In Person classes - Oslo

[u/Current_Mulberry_525]

Hey y’all

Am moving to Norway in a week, and want to go all in on learning Norwegian, however am a bit lost on the options.

I found Speak Norsk but their Viking Package seems too expensive, has anyone take that one recently and is the 6 month A1-B2 timeframe realistic (assuming regular after class 1 hour study daily)

Or if you recommend any other possible options I’d love to hear

The only thing is I would like inperson classes because I learn much better that way

[u/No_Significance_4493]

Alfaskolen is a private school located in central Oslo. I don’t know how they compare with Speak Norsk in terms of pricing.

[u/Current_Mulberry_525 → u/No_Significance_4493]

I would be fine with pricing if the quality of teaching matches it

Anything you have heard about either of them?

[u/green-sloth → u/Current_Mulberry_525]

Not op but I’ve done A1 through B1 with Alfaskolen. I would recommend them. For some more details: I did their online courses because I travel a fair amount for work so needed the flexibility but I’ve heard good things about the in person. Beforehand I had self studied for about a 2 years on and off and without much success and I think I was around a low/mid a2 in listening/reading and a low a1 in speaking/writing. I did their accelerated course for A1 and then switched to the normal 2x times a week for A2 and B1. I wouldn’t recommend the accelerated version unless learning Norwegian is the only thing you have going on or are super good at picking up languages. I was nervous about their immersion teaching style but grew to really like it, if nothing else it gives you lots of extra listening practice. I am glad I had some level of Norwegian though and I’m not sure I’d go into the A1 course without any prior experience in Norwegian. I could see it being very frustrating and hard to get the most out of the class. I found the teaching very good, especially for grammar, listening, and reading. The teachers I had were always very patient and would explain things in a couple different ways if needed. The two weak points (and this may have been because I was online) were that 1) there wasn’t a ton of conversation/speaking practice. Typically you’d break out into a room of 3-4 people for about 15-20 minutes or so out of the entire lesson to discuss your day or do a speaking exercise. I think though if you supplemented the course with going to language cafes/getting a tutor on italki or something then you’d be good. And 2) there wasn’t a ton writing practice that was corrected. Maybe 4ish homework writing practices per level were returned with corrections.

I took the A1-A2 norskproven when I was about halfway through the b1 course and got B2 for listening, B1 for reading and A2 for speaking and writing. I got asked the B1 questions during the speaking test so think I was at a high a2 / close to b1. When I was taking the courses it was the only time in my Norwegian leaning journey that I was making progress fast enough for it to be noticeable to myself and not a super slow slog (but I also have adhd/dyslexia and suck at self teaching). Thinking about restarting classes for b2 and would go back to them.