When you first start studying Flexi classes, you can choose to take a class at any time. Everything is new, the system is flexible, and life is great. But have you ever almost finished a level and found yourself refreshing the “Book a Class” page, waiting for a class to pop up at a convenient hour?
So far, I have completed HSK 4+, 5, and now 5+. My studying pace always dramatically slows down as I reach the end of a level. Most of the classes I haven’t taken yet are randomly scheduled late at night or during my working hours. I’m afraid Flexi the Lion no longer lives up to its name.
I know there are several strategies I could choose from, none of them ideal:
I can use the My Level page to find out when the class I haven’t taken yet is scheduled (but the next convenient time slot could be months away).
I could take classes from the next level (but there is no HSK6 yet).
I could schedule a 1:1 with the topic I haven’t studied yet (but that would cost me 3 credits instead of 1)
What if we could use the existing feature that allows us to schedule a 1:1 to “Study a Topic” but make it a group class (costing 1 credit) instead? We could call this “Propose a time to study”. Since most classes are 1:1 anyway, this new feature will definitely bring in more revenue for the school.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be happy to use this.
Thank you for your feedback. Students do not have to complete all classes at one level before moving up to the next. If a student is unable to find a convenient time to explore unfinished topics, they can move ahead and schedule classes at the next level that fit their availability.
Currently, the highest level available in our system is HSK 5+ which is your current level, so there is not a new level for you to continue booking classes yet. As you mentioned, there are two ways to proceed:
You can wait for HSK 6 in the upcoming weeks to continue booking classes at any time that you want. Our academic team is reviewing the materials and working to complete this advanced level as soon as possible.
Alternatively, you can book a 1-on-1 session for a more personalized learning experience. Though this option requires more credits, it also provides the flexibility to schedule classes at a time that suits your schedule.
We appreciate your idea and will certainly keep your suggestion in mind for future improvements. For now, it is impossible to do that because that will change the structure of the system.
Would it really be such a drastic change? The desired functionality already exists. The only structural change needed is charging 1 (or .5) credits instead of 3 (or 1.5) when the student books Study a Topic. The Tailor Made 1:1 class would stay at the current price. The other (optional) change would be purely visual - a link to this feature, something like “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Suggest a class time” on the main Book Class page.
While it is great to hear that higher-level classes are available (or will be soon), searching for the next class is currently a bit of a treasure hunt. We should minimize the effort the students need to spend on booking so that they can focus on studying.
Agree with what Ben said above, and appreciate his time to start this topic. Thanks, Ben!
I also noticed on Mondays and Tuesdays, the 9am - 12pm AEST lessons are often unavailable. However, other times such as 5-6am AEST (3-4am Beijing time) are available… clearly this is not due to the teachers’ preference?
The 72-hour cancellation policy is also quite a killer for me. I tried my best not to cancel as I actually want to study the class, and happy to pay if I have to cancel last minute (less than 24 hours). But there are times when a meeting suddenly pops out and I have no other option besides cancelling… and losing my credit.
These days I tried to wait for someone to book a class and just join in if the time allows, but at my level (HSK5+) and my timezone, it doesn’t seem like there are too many HSK5+ students around.
I’m genuinely missing the social / community aspect of learning languages. I hope there will be a speaking club or something in the future, even if it’s just once a month or something and it could be set as “casual” or “add-on” class.
While it sounds simple, the backend process takes a lot more work than we can imagine. However, we will take your point into consideration for improvement.
Thanks for your suggestion about the speaking club! We have a chat group on Discord (click to join the group) where you can practice your Chinese with other students. We also hold monthly student meetings to listen to students’ feedback and suggestions. You’re more than welcome to join and give us feedback in Chinese as a way to practice your speaking.
We want to ensure that our teachers have enough time to prepare and deliver top-quality lessons for our students. So, we set a policy of canceling classes at least 72 hours in advance. We’re trying to find a balance between our teachers and students so that everyone can have enough preparation time before each class.
I also had this problem, that the only available classes were either very early morning or late night, I did book a one-one class so I could study the next topic to progress my learning but it does seem that there is a lack of choice in hours now. I also would like to have a group oral class at the relevant levels once a month to practice what I’ve learnt and am happy to pay additionally for a class like this.
Just speaking as a team member here… it is worth mentioning that we are still quite a small team.
Sourcing the best teachers takes our team a lot of time. Obviously we don’t just want to hire anyone.
As the team and the teacher numbers grow at LTL, so will the number of classes
I completely appreciate your feedback as students (I also study with Flexi so I can see both sides of the coin) but I just want to make people aware that behind the scenes all ideas on the forum are deeply discussed - but only so many can be put into practice (and the ones that do, take time)
Hope this comes across. Happy studying everyone, and I hope we can find a way around this soon.
Perhaps the computer-generated schedule could include some time slots designated as “TBD: Student’s Choice,” meaning that content is to be determined and the first student to sign up would specify which lesson will be covered. These could be offered according to teachers’ preferred times to teach. I think it would be a popular feature.
Thanks for all the feedback and it’s super helpful to hear more about issues students are facing and we definitely need to improve this.
The main issue here are student numbers. Currently Flexi Classes are of course an amazing deal, because one pays for a group class, but can quite often be the only student in the class and effectively get a 1on1 class.
That’s great, but of course long term not sustainable. A group class should have 2 to 3 students in it (which many students say they would actually prefer too as its more social).
The issue is that we teach many more “nieche” languages (to which Mandarin, Japanese and Korean still belong) with relatively small student numbers and at the same offer a huge number of group classes for them. HSK 6 online group classes is an extremely nieche area and demand for it is not big at all. Offering options for languages and levels that are not mainstream is of course what LTL is all about, so we are very happy to do it.
For Mandarin for example we offer every day 192 different group classes for 9 different levels.
Across the languages we teach, we offer about 40,000 group classes per month (about half a million of group classes offered per year).
This means getting several students study together at the same time is quite hard with just one topic offered per hour (we actually sometimes offer two lessons with different topics per hour when for example courses overlap, you can use the “arrow” buttons to switch between them). If we start offering additional “student demanded” lessons on top it will get even harder to ever increase the average number of students per group to at least two for all those “smaller” (or less studied, Mandarin is not small of course, just not that many people study it) languages.
So what you are suggesting is possible, but we need more students in the system to make it justifiable to offer several topics per hour (and probably increase the number of lessons offered up to a million per year). Anyone who wants to help, please use the Refer a Friend option and get 5 free credits for your friend and yourself.
Or just mention us on some social media etc.
Oh, thanks a lot and thats amazing. We really want to increase the number of topics offered for Mandarin, Korean and Japanese.
We also really want to be able to continue to teach Shanghainese, Taiwanese and Cantonese, even though these are of course not very much studied languages at all. Currently we are trying to get the overall system more attractive by offering more languages (Italian and Russian are already doing quite well) including more studied ones (sneak peak: Spanish will be launched on Flexi Classes later this year).
I agree that, generally, having just one student in a group class is probably not sustainable in the long term. However, I think that giving students the option to specify class time is not going to make the existing situation any worse than it is now; on the contrary, it would motivate students to attend classes more often.
Also, you could always automatically cancel the custom-time class unless at least one other student signs up for it. Before that happens, these classes would be advertised in the My Recommended Classes space for other students on that level to easily find them.
Most of the classes I haven’t taken yet are randomly scheduled late at night or during my working hours.
I have this problem too. Although there’s no shortage of classes that are scheduled from say, 7 AM to 12 PM CST, my working hours mostly only permit going to classes from 6-9 PM and it can often be difficult to find classes that are available at that time.
If you choose “not yet studied topics”, you will only see topics that you haven’t booked, and sometimes you will see that they’re not scheduled for your free time. If your schedule is fixed from 6 to 9 p.m, booking fixed group classes might be a good option for you. To view the schedule, you can go to “full courses.”
“Full course” seems less convenient to use once you’ve taken a few classes since it shows all classes scheduled for that time slot, including the ones you’ve already taken. I think adding the “not yet studied topics” filter here would make it a little bit more usable.
1:1 classes are three times as expensive as regular classes, so they’re not a great option either.
So far, I have finished HSK4+, 5, 5+, and now I’m at the end of HSK6. Every time I reach the end of an HSK level, it’s getting more and more painful to schedule the remaining classes (especially if there is no level above your current). The only practical option is to use My Level and schedule weeks (and sometimes months) ahead. Really, Flexi is not flexible at all once you’ve taken over 50% of classes at your level. I would imagine most students would just drop out once it becomes too difficult to schedule the next class.
and I was very impressed with what the LTL team can do when they put their mind to it! 加油！
