Background sound and your teacher’s pace

Real conversations happen at real speed, with noise around them. On the website, your lessons get closer to that as your level grows.

Your teacher’s pace

• A1: slowly and clearly, with short pauses.
• A2: a little slower than natural speed.
• B1 and up: natural speed. Ask your teacher to slow down whenever you need to.

Your level comes from your placement chat or your latest level check, or else the level you chose when you started. The pace applies to lessons, the daily call and narrate mode.

Background sound

Lessons set in a café, on a street or at a station can have quiet background sound: voices and cups at a café, traffic and footsteps in the street, trains and far-off announcements at a station. It is made on your device while you practice, so it is never recorded or sent anywhere. It always stays quieter than your teacher, gets quieter while someone is talking or while you hold the talk button, pauses when you switch to another tab, and stops when the lesson ends. Your teacher knows you may hear it and repeats calmly if you ask.

Scenes indoors or on the phone have no background sound, and neither do the daily call, narrate mode, the placement chat, the "About you" chat or the level check.

Turn it up, down or off

• Open your notebook (Notebook in your account menu, top right) and find "Your teacher". For each language, choose Off, Auto, Low or High under "Background sound in live lessons".
• Auto follows your level: no sound at A1, low at A2, and higher from B1.
• During a lesson, tap the sound button at the top of the screen (it shows, for example, "Café sounds" and "High"). Each tap turns it down a step, then off, then back to where it started. This change lasts for that lesson only.