Top questions:

Yes! Your teacher will give you a level test during your trial lesson. The result will be recorded, and your future lessons will automatically start in your stage.
The price of a lesson depends on the plan you choose. The larger the plan, the lower the price per lesson. For example: Spanish 10 credits Pay As You Go: £150 - 1 credit: £15; Spanish Intensive 24 weeks (240 credits): £2815 - 1 credit: £11.72. To compare all available plans and their prices, please visit the course page.
When you complete a stage (exam + full stage revision), please contact us and we will send you a certificate confirming the dates of your course and the Callan Stage you completed.
Log into your account and click “Buy more” in “My credits.” You’ll find the eBooks on the course page, right under Plans.

Trial lesson and level test

Yes. The trial lesson is free. Just sign up and book the lesson. To attend it, log into your Callan Online account and follow the instructions on the dashboard. After the free trial lesson, you can buy a plan and take more lessons, but you don’t have to.
Yes! Your teacher will give you a level test during your free trial lesson. The result will be recorded, and your future lessons will automatically start in your stage.
The teacher will ask you some questions and listen carefully to your answers, evaluating your vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. They will start with easier questions, and then increase the difficulty level depending on your performance. When you struggle to understand the questions or give answers, the test will stop and the teacher will tell you your stage.
The only things you need to prepare are a nice, quiet place where you can focus, a good internet connection, and a reliable device with a camera and microphone.
The Callan Method is perfectly suited for beginners. Even if you don’t speak a single word of English/ Spanish, your teacher will know what to do! They will skip the level test and start your first lesson immediately, teaching you basic words and very simple sentences like “What’s this? It’s a pencil.” Just follow the teacher’s lead and you’ll see how it all works.
Get in touch with us. We will discuss your result with your teacher and arrange another test. Please note: Callan Stages are not equivalent to CEFR levels. It’s entirely possible for a B1 student to join Callan Online and start at Stage 4. This would be because the test teacher found some gaps in the student’s knowledge from Stages 4-6. We test for (and teach) practical skills, and any certificates from previous courses are irrelevant.
No. The trial is for you to see if you like Callan and want to take more lessons. We have a no-strings- attached, if-you-love-them-let-them-go policy, so you can decide if you want to buy a plan or not.
No. Our courses are flexible: after you complete one plan, you can buy another one directly after, or take a break. Whatever works for you!

Teachers

Please try not to. We highly recommend booking multiple teachers. Everyone speaks a little differently and so interacting with different teachers will help you get used to various voices, accents, and speech patterns. This will give you the flexibility and confidence to go out there and have real life conversations with anyone!
If you have one or two favourite teachers, you can book all your lessons with them. It’s better for your progress to use various teachers, but it’s not strictly necessary.
Yes, all Callan Online teachers are native speakers of the language they teach.

Books

Log into your account and click “Buy more” in “My credits.” You’ll find the eBooks on the course page, right under Plans.
The eBooks are a useful tool for revising between lessons. You can read and listen to the material that you have already learned during your lessons. You will also need it during the “Reading” part of the lesson, when the teacher asks you to read specific pages from the book out loud. Most of the time, the teacher will be able to show you the relevant pages in the Classroom, but please have your eBook handy just in case. Please do not read the eBook during the lesson! It’s important that you focus on the spoken language and concentrate really hard on remembering the words and saying them quickly. That’s how you learn most efficiently. Please do not read ahead of your lessons. It’s a basic tenet of the Callan Method that when you learn new vocabulary, you hear it first, and only see it written later. This way, you have to concentrate harder, and your mind remains focused on the pronunciation and becomes more attuned to the sounds of the language. Please do not learn the answers by heart. If you memorise the answers, you will say the words automatically without thinking about them. It will make lessons easier, but it won’t help you develop confidence and the ability to use the language independently outside of lessons!
Due to copyright protection laws, it is impossible to print an eBook.
Saving an eBook to any drive would create a digital copy of the book. This is impossible due to copyright protection laws.
The eBooks are not available in pdf format. Just like printing or downloading, this would constitute creating a copy of the book, which is impossible due to copyright protection laws.

Money

Your plan has expired. Every plan comes with an expiry date consistent with the timeframe indicated by the plan name. For example, when you buy a “4 weeks plan,” you will have 4 weeks (= one month) to complete it. Any Pay As You Go plan is valid for 6 months. Any credits that remain unused post-expiry date become void and are non-refundable.
The price of a lesson depends on the plan you choose. The larger the plan, the lower the price per lesson. For example: Spanish 10 credits Pay As You Go: £132 – 1 credit: £13.20 Spanish Intensive 24 weeks (240 credits): £2450.00 – 1 credit: £10.20 To compare all available plans and their prices, please visit the course page.
You can cancel any booked lesson 12 hours or more before in advance. When you cancel a lesson, the credit that you used to book it returns to your account. If there is less than 12 hours left until the lesson time, cancellation is impossible. Try to attend the lesson, so your credit doesn’t go to waste!
The Callan Method works thanks to frequent and extensive revision (Repeat, repeat, repeat!). The weekly plans are designed to motivate you to take lessons regularly and make progress faster. We find that taking 5 lessons per week brings the best results for most students. If you are unable to take lessons 3, 5 or 10 times a week, please consider a Pay As You Go plan – these are for people who need extra flexibility, even if it’s at the cost of slightly slower progress.
We are able to extend your plan if you need to take a break for one of the following reasons: - holiday; - illness; - natural disasters; - war or civil unrest; - family emergency; - unexpected changes in life circumstances relating to job/ education/ living situation etc. If any of the above applies, just send us a message and explain what happened. We will offer you extra time to use your credits after your plan expiry.
An order can be refunded within 7 days of purchase unless at least one lesson has been taken to a satisfactory standard. A satisfactory standard means: - Teacher began the Lesson within five minutes of booked time (regardless of what time the User joins the Lesson); - Teacher and User established satisfactory connection quality (both parties can hear and see each other clearly); - Teacher conducted the lesson correctly according to the Callan Method and following the User’s individual lesson plan; - Lesson ended at planned lesson end time (25 minutes after planned lesson start) or no more than one minute before planned lesson end time. If one or more of these requirements have not been met, you can ask for a full refund.

Content

Each Callan Method course is divided into several parts, or Stages. Each Stage contains a carefully selected range of grammar and vocabulary, from the most basic in Stage 1, to increasingly advanced in the following Stages. Stages vary in length, so each Stage will take a different number of lessons to complete. For example, to complete Spanish Stage 1 you will need to take about 35 lessons; for Spanish Stage 6, you will need up to 55 lessons.
Callan Stages do not compare directly to CEFR levels, as the content we teach is introduced in slightly different order. Here is the approximate comparison:
English
Callan stages CEFR Level11 Trinity GESE2 Trinity ISE3 TOEFL iBT4 Cambridge English5 IELTS6
3/4 A1 Grade 2 - - - -
4/5 A2 Grade 3 & 4 ISE 0 - KET 3.0-3.5
end of 6 B1 Grade 5 & 6 ISE I 57-86 PET 4.0-4.5
end of 10 B2 Grade 7, 8 & 9 ISE II 87-109 FCE 5.0-6.5
end of 12 C1 Grade 10 & 11 ISE III 110-120 CAE 7.0-8.0
- C2 Grade 12 ISE IV - CPE 8.5-9.0
Spanish
Callan stages CEFR Level1
1/2 A1
3/4 A2
5/6 B1

Miscellaneous

CASA stands for Callan Accredited School Area. It’s a database run by our parent company, Callan Method Organisation, that hosts the CSPA (Callan Student Practice Area). It also contains your Callan Online account. That’s why Callan Online connects to CASA every time you log in.
When you complete a stage (exam + full stage revision), please contact us and we will send you a certificate confirming the dates of your course and the Callan Stage you completed.
Children aged 7-12 can take our dedicated children’s English course, Callan for Kids. It is not part of our regular offer, and the teachers’ availability is limited at the moment.
Children over the age of 12 can take our regular General English course and regular Spanish course.
We do not currently have a children’s Spanish course.
If you would like your underage (7-16) child to start learning English or Spanish with us, please contact Support and ask for more information.
You can attend lessons at any time you find on the teachers’ availability calendar that you find convenient. The teachers are available mostly between 8am and 9pm Central European Time.
It is easier to book convenient times a few days in advance. This is because we have a limited number of teachers and it may be difficult to book lessons last minute – sometimes you’ll find that all the teachers have already been booked.
We recommend planning your lesson schedule in advance and taking lessons regularly, in accordance with your selected plan.
Contact us