To not pay for DD to keep using an app which teaches you a new language?

[femininepolarbear]

DD is 14 and does French at school... she isn't keen. She has a friend who lives in Spain (met online - yes I am keeping an eye) and she has had an app for a month now, on a free trial, she has used it lots and been practising out loud to her friend and using it a lot. The trial is now up and it's £8.99 to continue. To be honest, 1) I've told her to find some cheaper option 2) I don't know how keen I'll be in not knowing what she is saying to the friend.

DH thinks we should be encouraging her to learn a new language.

Who is right?

If she's really spending an hour a day on it then I would pay (if the suggestions about XP from previous posters don't work)

If she’s using it an hour a day then the free version will be unsuitable, unless she makes an extraordinarily small amount of mistakes or has the patience of a saint. You only get 5 mistakes with the free version, and in an hour, at a decent pace, you could very easily make a few dozen mistakes. If you repeat a lesson you get another mistake credited, but you can lose it immediately by getting the first question of the new lesson wrong. Do that a few times each session and the app will just become a source of frustration. It works much better when you’re able to steadily progress.

The free version is great if you only want to do 1-5 lessons a day (2-10 minutes). If you want to use it more intensively it’s really worth paying, and honestly $8.99 for for a month of hour long daily lessons is an absolute bargain.

Money aside I’m not sure why you’d even be questioning supporting her learning another language. Of course you should be encouraging it. If she wants to speak privately to her friend there’s far, far easier ways of doing that than learning another language.