‍Here’s the thing - Lirica is not really like other language apps which offer you a clearly defined progression through levels. They often start with a blank canvas, writing their content from scratch to suit a specific level and learner - they only expose you to vocabulary and language that is appropriate, underpinned by learning science. We think many of them do a great job, and we all want the same thing - to make language learning easier for more people.

However, it’s not helpful to compare Lirica with apps that work in this way. Our lessons are based on songs - authentic texts that are language-rich. With the possible exception of Baby Shark, 99.8% of popular musicians never wrote their songs for the purpose of language learning. This is why although we tend to highlight and work on aspects of language that are linked to a certain level, you will sometimes meet more advanced vocabulary in songs - even if we have classified the song as Beginner level. Have you noticed how children’s books in your own language contain incredibly advanced vocabulary? It’s exactly the same principle - the story’s context helps kids pick up and retain the meaning. Since the vocabulary you acquire in Lirica is contextualized, it doesn’t really matter if you learn a few words above your level. It’s more important that you learn to develop your ear for how the language sounds when we move beyond learning individual words.

Songs deal with oral language, which is organized in a completely different way than written language. It may come as a surprise to learn that native speakers often make many grammatical mistakes in speech, and they don’t necessarily pronounce things correctly. Even in our beginner lessons, we point out examples of this because we think it’s essential to help you deal with natural language that you are likely to hear in informal spoken contexts. The language we learn in the classroom is usually much more formal, and many of our users feel that they have a good level of reading and writing, but as soon as they try to have a conversation, they lose confidence.

Lirica aims to principally develop listening and pronunciation skills by using a descriptive approach, i.e., We tell you what people actually say and why, to make you aware of linguistic variety, rather than telling you what should be said.

We see every song lesson as an opportunity to introduce you to an artist and to help you understand cultural differences and similarities. Even if the vocabulary or grammar topic we have selected is a little easy for you, you can still focus on developing your listening, comprehension, and pronunciation skills.

Lirica aims to principally develop listening and pronunciation skills by using a descriptive approach, i.e., We tell you what people actually say and why, to make you aware of linguistic variety, rather than telling you what should be said.