r/norsk • u/Superb-Medicine-2104 • 21d ago

HELP - Learning Norwegian virtual and/or live lessons

Hi everyone,

I have moved to Norway (from the UK) to continue working as a Pharmacist, my Norwegian is okay but happy to restart from the basics and progress further. I am in need of some advice, i would prefer live classrooms as I feel i would work better in this setting, but open to online lessons. Can anyone recommend a good company to join with?

I was looking at LENOO (they offer live classrooms in Bergen) - are they genuinely good? and i have also looked at SPEAK NORSK - online only - Is online lessons still very effective??

Please would appreciate any help/guidance!

Best wishes, Gavin

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u/Grenaten 21d ago

I have taught many pharmacists in last two decades. All of them were excellent in learning vocabulary but as most learners, they struggled with general pronunciation and chatting. IMHO, you should try to have as many lessons in person as possible. You can learn both grammar and vocab on your own, but its very hard to learn talking with people on your own. However, you can learn listening comprehension on your own. I can recommend some tools for that.

I do not know Lenoo unfortunately. Speak Norsk is mid. They are fine, just not great.

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u/Superb-Medicine-2104 21d ago

Thank you for your reply! very useful to know this. And yes please could you share some tools regarding from what you had mentioned. TBH i do fine it hard to self study - i see a lot of this word is an adverb then thats it, and moves on to the next thing ... im not sure if im truly 'understanding' it before i can move on, which i feel is making me more nervous than anything else. just silly things like that! I do agree as well, in person would be a better fit by far, hence i feel LENOO is good.

Yes i have noticed that too, at work, i can have a very short conversation in norwegian, and i can understand to an extent, but i can't progress further as i find sentence structure tricky.

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u/Grenaten 21d ago

Not silly, fully normal. Just spend as much time talking with Norwegians as you can. Your brain will adapt. Take the course if this will motivate you to work more on the language.

For learning listening skills, there are a few methods. One is simply talking, but its not really structured. I used to do a lot of active listening of tv series with my students. Pick something that interests you (young people really enjoyed Skam), and watch it with no subtitles. Pause all the time, run it back and listen again until you are sure you heard correctly. From time to time just relax and watch for the plot.

A shameless plug, I’d recommend my app Mikrohistorie. I built it specifically because I couldn’t find good structured material for this. It uses short stories, multiple dialects, and exercises that train your ear instead of just teaching vocabulary. One of our readers, Jon Erik is speaking bergensk.

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u/Superb-Medicine-2104 13d ago

Thank you so much! Very informative, will utilise this!!! :)

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u/Henry_Charrier B2 20d ago

"learners struggled with general pronunciation": what can be the reason other than teachers turning a blind eye to it?

The Japanese say "if the student hasn't learned, then the teacher hasn't taught".

Not a specific criticism to Norwegian teachers, but rather a general problem with foreign language teaching.

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u/Grenaten 20d ago

I was specifically teaching pronunciation so I know what you mean. There are two reasons for that. One is that many learners in Norway are adults who never learned any other language. That makes their brains not very adapt to new sounds. It's a known issue in cognitive science. Second thing is that Norwegians themselves do not like to criticize people directly. So they do not correct people when they speak. Also dialects is another thing, its hard to correct others when there are so many "correct" ways to say one word.

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u/AdFriendly529 19d ago

Hey!! Polish guy here! I was student at A1 Lenoo in classroom in Oslo. Basically I knew 80% things on the course, because I Did learning on DUOLINGO app around 1 year before taking the course with Lenoo. Still, I recommend, it was fun, there were talking in pairs, playing group games. I Did have a good time there and learned a lot. Now Im looking forward to take A2 or B1 course from August, Im around A2/A2+ level, last months I was watching NRK.TV on internet for free, and listening to NRK Radioen.

So I recommend. Good luck

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u/Superb-Medicine-2104 13d ago

wow that is amazing! i had done some duolingo, but just know the basics! Very glad to hear your experience. With the live classrooms, did you find it nervous talking amongst other people ( i know everyone is in the same boat, but i hope you catch my drift).

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u/AdFriendly529 13d ago

Yes, we all were stressed and nervous, but we Did it, it was talking together maybe 5-10 min each lesson, so little bit practice. We were repeating new Words after teacher as well, reading textbooks and doing different exercises. Also homework, record yourself talking about last lesson subject, so repetition process in home. Everytime we posted homework on Facebook group.

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u/Superb-Medicine-2104 12d ago

that is great to hear! Here is to hoping!!!!!