If you’ve been around Express Fluency for a while, you may have noticed that “Beginner,” “Beginner Plus,” and “Advanced Beginner” have quietly disappeared from our class listings. In their place: Foundations 1 and Foundations 2.
The change might look like a small cosmetic tweak, but it isn’t. Here’s why we made it.
The problem with “Beginner”
When most people hear “Beginner,” they assume it means someone who has never studied the language. And when they hear “Advanced Beginner,” they picture someone who has been at it for a while, making steady progress through a defined sequence.
That model makes sense if you think of language learning as a ladder: you climb the rungs, and the longer you’ve been climbing, the higher you are.
But that’s not how acquisition works.
We regularly have students arrive in our entry-level class who studied Spanish, French, or Italian for four years in high school. Or two semesters in college. Or who have been using Duolingo for longer than they’d like to admit. By any conventional measure, these students are not beginners. They’ve put in serious time.
And yet they can’t hold a conversation. They freeze the moment someone speaks to them. They know vocabulary; they just can’t use it. The traditional approach failed them, and no amount of time spent inside that approach was going to change that.
So where do they belong? In our entry-level class, right alongside someone who has never heard a word of Spanish. And here’s the thing: they thrive there. Because Comprehensible Input meets each student exactly where they are.
Calling that class “Beginner” felt like an insult to them, and a misrepresentation of what the class actually is.
What “Foundations” means
Foundations 1 is built around a set of high-frequency verbs: wants, has, goes, is, gives, looks for, likes, can, says, speaks, and works, among others. These words appear constantly in natural speech, and they’re the scaffolding through which everything else starts to come together.
But here’s what makes Foundations 1 genuinely different from a traditional beginner class: the stories and conversations are always new. The vocabulary is the same foundation, but the content is entirely shaped by the students in the room. Conversations revolve around their lives, their interests, their personalities. A Tuesday evening class in May is a completely different experience from a Thursday morning class in September, even though both are “Foundations 1.”
This means returning students aren’t bored and brand-new students aren’t lost. We fully expect that someone new to the language will take Foundations 1 more than once, and they always find it fresh, because the community creates it.
And Foundations 2?
Foundations 2 is what we used to call “Advanced Beginner,” a name that always felt a little awkward. You’ve built real scaffolding. You can follow Spanish when it moves at a comfortable pace. You’re ready for richer input, more complex stories, a little more speed. You’re starting to string words together. But you’re not quite ready to run with it independently.
Foundations 2 honors that. It doesn’t rush you to Intermediate. It deepens what’s already there.
And it’s worth noting: even students who would consider themselves intermediate can get a great deal from Foundations 2. As long as the language isn’t yet flowing almost effortlessly, there’s more to absorb. The input keeps working on you.
A note on the word “Beginner” itself
There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner. But the word carries baggage: a sense of starting at the bottom of a staircase, of being behind, of time already wasted. For students who have spent years trying to learn a language through methods that didn’t work for them, that framing isn’t just inaccurate. It’s discouraging.
Foundations is different. Everyone has a foundation. Everyone is building one. And no matter how long you studied before you arrived here, you’re in exactly the right place to build yours.
A personal note
I studied French for years in school, so I’m not technically a “Beginner” French student. And yet I get so much out of sitting in on our Foundations classes. My comprehension is solid, but I still need more input before speaking comes easily.
That input paid off in an unexpected place. While working at the US/Mexico border, I found myself able to communicate with French speakers from Africa in a way I never could have managed before. Those Express Fluency classes got me there.
I need to carve out more time to sit in on classes and keep building. Honestly, any level except Advanced would be useful for me right now. Which is kind of the whole point.
Here are our upcoming Foundations 1 and 2 classes for summer 2026:
I hear this one all the time. I mention Express Fluency classes and someone responds: “I just need to move to (Spanish-speaking country). That’s the only way I’m really going to learn Spanish.”
