Verbo
Live immersion · Spanish · Portuguese · Italian · French · Greek
Eight weeks. Four people in the room. No English after minute three.
Verbo runs live immersion courses of four students, twice a week, ninety minutes each. By week eight you will hold a fifteen-minute conversation with a stranger about something that matters to you.
Twenty minutes, free, nobody buys before it.
4
students in the room, every session
22
minutes an hour you personally speak
16
ninety-minute sessions, £420 total
The spine · week by week
What you can do by Friday
Not a syllabus. A list of things you could not do on Monday and can do by the end of the week, out loud, to a person.
1
Introduce yourself without translating
Week 1: you will introduce yourself and ask three follow-up questions without translating in your head. It will be exhausting.
2
Order, ask, misunderstand, ask again
Week 2: you will order food, ask for directions and misunderstand the answer. Then you will ask a second time, differently, and get it.
3
Talk about yesterday, badly
Week 3: the past tense arrives and it arrives wrong. You will tell the room what you did at the weekend and nobody will stop you mid-sentence.
4
Argue about something small
Week 4: you will argue about something small. Food, weather, football. You will be wrong grammatically and understood completely.
5
Take a phone call with no notes
Week 5: your teacher rings you without warning. Four minutes, no script, no screen to read from. Everyone survives it.
6
Explain your job to a stranger
Week 6: you will explain what you do for a living to someone who does not do it, twice, in two different ways, until the second way is shorter.
7
Choose your topic and defend it
Week 7: you choose the subject for week eight and you argue for that choice in the language. Homework is one conversation with someone outside the class.
8
Fifteen minutes with a stranger
Week 8: fifteen minutes with a stranger over video, unscripted, on a topic you chose in week seven. We record it and send it to you, and you should keep it.
Intakes begin the first Monday of every month. Cohorts of four fill in about nine days.
The whole method
Why four students and not twelve
Four students. In a class of twelve you speak for six minutes an hour. In a class of four you speak for twenty-two. That single number is the whole method.
Class of twelve — 6 min / hour
Class of four — 22 min / hour
The people in the room with you
The teachers, and where they are from
Teachers are native speakers who live in the language, not in a curriculum. They will talk to you about their own street, their own football team and their own arguments with their own mother.
Núria Bosch
Girona, Catalonia · teaches Spanish
Tiago Almeida
Porto, Portugal · teaches Portuguese
Giulia Ferrero
Bologna, Italy · teaches Italian
Malik Ferhat
Marseille, France · teaches French
Eleni Ráptis
Thessaloniki, Greece · teaches Greek
Every teacher has been through our own placement call from the other side of the screen. None of them will let you switch to English at minute four.
Five languages
Languages and levels offered
Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Greek, from complete beginner to B2. Your level is set on the call, not by a form.
Spanish
Español
Complete beginner → B2. Four cohorts a month.
Portuguese
Português
Complete beginner → B2. European and Brazilian.
Italian
Italiano
Complete beginner → B2. Two cohorts a month.
French
Français
Complete beginner → B2. Four cohorts a month.
Greek
Ελληνικά
Complete beginner → B1. One cohort a month.
The one rule
No English after minute three
The first three minutes are for admin and nerves. After that the room switches and stays switched for eighty-seven minutes. You will point, mime, draw, use the wrong word on purpose and get there anyway — and the teacher will help you get there in the language, never around it.
Homework is only conversation. No worksheets, no gap-fills, no streaks to protect.
Before any money moves
A placement call before you pay
Nobody buys before a twenty-minute placement call. Roughly one in six people we speak to are told to start a level higher than they expected.
It is a conversation, not a test. Ten minutes in English about why you are doing this, ten minutes in the language you are learning — however little of it you have. We tell you the level, the next intake date and, sometimes, that you should not book yet.
Minute 0–10
In English: three years of an app, and what still happens when a waiter answers you.
Minute 10–20
In the language. Badly is fine. Silence is fine. We are listening for what you reach for.
Same day
An email with your level, your intake date and the two evening slots you would keep for eight weeks.
Plainly
Price, schedule and what happens if you miss a week
Price
£420 for the eight weeks, sixteen sessions. Paid after your placement call, in one payment or two.
Schedule
Twice a week, ninety minutes each, evenings at 18:30 or 19:30 UK time. You keep the same two slots for the whole course.
If you miss a week
Miss up to two and you can sit them with another cohort at no cost. Miss four and we move you to the next intake for free.
Class size
Four students. Never five. If a cohort fills, you go to the next intake rather than into a bigger room.
What you need
A camera, headphones and ninety minutes where nobody will interrupt you. No textbook — we send the material each Sunday.
Book a placement call
Twenty minutes, free, no card. You will speak the language for ten of them and we will tell you honestly where you are. The next cohort of four starts the first Monday of the month.
hello@verbo.school · £420 · sixteen sessions
Verbo
Live immersion language courses · four students · eight weeks