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German

Verbling Review: Online Classes With Helpful Revision Tools

Verbling

Rating 4.6

Summary

Verbling is an online language-class marketplace where you can take lessons with teachers of your choice. It has some student-friendly extra features, including a built-in online classroom, flashcards, homework calendar, and a filing system for lesson materials. There are also useful but disorganized forums where you can discuss languages, share writing for critique, and do free language drills and exercises.

The lessons are generally high quality and well structured, plus the filters make it easy to find teachers who specialize in everything from accent reduction to interview preparation. 

However, it can be slightly pricier than alternatives, so if you’re on a tight budget, you may want to look elsewhere. It also has fewer languages than some of the bigger competitors, so it might not be a good choice if you want to study Azerbaijani, Khmer, or Yoruba.


Quality 4.5

There are some less experienced teachers, but I found the lessons to be more consistently high quality than on italki.

Thoroughness 5.0

The classroom technology, flashcards, and filing system are fantastic for learners and easy to use.

Value 4.5

Some teachers charge more than on italki, but you get better classroom technology, more privacy, and fewer disorganized teachers.

I Like
  • I quickly found great teachers.
  • The platform’s extra features, such as teacher-made, personalized flashcards, help you review the material learned in each lesson.
  • It seems focused on long-term progression as well as immediate student satisfaction.
  • You don’t have to give out your contact details, thanks to the classroom technology.
I Don’t Like
  • Some teachers don’t use the platform’s flashcards and materials system.
  • There are fewer languages available than on italki.
  • You can only pay in US dollars, plus there’s a hidden fee.
  • The forums need more moderation.
Price

Prices are set by the teacher and range from $5 to $75 for an hour-long lesson. You can get discounts for buying packs of 5, 10, or 20 lessons with a teacher. Every student gets one free trial lesson, after which they’re $6 each.

I’ve got a confession to make: italki is one of my least favorite online language-learning resources. However, it was my go-to option for a long time, and I understand why people love it: it’s cheap, has teachers in nearly every language imaginable, and the app has a bunch of extra community features.

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StoryLearning Olly Richards 101 Conversations Mini Review: Practical

Olly Richards 101 Conversations

Rating 3.7
Price:

Kindle books cost $0.99

Summary

Olly Richards, the creator of I Will Teach You A Language, has written a series of books for beginner and intermediate learners to improve their conversation skills in several languages. He also has a Short Stories series, but this review focuses on 101 Conversations. His 101 Conversations series has a beginner and intermediate book for every language, though both books are appropriate for level A2 on the CEFR scale. You will learn natural phrases that you can use in everyday conversation through following the story of six people. Each chapter has a dialogue between some of these characters, which you can engage with through the practical learning methods that Olly outlines at the beginning of each book. While the first chapter in the first book may have one-sentence exchanges, the characters get chattier and the grammar becomes more complex as you continue reading. Overall, Olly’s 101 Conversations series is fun to follow, particularly because each book sets out to solve a mystery. They are less expensive than his Short Stories series, but also contain less content (there are no comprehension questions or summaries at the end of the chapters, but there are short vocabulary lists). Nevertheless, both are probably a good investment to advance your conversational Spanish abilities.

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DeerPlus Mini Review: Fun Supplementary App

DeerPlus

Rating 3.7
Price:

Freemium; $8.99/month, $35.99/year, $59.99/lifetime

Summary

DeerPlus, also known as LingoDeer Plus, is a cute, gamified app from the makers of Lingodeer. It sets out to teach you words, phrases, and grammar through 11 different games, but it’s best used as a supplementary tool. You’ll drill vocabulary, build phrases, select the right particles, decide if a sentence is grammatically correct or not, do conjugation exercises, answer listening comprehension questions, and more. What you won’t do is learn the material prior to being tested like you do with LingoDeer (review), DeerPlus’ sister app.  DeerPlus is a fun supplementary tool that would work well alongside most resources, but especially LingoDeer. However, it’s a shame that there aren’t SRS features in what is essentially a review app. A word of warning: you can study in a range of languages, but not all the games have been translated. We were shocked when we switched from studying Japanese via Spanish to Japanese via English and discovered grammar and “integrated” games in addition to the five vocabulary and phrase-based ones we had been playing.

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Learn German DeutschAkademie Mini Review: Grammar Only

Learn German DeutschAkademie

Rating 3.5
Price:

Free

Summary

Learn German by DeutschAkademie is a simple, free app that offers grammar exercises for levels A1 – C1 on the CEFR scale. It was designed by German Language teachers at the DeutschAkademie, a German language school in Germany. The app is not a standalone resource to learn German, but rather a supplement to your current German studies to help you practice grammar. You can choose exercises based on your level, a specific grammar topic, or one of 70 common textbooks.  Beginners may struggle to use this app, as there are no grammar exercises or English translations beyond the home page. Additionally, there are no instructions for how to respond to the questions, so you will have to use context from the multiple-choice answers to understand what the question is asking. Overall, Learn German by DeutschAkademie is a useful tool to practice grammar, but if you are looking for a course that will teach you how to speak, read, write, and understand German, you may want to look elsewhere. Deutsche Welle is another free option with short courses and activities, while Lingoni, and Smarter German offer comprehensive courses. 

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André Klein Mini Review: Graded Readers for German Learners

André Klein Graded Readers

Rating 4.0
Price:

Kindle books range from $2.99 – $3.43

Summary

The André Klein Graded Readers can help build reading skills for German learners at different levels through fun, easily digestible stories. The books are structured to be accessible for learners, while teaching vocabulary in the context of phrases (rather than isolated words). Lower-level beginners might like the Learning German With Stories And Pictures series or the Learn German With Less Text, More Fun series, both of which intersperse short sentences with numerous drawings depicting their meaning. Upper-level beginners might prefer to start with the Dino lernt Deutsch (Dino Learns German) series, which uses simple vocabulary and repetition of related phrases for reinforcement. Intermediate learners can try the Baumgartner & Momsen detective series. Aschkalon, a fantasy adventure series, was written for advanced learners. It seems fairly easy to follow the stories. The multiple-choice questions after each text help you gauge your understanding. The glossaries tend to be formatted as large text blocks of German phrases and English definitions, which can be difficult to scan. In the Dino lernt Deutsch series, readers may find the pervasive boldfacing in the texts distracting. For the amount of money and time invested, you can gain better reading comprehension, increase your German vocabulary, and build your confidence as a German learner — all in an entertaining and low-stress way.

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Lingo Mastery Conversational Dialogues Mini Review: Dual-text

Lingo Mastery Conversational Dialogues

Rating 3.5
Price:

Kindle books cost $4.60

Summary

Lingo Mastery provides over 100 short dialogues in a series of advanced beginner books (about A2 on the CEFR scale) for various languages.  Lingo Mastery’s Conversational Dialogues doesn’t take the immersive approach that you will find in other graded readers. Instead, they provide a full English translation of each text. There are no vocabulary lists or comprehension questions like in their Short Stories series, but you will read conversations that take place in over a hundred different scenarios. If your goal is to accumulate vocabulary based on situations that you may encounter in your everyday life, then Lingo Mastery is probably a good investment. If you want to follow real-life conversations that are part of a continuous story, you may want to check out Olly Richards’ 101 Conversations. Also, if you are looking for a series of books that will keep you captivated, Mandarin Companion and ESLC provide graded readers that simplify famous stories into Chinese and Spanish. If you do decide to invest in these readers, make sure to buy the Kindle version, which is about 20% of the paperback price. There are also previews available on Amazon.

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StoryLearning Olly Richards Short Stories Mini Review: Practical

Olly Richards Short Stories

Rating 4.0
Price:

Kindle books start at $6.55

Summary

Olly Richards, the creator of I Will Teach You A Language, has written a series of short stories for high-beginners to improve their reading skills in several languages. He also has a 101 Conversations series, but this review focuses on his Short Stories. Most of the languages use the most common words in your target language, with natural phrases that you would overhear locals using while conversing amongst each other. In every language, the plot follows the same characters and adventures, with some adjustments for cultural differences. The intro to each book provides a practical overview of how to maximize your learning. At the end of each chapter, you will see a summary of the plot, a vocabulary list of new words (that are also bolded in the stories), and comprehension questions. The comprehension questions are simple, allowing you to find the responses directly in the text. Overall, the Kindle version of Olly’s short stories seems worth the investment for upper beginners to improve their language abilities. If you’re learning Chinese, check out the Mandarin Companion series. Also, A1 – A2 Spanish learners can enjoy several short novels in the ESLC and Read It! series.

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Lingo Mastery Short Stories Mini-Review: Lots of Unique Words

Lingo Mastery Short Stories

Rating 3.7
Price:

Kindle Books cost $4.60

Summary

Lingo Mastery provides 20 short stories in a series of advanced beginner books (about A2 on the CEFR scale) for various languages. Each book has a vocabulary list, reading comprehension questions, and a summary in both English and the target language.   If your primary goal is to acquire new vocabulary, then Lingo Mastery’s Short Story series may be helpful to increase your skills. Each chapter has a specific language focus, such as directions, verbs, nouns, or activities. These stories have a considerable number of unique words, so you may find yourself referring to the vocabulary list more frequently than in other graded readers. Keep in mind that the stories are not as engaging as a novel you might read in your native tongue, but the repetition is helpful to familiarize you with different concepts. Other graded readers, like those by Olly Richards, ESLC, and Mandarin Companion follow a single storyline — each chapter in Lingo Mastery, however, follows a separate storyline. Therefore, although the chapters are a manageable length, finishing one may not make you eager to move onto the next. If you do decide to invest in these readers, make sure to buy the Kindle version, which is about 20% of the paperback price.

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Internet Polyglot Mini-Review: Word Lists With Games

Internet Polyglot

Rating 1.3
Price:

Free

Summary

Internet Polyglot is a website for memorizing vocabulary words in dozens of languages. It has 44 “lessons” that cover topics like cars, time, religion, politics, feelings, measurements, and more. Each lesson is essentially a word list with native speaker pronunciation, an English translation, and a link to a picture to help you remember each word. There are picture games, matching games, guessing games, and typing games, plus a word search and a slide show that reviews all of the words in the lesson. Given that none of the vocabulary words in Internet Polyglot are taught using example sentences or context, learning vocabulary using this site may not be the best use of your time. You are probably better off using Anki to curate personalized vocabulary lists and downloading native speaker audio files from Forvo to accompany your flashcards. Nevertheless, you may find it useful if all you are looking for is a site that already has lists of vocabulary words with native speaker audio. If you are looking for audio files for less commonly-studied languages in context, you can check out iLoveLanguages.

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Complete Language Lessons Mini Review: Almost Useless

Complete Language Lessons

Rating 0.2
Price:

$8.99 for the CD/$1.29 per track on Amazon, free on Spotify

Summary

Complete Language Lessons has audio courses for numerous languages on Amazon, Spotify, and Deezer. We tried out the Swahili audio course, Learn Swahili Easily, Effectively, and Fluently – and were extremely disappointed. The audio tracks we sampled consist of Swahili phrases repeated over and over again, with no translations, explanations, or anything in English. The audio quality isn’t great, either, and the occasional muted club music adds to the bizarreness.  It feels to us like the audio tracks are supposed to accompany a textbook, but we couldn’t find one. If one existed at some point, we suspect it’s no longer available. If you already speak the language and are looking for native audio recordings to help you improve your listening and pronunciation, you might get some value out of Complete Language Lessons. However, if your aim is learn the language, we would skip these CDs.

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