in Module 1, the beginner module. We’re moving Modules 2–5 to it next. Until then, they stay in the previous format, and the previous version of the course is still available in Courses.

Skills: Grammar Practice That Adapts to You

Skills is a new section in Exercises, open to learners at every level. It’s in beta, and for now it covers grammar.

The idea is simple: knowing a rule isn’t the same as using it without thinking. If you pause mid-sentence to work out an ending, it isn’t automatic yet. Skills is there to make it automatic.

• A short check comes first. Whatever you already know, we skip, so you only spend time on what’s new for you.
• You learn from every mistake. Each one comes with a short explanation of why it’s wrong.
• Practice adapts to you. Skills takes your mistakes into account and repeats each rule until it feels easy.

Five topics to start: conjugation, past tense, future tense, cases and gender of nouns. Listening and speaking will be added to Skills later.

Your Track: The Next Words, Picked for You

Learning vocabulary on your own comes with two problems: where to find the words you need, and how to know they’re actually useful. Learn a pile of rare words, and it feels like you’re not getting anywhere.

Your track solves both, whatever your level:

• A 6-minute test shows which words you already know, so you don’t relearn them.
• 600 short levels take you from your first words to upper-intermediate (B2), about 8,000 words in total.
• Each level adds about 20 words. You practice them, they stick, and you move up to the next level. The new words are added to your vocabulary automatically.

You can still add any word sets from the catalog whenever you like.

New Apps for iPhone and Android

BeFluent now has new apps for iPhone and Android. They’re faster and smoother, so it’s easier to fit a lesson into a coffee break or a commute.

Get it on the App Store

Get it on Google Play

A Few Smaller Things

• A fresh look across the whole platform.
• Pages load faster.
• All exercises open right on the platform, with no jumping to another site.
• We fixed the translations of 18,000 words.
• Words with more than one meaning, like “замок” (castle / lock), now have a separate card for each meaning.

See It in Action

We walk through all of this in our first Dev Blog on YouTube:

Try It Yourself

The best way to see what’s changed is to do a lesson. If you’re new to BeFluent, you can try it free for 3 days. Skills and your vocabulary track work at any level; if you’re a beginner, you’ll also start with the new interactive Module 1.

Try the new BeFluent free for 3 days

Not sure where to start? Take our free Russian level test first.

Already learning with us? Everything’s waiting for you in the app and on the website. Tell us what you think — we read all your feedback.