Optilingo Mini-Review: Use if You Absolutely Love Slideshows

optilingo

Rating 1.5

★

★★★★

Price:

$11.99/mo, $23.97/quarter, $41.94/half-year, $71.88/year

Summary

Optilingo is essentially a phrase-bank in slideshow form. Each of the 20 languages available includes 100 lessons, none of which contain information about the topic or learning goals during the writing of this review. You can expect to listen to a series of phrases, and then review (what seems like) the last 45 phrases you have learned before moving onto the next lesson. The phrases are not in flashcard form — instead, they are in a slideshow with both the English and the target language displayed together. Optilingo advertises learning and practicing with over 29 hours worth of phrases, and while you can surely practice with their phrase-bank, actually learning to speak any of the languages offered using their platform is questionable. If you are keen on language learning, check out our bank of reviews for other resources.

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Anki Mini-Review: The Go-To SRS Flashcard App

Anki

Rating 4.1

★★★★

★

Price:

Free

Summary

It is the go-to app for free (except on iOS) Spaced Repetition System (SRS) flashcards. It has a simple user interface with various features that more hard-core users can dive into if they choose. Your flashcards will appear according to your natural forgetting curve; the app will test you in increasingly spaced out intervals, with more difficult cards appearing more than once in a session, while easier cards spacing out over weeks — or even months and years. An SRS system is the most effective way to drive information into your long-term memory. The cards can sync between the web, desktop app, and mobile versions to keep your flashcards updated and with you at all times. You can add images and audio clips to your cards and change the text formatting (if you use it on your computer). One feature unique to Anki, as opposed to other SRS flashcard apps, is the “Cloze deletion” function, which allows you to block out parts of your card and create a “fill-in-the-blanks” type card format. If you want a resource for how to make effective flashcards, check out the book, FluentForever. The author leaves a whole section dedicated to understanding how to use your Anki deck to advance your skills quickly.

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Paul Noble Mini-Review: Great for Beginners

Paul Noble

Rating 4.2

★★★★

★

Price:

Complete Audiobooks start at $14.95 on Audible, or 1 Audible credit

Summary

Paul Noble’s audiobook series is for beginners or upper-beginners who want to gain confidence in their target language. There are also crash courses for those who will soon be heading off on a business trip or holiday. The series focuses on cognates (words that are similar in both English and your target language) in order to build your vocabulary more efficiently. It also seems to have been inspired by Michel Thomas’ courses (with a few improvements). Paul introduces vocabulary and gets you to make new sentences through problem solving. For example, he may introduce a sentence, then ask you to make a new sentence using your current knowledge and the new words you have just learned. Although the narrators move a bit slowly, the consistent interaction between you and the material ensures that you won’t get bored. Because Paul breaks down the rules of each language in such a simple and concise way, you can feel confident in building new sentences by yourself.

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Encore!!! Language Learning Mini-Review: Basically a Phrasebook

Encore!!! Language Learning

Rating 1.5

★

★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

Encore!!! Language Learning allows you to listen to playlists of common phrases, vocabulary, conjugations, and dialogues. It varies in terms of whether it uses native speakers or automated text-to-voice. The app is basically a phrasebook that allows you to practice translating sentences to and from your native language, or simply repeat after an audio in your target language. You can listen to a pre-made playlist, mute or unmute certain phrases within a playlist, adjust the number of repetitions of each phrase, or create your own playlist. You can also test your memory with the Test tool by reading prompts in your native language and translating into your target language. The app seems to focus more on understanding grammar structures than other phrasebook sites like Optilingo or Lingohut. Technically you could learn something by repeating the phrases aloud, but there are many other free apps that provide a clearer learning path and have a more intuitive interface than Encore!!! Language Learning.

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CaptionPop Mini-Review: Use The Free Version

Caption Pop

Rating 4.0

★★★★★

Price:

Free, Premium subscriptions start at $10/mo

Summary

With CaptionPop you can use YouTube videos to pursue your language learning endeavours using subtitles in both your target language and native language. Tap a single key to repeat the last caption, slow down the playback speed, and bookmark subtitles to study with SRS interactive flashcards. The flashcards will not just have you memorize words, but practice dictations with immediate feedback on your accuracy. Unfortunately there are currently some bugs in the programming, and you may only hear part of the caption you are being asked to transcribe. You can search for Youtube videos in your target language within the CaptionPop platform, but only those videos with subtitles in both your target language and your native language are available. This means that you will rely on captions translated and transcribed by the video’s creators, which improves your language learning experience but restricts the amount of available Youtube content. Nevertheless, there is a good amount of content from popular channels in more common languages. The free version of the platform combined with self-made Anki cards may be a better option than subscribing to the premium version, as the bugs in CaptionPop’s programming may not be worth the monthly payment.

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Rocket French Review – Solid But Boring

Rocket French

Rating 3.7

★★★

★

★★

Summary

Rocket Languages offers courses in a number of languages, some of which aren’t great, while others are pretty solid. Rocket French is neither amazing nor terrible, it’s pretty good. The content is structured well and gives you lots of opportunities to practice what you’ve learned. But, their lessons can be rather bland, with a large emphasis on rote memorization drills.

Quality 3.5

★★★

★

★★

The lessons aren’t very exciting, but you’ll learn from them, and they’re designed well.

Thoroughness 4.0

★★★★★

The course structure is solid and includes lots of explanations.

Value 3.5

★★★

★

★★

The price tag for the lessons is relatively high but justifiable.

I Like

The emphasis on speaking skills
The good mix of speaking and grammar focus found in the audio lessons
Leaderboard and streak system

I Don’t Like

It’s fairly expensive
The voice recognition isn’t reliable enough to depend on
The lessons can be repetitive and monotonous

Price

Level 1 costs $149.95, Levels 1 and 2 cost $299.90, all three levels together costs $449.85.

Try a free trial of Rocket French

At All Language Resources, our first exposure to Rocket Languages was with Rocket Chinese, which succeeded in lowering our expectations of Rocket French.

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Instant Immersion Mini-Review: No Longer a Good Investment

Instant Immersion

Rating 2.0

★★★★★

Price:

1 level costs $29.95, 3 levels cost $44.95

Summary

Instant Immersion offers programs in over 120 languages, narrated by native speakers. It claims to help you build your vocabulary, converse with ease, and perfect your pronunciation. It has interactive activities on the computer, interactive games you can play with your family on a DVD, and MP3 files for your car. Their topics include food, shopping, restaurants, animals, numbers, etc. In other words, Instant Immersion will probably not help you if you are looking to have immediately applicable conversations A common trend in many reviews is the lack of structure in these courses. While other courses build on what you have previously learned and help you learn vocabulary relevant to your everyday life, Instant Immersion seems to provide a large amount of information without transitions or a clear learning path. There is a lot of content, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you will learn a lot. Instant Immersion may have been a good investment several years ago, but now there are many other options for affordable, quality language learning.

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Daily French Pod Review: Bite-Sized Listening Comprehension

Daily French Pod

Rating 4.5

★★★★

★

Price:

Free

Summary

Daily French Podcast is a series of short 4-5 minute podcasts developed by a team of educators — all with a Master’s Degree in French as a foreign language. The narrator will read a short fact about current events, history, or culture. He will then repeat it, then deconstruct the new words. You will hear examples of how to use the words in different contexts, and also an explanation of the tenses of various verbs. Whether or not he translates words into English varies, but even with the translations it would seem that 98% of each episode is in French. He speaks relatively slowly, but some of the vocabulary is more advanced; intermediate learners would benefit from the new vocabulary, while the content would probably help upper-beginner learners advance their listening comprehension. The creators also have a series of other podcasts for more advanced learners and native speakers. You can learn about culture, science, health, history, travel, tech, and more in 1 to 3 minute segments. Check them out here.

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Readlang Mini-Review: A Must-Have For Language Lovers

Readlang

Rating 4.5

★★★★

★

Price:

Freemium, Premium subscriptions start at $5/mo

Summary

With Readlang as your Google Chrome Extension, you can have instant translations for words or sentences in over 45 languages at the tip of your mouse cursor (or fingertip)! Browse the internet and effortlessly click on unknown words to get a translation that stays on your screen until it is no longer needed. If you can’t find anything to read on the internet, you can access a bank of public texts organized by word count and difficulty, browse the most popular websites for Readlang users, or upload your own text to study. If you read on the Readlang website, you can see words that you have previously translated highlighted across every text. Readlang collects SRS flashcards for you from words that you have translated. It will only record the most useful words for you to practice based on word frequency lists, which could be either a pro or a con depending on your study goals. Each flashcard also includes audio pronunciation and the sentence from which the word was taken. You can choose to reveal the flashcard to check your comprehension, or type in your response for more effective recall. The free version provides enough for the casual user, but upgrading to an affordable premium membership allows unlimited phrase translations and unknown word highlighting across texts. Although there may be some problems with translations in beta languages, and sometimes it fails to recognize text, overall Readlang is an excellent resource for language lovers.

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Quizlet Mini-Review: A Flashcard/Quiz App for Many Languages

Quizlet

Rating 3.2

★★★

★

★★

Price:

$ 0.00

Summary

Quizlet is a flashcard-based learning system. Community-contributed flashcards are available for numerous languages. These vary in quality, but you can preview them to see how well they meet your needs. Each set of flashcards powers other activities: In Learn mode, you demonstrate your mastery of each word or phrase by using multiple choice to select the correct definition. There are also spelling and writing exercises. The spelling exercises can be frustrating, as they sometimes require the addition of alternate word endings that are not always pronounced by the speaker. A space-themed word game and a “Concentration”-style matching game inject some extra fun into your study time. Recent changes to Quizlet mean that you are now required to sign in to use the flashcard sets. As Quizlet is now promoting two premium plans — the modestly priced “Quizlet Plus” and the less-expensive “Quizlet Go” — you may encounter several promotions for these paid versions. We have not tried the paid tier at this time. Overall, Quizlet can be a fun, effective way to learn new vocabulary. It has the tools to help with auditory comprehension and spelling in your target language. It covers many languages, even some harder-to-find ones. However, not all of the flashcard sets are high quality.

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