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An Honest Review of Drops App With Image of Woman on Phone

Drops App Review – Decent As A Supplementary Resource

Drops App

Rating 3.9
★★★
★
★★

Summary

Drops is a phone app for iPhone and Android that covers 33 languages. Daily games test the user on thousands of vocabulary words, and many of these words are ideal for everyday use. Drops has an entertaining, user-friendly interface, but it also lacks grammar lessons, and it works better for some languages than others. For anyone looking to supplement their vocab lessons, this app is worth considering; however, the free version might be more worthwhile than the paid version.

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

Though cute and easy to use, some visuals are hard to distinguish.

Thoroughness 3.0
★★★★★

Drops will teach you thousands of words and phrases, from transport and hobbies to astronomy and spices. Some languages, such as Japanese, have extra modules for culturally specific vocabulary.

Value 3.0
★★★★★

The free app is a great supplementary tool to help round out your vocabulary, but the paid app doesn’t offer many useful extras.

I Like
  • The daily reminders keep me accountable.
  • If you already know a word, you have the option of swiping up and removing it from your lessons.
  • Though the app works better for some languages, the sheer amount of languages is a plus.
I Don’t Like
  • It can be difficult to tell certain images apart, which means you’ll likely identify them incorrectly during your review.
  • Some of the categories seem to include random, unrelated words.
  • In languages where a noun’s grammatical gender or case isn’t obvious from the article, you won’t learn that information.
  • Drops only teaches you vocabulary, not grammar.
Price

A monthly subscription costs $9.99, a yearly subscription is $69.99, and a lifetime subscription is $159.99. You can use the app up to five minutes every ten hours for free.

Visit Drops

I’d previously heard about Drops on Reddit, where it achieved rave reviews and some pointed criticism.

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Transparent Language Review – Not Exciting, But Language Offering Is So Vast That You May Need It

Transparent Language

Rating 2.3
★★
★
★★★

Summary

Transparent Language markets itself as “the most complete language-learning system for independent learners.” While there are lots of different exercises for you to work through in their Essentials Course, I thought that the material wasn’t all that helpful and that it got very repetitive. Although the courses might not be all that useful or in-depth, with over a hundred languages on offer it might be worth checking out if you want to learn the very basics of a more obscure language such as Buriat, Kazakh or Turkmen.

Quality 2.5
★★
★
★★★

While the exercises are for the most part well-designed, diverse and easy to use, it is the core material itself that I found lacking.

Thoroughness 2.0
★★★★★

I hardly came across any explanations at all; practice was almost exclusively memorizing words and phrases.

Value 2.5
★★
★
★★★

I would only consider using if I was studying a very rare language.

I Like
  • I really like the fact that they offer up courses in languages that are usually overlooked.
  • It’s pretty well-designed, easy to use and has lots of different activities to work through.
I Don’t Like
  • The core material is severely lacking in my opinion; it’s hard for me to imagine you’ll learn much grammar or how to form even a basic sentence yourself.
  • It gets very repetitive and so I didn’t find it that fun to work through.
  • You learn virtually nothing about the different cultural contexts of the languages you’re learning.
  • Their teaching methodology was the biggest issue for me, leaving you memorizing lots of words and phrases in isolation.
Price

There is a free two-week trial period for you to try it out. Otherwise, it is $24.95 per month or $149.95 for a whole year if you just select one language. If you want access to all of the languages it is then $49.95 per month and $249.95 a year.

Visit Transparent Language
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Glossika Review – Not Cheap But Useful

Glossika

Rating 3.6
★★★
★
★★

Summary

Glossika has learning resources for over fifty languages that impressively range from Armenian and Czech to Icelandic and Tagalog. While not suitable for absolute beginners, lower intermediates could use the resource to familiarise themselves with sentences in their language of choice using Glossika´s intuitive approach. Listening to native speakers and repeating what they say can help learners to improve their comprehension skills and spoken fluency. While it is amazing that so many languages are included, learners would have to use numerous other resources alongside it. The cost is unjustifiably high.

Quality 3.8
★★★
★
★★

The audio recordings are well made but other aspects could be improved

Thoroughness 3.8
★★★
★
★★

Glossika covers an impressive number of languages but their method requires you to intuitively learn

Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★

Polyglots may find the price to be fair but for most language learners it’s not

I Like
  • There are lots of languages available, including many that are rarely covered by other resources.
  • The subscription gives you access to all of the languages making it possible to study one language and review another at the same time.
  • It will force you to speak the language which will improve your confidence and prosody.
I Don’t Like
  • As all of the languages cover the exact same material, the diversity of the languages and cultures are reduced to a simple formula with no cultural context involved in their teaching.
  • There are a fair amount of errors in the materials.
  • The cost is excessively high compared to other resources.
  • There are no explanations of grammar.
Price

You can try out Glossika´s learning method for free with their week-long trial. Their basic subscription is $16.99 a month. The monthly subscription costs $30.99 a month. The annual subscription costs $24.99 a month and will set you back 299.88$ in total.

Click the link below to save $5 on a subscription to Glossika.

30% off Back-To-School Promotion is going until October 1st, 2023. Use Coupon Code: BTS2023

Try Glossika For Free

Few resources cover as many different languages as Glossika does. Because of this, I was excited to try it out and see what it’s like to use.

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Earworms Review – A Unique Idea But Lacks Substance

Earworms

Rating 2.5
★★
★
★★★

Summary

Earworms is a unique language resource that relies on audio lessons mixed into music. The theory is that you will find the music catchy and thus remember your lessons easily.  The whole idea behind Earworms is the psychological theory of memory association. You would associate some information with the music and thus remember it easily. However, the music used in these lessons will not appeal to everyone, at least it didn’t for me. Moreover, the lack of visual aid and no exercises to assess your skills make it harder.  I would only recommend this for people who have failed to learn through other online resources or perhaps someone looking to learn a few phrases before a trip.

Quality 2.0
★★★★★

With a lack of exercises and visual aids, I can’t really say that it will prove to be a useful resource.

Thoroughness 2.0
★★★★★

All the lessons are comprised of various phrases that they think will be useful for anyone willing to learn French. Unfortunately, they’re too shallow and poorly structured.

Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★

With such low utility, it is important to have a low-price tag. Fortunately, they have followed this idea and thus you won’t be losing out too much if you opt for this.

I Like
  • The repetition of the phrases
  • Some of the tracks aren’t half bad
I Don’t Like
  • Tracks aren’t as catchy as I expected
  • Lack of visual aids
  • Complete absence of a testing system
Price

Each volume can be purchased as an mp3 download for £10.42 or £31.26.

Visit Earworms

When I first heard of Earworms, I was quite intrigued mostly because I know what it’s like to get a song stuck in my head. Compared to annoying lyrics, getting a new language stuck in there sounds pretty appealing.

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