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French

Lingoda Review – Positive Experience But Room For Improvement

Lingoda

Rating 4.0

Summary

Lingoda is an online language learning platform where you can take private or group classes at any time of the day. They offer lessons in Spanish, German, French, and English. There are a large number of lessons available for everyone from absolute beginners to more advanced levels. It’s a good option to get the structure of a course with the guidance of a teacher, at an affordable price.


Quality 4.0

Both the platform and the content itself are easy to use and presented well.

Thoroughness 4.0

Although there are hundreds of lessons, they could use a bit more variety and you’ll need to study them with a teacher to get much benefit.

Value 4.0

It’s an affordable option that gives you access to good teachers and a comprehensive course.

I Like
  • The flexible hours mean that you can pretty much take a class whenever suits you – whether that’s 3am or 3pm!
  • Right from the start, the teachers speak almost entirely in the language that you’re learning.
  • There are hundreds of different classes covering different subjects for all levels.
I Don’t Like
  • The quality of your class and how much content you cover relies to a large extent on the other students. This also impacts how much time you actually get to speak.
  • The lesson materials all look quite similar and there is not much variation between lessons.
Price

There are lots of different plans available whether it matters how many classes you want to take or if you want to do individual or group.

For group classes, it is $399.99 a month, which gives you access to 40 class subscriptions.

For private classes, the plan is $799.99 a month for 40 classes.

There are a lot of smaller plans than these so take a look as to what is interesting to you.

There are also “marathon” plans for three, six, or twelve months that offer lower per-class rates and a chance to earn cashback if you attend 90% of your classes.

It’s an affordable option that gives you access to good teachers and a comprehensive course.Lingoda is an online language learning school where classes take place 24/7 and native speakers teach you either English, French, German or Spanish (depending on what you sign up for). The lessons progress in difficulty following a course and the teachers help you out along the way in both private and group lessons where you’ll be with up to four other people.

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An Honest Review of Speechling With Image of Girl Looking at Phone

Speechling Review – I Didn’t Know I Was Saying That Wrong!

Speechling

Rating 4.3

Summary

Speechling is a website and app that makes it easy to improve your speaking skills in several languages. The free version is an incredbily valuable resource that makes it easy to practice mimicking native speakers. The Unlimited Plan provides unlimited corrections of your recordings by a teacher.


Quality 4.5

Speachling makes it easy to improve your speaking rhythm and pronunciation.

Thoroughness 4.5

Lots of different ways to practice speaking.

Value 4.0

The free version is better than most paid resources and the paid version provides outstanding value.

I Like
  • An excellent method to improve your speaking abilities and get feedback from a real teacher.
  • Answer the Question, Describe the Image, and Freestyle mode are great for higher levels.
  • You can switch languages at any time. I like seeing translations in my second language while studying my third language.
  • Truly unlimited recordings with quick feedback.
I Don’t Like
  • Absolute Beginners should learn the basics elsewhere first.
  • You’ll need to learn how to make the sounds of your target language on your own.
  • The amount of time given to record sentences can be too short.
Price

The Forever Free Plan is complete free. A monthly subscription to the Unlimited Plan costs $19.99 per month.

Click the link to save 10% on Speechling’s Unlimited Plan.

Speechling has quickly become one of my favorite language learning resources. The free version includes a ton of useful features and the premium plan is great value for the cost.

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Bilingual Oxford Dictionaries Mini Review: Handy Apps

Oxford Dictionaries

Rating 4.2
Price:

Free

Summary

Oxford Dictionary has published numerous bilingual dictionaries over the years, many of which are not designed to be comprehensive. While some are “complete” dictionaries, others are called “mini”, “concise”, “essential” or even “shorter”. Even the smaller ones are pretty thorough, however. The Oxford Mini Greek dictionary contains 40,000 words and phrases, many of which also contain multiple translations. It’s a lot shorter than the Oxford Hindi dictionary, at 100,000 entries, or the New Oxford American English Dictionary at 350,000 – but it’s still got a wider vocabulary than the average English speaker. You can purchase the books themselves, but most learners will prefer the convenience of the apps with their regular updates and learner-friendly features. Search Autocomplete, Fuzzy Filter, Wild Card and Voice Search help you find words you don’t know how to spell. Favourites help you save useful words and phrases, while Word of the Day will introduce you to new words. Some dictionaries also contain audio recordings and thesauruses. And the freemium Oxford Dictionary with Translator will translate words and paragraphs to and from 14 languages. For some languages, learners already have plenty of free, thorough dictionaries available to them. Spanish learners, for example, will probably prefer to combine the free apps SpanishDict and Diccionario RAE (Google Play, App Store). Mandarin Chinese learners will likely find Pleco more useful. But for some languages, these dictionaries may well be the most thorough and reliable ones available.

The rating is our best guess, but we haven’t yet had the opportunity to fully test and review this resource.

 

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An Honest Review of News in Slow French With Image of Paris

News In Slow French Review – Makes Studying More Fun

News In Slow French

Rating 4.5

Summary

News in Slow French offers three different levels of content (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) with lots of different features for each. I’m a huge fan of what’s included at the intermediate level but a bit less enthusiastic about the content at the beginner and advanced levels. That’s not to say those levels are bad, they aren’t by any means, but the material available for intermediate level learners is really fantastic. Much more than simply current events narrated at a slower pace, News in Slow French is comprensive, engaging, fun, and effective.


Quality 4.5

It often doesn’t feel like you’re studying without sacrificing on quality.

Thoroughness 4.5

The depth and unique manner in which they teach grammar and expressions is really impressive.

Value 4.5

Although it’s not cheap, there’s more content than you may initially realize.

I Like
  • The manner in which current events are talked about makes them really engaging to listen to.
  • The huge catalog of grammar and expressions lessons age very well, providing a ton of study material.
  • Grammar and expressions are first used naturally in a conversation, only to be explained later, making learning them feel much more natural.
I Don’t Like
  • The beginner and advanced lessons aren’t quite as good as the intermediate level.
  • Their app is very basic and doesn’t include the courses, so you may prefer using a mobile browser instead.
  • Most of the content doesn’t require you to use the French you’ve learned.
Price

There’s a 7-day free trial for new subscribers, then the price is $19.90/month. There’s also an option to prepay for up to 12 months at a time, which doesn’t affect the monthly price.

News in Slow French is an online program that aims to provide useful content for French language learners of all levels. Some of these levels are better than others.

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Mondly Review – Made Significant Improvements Made in 2022

Mondly

Rating 2.7

Summary

Mondly is a language-learning app that teaches basic vocabulary and grammar structures. It seems most appropriate for learners with little to no exposure to their target language.

The activities mostly rely on passive recognition of vocabulary and phrases, and therefore are not very challenging. However, they are varied enough that you probably wouldn’t get bored with short, daily practice sessions.

Although I wouldn’t recommend Mondly to anyone looking to seriously learn a language, it may be appropriate for individuals studying languages with less available resources, or for individuals who are preparing to travel abroad.


Quality 3.0

Both the interface and the course itself could be designed better. *Edited on Nov 22* It has made many improvements this year. We will update soon.

Thoroughness 2.5

It’s decent for learning vocabulary, but I thought a lot of the material wasn’t explained very well.

Value 3.0

It’s fairly inexpensive.

I Like
  • Daily lessons, weekly quizzes, and monthly challenges – these functionalities encourage you to practice every day.
  • The vocabulary included is useful and drilled in an effective way.
  • It’s fairly inexpensive.
I Don’t Like
  • The content and exercises are the same for all levels and languages.
  • The exercises are mostly passive.
  • I don’t think the order of lessons and topics is very well thought out.
  • For me, the interface is not user friendly and the platform is visually unappealing.
Price

There are three plans… $9.99 per month for one language $47.99 per year ($4/mo) for one language and $99.99 for lifetime.

Spring Sale! Get 96% off Lifetime Access to Mondly Premium, plus bonus access to Mondly AR & Mondly Kids! See details on the website. Offer ends on 4/30/24.

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Lang Workbooks Mini Review: Thorough Writing Practice

Lang Workbooks

Rating 4.0
Price:

$5.99

Summary

For learners of languages that use unfamiliar writing systems, the Lang Workbooks series can be a helpful and practical way to master the intricacies of writing in their target languages. Among numerous other writing systems, the series includes the Korean, Russian Cyrillic, and Armenian alphabets; Persian and Thai script; the Hindi Devanāgarī abugida; Chinese characters; and Japanese Hiragana and Katakana. The series also covers languages that use the Latin alphabet with diacritical (accent) marks, such as French, German, and Portuguese. Many books in the series have been translated into other languages, such as Italian, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese. The series also covers writing systems that may have fewer available resources for learners, such as Lao script and the Cherokee syllabary. Each book in the series presents its featured writing system with suggested pronunciations. The practice pages in each workbook have useful features for each letter, symbol, or character, such as a recommended stroke order, font variations, example words, and a “Trace and Learn” section. Each workbook is relatively inexpensive. In addition, the publishers of the series have granted teachers and students a license to make photocopies of the workbook pages for personal use, so you can get unlimited chances to practice. Considering the depth of information in each language’s workbook, the books in this series can provide great value for learners.

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