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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.

Visit Speechling

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.

 

Visit Oxford Dictionaries

The 19 Best Podcasts For Learning Russian Regardless Of Your Level

How many ways are there to learn Russian? That question may be unanswerable, but what’s certain is that there are enough to appeal to learners of all types.

Visual learners may appreciate educational YouTube channels, those that appreciate a highly organized approach may prefer online courses, and on-the-go learners could opt for language-learning apps.

This post will explore an oft-overlooked learning strategy — podcasts. Podcasts offer many benefits as language-learning tools: they’re often free or inexpensive, they can provide extensive listening practice on just about every topic imaginable, and they’re extremely portable.

We’ve combed the internet in search of the best podcasts for learners of Russian and have organized them by level. No matter where you are on your Russian-language journey, there’s likely a podcast that’s perfect for you — find yours in the list below!

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22 Top-Quality YouTube Channels for Learning Russian

If you’re interested in learning Russian and are one of the over 2 billion users that access YouTube every month, you’re already familiar with an incredibly potent language-learning tool.

YouTube is full of language teachers and Russian speakers creating content for free consumption. Videos can be a particularly effective way to get Russian practice because they are engaging, provide visual connections to the language, and can facilitate both listening and reading practice.

Many YouTube videos also take advantage of multilingual subtitles, which can help learners interact with Russian content that may be slightly above their level.

Whether you’re an absolute beginner who’s ready to jump into Russian or a more advanced learner looking for quality practice, we’ve got you covered — we’ve scoured the internet to find quality YouTube channels for Russian learners at every level. Use the list below to get started with your new favorite channel.

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13 Top-Rated Russian Courses for All Levels

Why would you ever learn Russian unless you had to? It’s got a confusing writing system, and it isn’t that useful anyway, right? Not quite.

While the Cyrillic alphabet may be daunting in appearance, it can reliably be learned in just one or two days. The fact that many of the letters resemble those in the Latin alphabet and that the language is much more phonetic than English are two big helps.

There are also plenty of ways knowing Russian could come in handy. It’s the most widely spoken language in Europe, the official language of four countries, and a lingua franca in many more. An understanding of Russian will also open up opportunities to learn other Slavic languages more quickly, like Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Polish.

Still not convinced? How about the chance to read renowned Russian literature in its original form, take a Russian-language architecture tour in Moscow, cruise the Trans-Siberian Railway, or simply deepen your relationship with vodka? 

Whatever your reasons for learning Russian, there are plenty of courses out there that can get you speaking the language. However, no two courses are created equal, and many are simply not very good. 

To help learners find the best courses for them, we’ve gone through the extensive list of resources we’ve tried and have listed the best of the best here. Only courses that we’ve rated 3.5/5 or above (with one exception) have made the cut. There’s a little bit of everything in this list, and we hope you’ll find something that feels just right.

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Best Apps for Learning Russian in 2022 – We’ve Tested Dozens

Russian language learners, rejoice — there are scores of great learning resources available to you. In fact, you’re more likely to be paralyzed by the number of good options out there than to struggle to find something that suits your needs.

It’s important to remember in your search that the most popular language resources aren’t always the best; a superb marketing strategy doesn’t necessarily equal outstanding quality.

In this post, we’ll focus on apps that aim to help learners with Russian. We’ve tried a ton of them and have sorted them by what they do best, but it’s by no means an exhaustive list. It should, however, narrow the field enough to help you find some great tools.

Russian Courses as Apps

Best Lesson Structure: Babbel

Best for Practicing Oral Communication: Pimsleur

Best Interactive Course: Lingodeer

Apps for Learning Vocabulary

Best for Fun, Engaging Practice: Memrise

Best for Customizable Practice: Anki

Best for Learning Words in Context: Lingvist

Best Free Way to Learn Words in Context: Clozemaster

Best Offline Dictionary Apps: ABBYY Lingvo and Linguee

Apps for Reading and Listening Practice

Best Lessons in the Style of a Podcast: RussianPod101

Best for Interesting Reading Content: LingQ and Readlang

Best Free Reading Content: Manga Method

Best for Side-by-Side Reading Practice: Beelinguapp

Apps for Speaking and Writing Practice

Best for Feedback on Pronunciation: Speechling

Best for Feedback on Writing: italki

Best Q&A App: HiNative

Best for Learning Russian Cyrillic: Cyrillic (Russian Language)

Apps for Tutors and Language Exchange

Best Language Exchange Apps: Tandem and HelloTalk

Best for Finding a Tutor: italki

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Mondly Review – Made Significant Improvements 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.

Visit Mondly

To see all of our favorite programs, online subscriptions, apps, podcasts and YouTubes for the language you’re learning, look for your language in the table below.

Most Recommend Resources By Language
ChineseSpanishGermanFrenchItalian
PortugueseKoreanRussianJapaneseArabic

First Impressions

I’ve previously tried out several language learning apps like Duolingo, Busuu, Babbel, and Mango Languages, that on the surface seem to be fairly similar to Mondly.

However, after testing out Mondly for a few different languages, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Immediately, I felt that their interface wasn’t very intuitive to use and the aesthetics were underwhelming.

I wish I could say that Mondly makes up for it with quality content, but that just wasn’t the case. It was nothing special and, in my opinion, below average compared to similar platforms.

There is a pathway for users to follow, but it seems a bit random. For instance, parts of the body is the last topic covered and that comes after the vocabulary related to emergencies.

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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.

Visit Lang Workbooks

LingQ Review – Extensive Reading Made Easy

LingQ

Rating 4.0
★★★★★

Summary

LingQ is a language-learning platform that focuses on extensive reading for over 30 different languages. You can import your own content or choose from the community library of books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more.

The app highlights unknown words across every lesson and makes them reviewable via different types of SRS flashcards. The more you read, the more accurately you will be able to identify content that is suitable for your level.

Although I did not find it beneficial for languages I had never studied before, I think LingQ can be helpful for upper-beginner to advanced language learners who enjoy reading. It is especially helpful if you struggle to find graded readers in your target language.

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

The LingQ reading app is enjoyable in most languages, easy to use, and can expand your vocabulary. However, I found the user content frustrating to navigate.

Thoroughness 4.0
★★★★★

With the import function, users can choose to study almost anything they want.

Value 4.0
★★★★★

Now that other apps provide similar functions, the monthly subscription may be a bit overpriced. However, the yearly subscription seems fair.

I Like
  • I can easily import almost any material I want to study.
  • I can use SRS flashcards to quiz new words from a specific page.
  • Each lesson in the library displays the percentage of known and unknown words based on my reading history.
  • There are many dictionaries to choose from for definitions.
I Don’t Like
  • Reviewing words is chaotic. Every word you look up gets added to a huge queue that quickly becomes unmanageable.
  • The extra features are overpriced and can be found other places for cheaper.
  • Very little of the content is original. Much of it was uploaded by users from other places.
  • The free version is extremely limited.
Price

Premium membership costs $12.99/mo, $71.94/half-year, $107.88/year, $191.76/2-years; single-language lifetime membership costs $199

VISIT LINGQ

When I first signed up for LingQ, I wasn’t very impressed. Its seemingly random lesson library, filled with custom cover photos and inconsistent title formats, made me want to click on just about anything to get away from that page.

However, after exploring every function I could find, I realized that the reading tool has several useful functions for anyone trying to learn a language through extensive reading. Most importantly, it makes reading in other languages feel manageable.

The site has three main pages: Lessons, Tutors, and Community. Within them, you can find free and purchasable lessons, coins, an avatar, writing exchanges, a community forum, audio playlists, and challenges.

I mostly used LingQ for reading in Spanish and dabbled in French, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and Korean.

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OPLingo Mini-Review: Community Driven, Non-Profit

OPLingo

Rating 3.5
★★★
★
★★
Price:

Freemium, Premium Subscriptions cost $6.99/mo, $60/Year

Summary

OPLingo is a community-oriented, non-profit language learning site. It essentially combines the functions of LingQ, LangCorrect, Readlang, iTalki, and HelloTalk. The free version gives you limited access to some functions, but by paying for a membership you support ethical causes — such as building a primary school in Tanzania. You can browse user-contributed texts or easily import your own YouTube videos, articles, or ebooks into the Reading Tool. OPLingo has also developed hundreds of audio conversations in several languages, including Tagalog, Cebuano, Thai, Swahili, and Russian. Within each page, you can read a transcript and get definitions and pronunciations of unknown words. By identifying which words you don’t know, the next passages you read will highlight the number of known or unknown vocabulary words. In their Write & Correct section, you can write in over 100 languages and exchange corrections with other users, although Spanish, French, and English learners have a better chance of receiving corrections than other languages at the moment. You can also practice a language by texting with fellow community members, or by hiring a teacher in your target language. OPLingo has a lot of potential and is a good alternative to LingQ, but it needs a community of learners to help it grow — so check it out!

Visit OPLingo