** 2022 Black Friday Deals are Finished **
Here is our standing ALR Discounts besides the holiday limited-time deals!
Wondering where to learn a new language? Where to start your language learning journey? Or Where will your children will get the best opportunities?
Where in the USA is language learning emphasized? While the USA coastal states are often viewed as the most cosmopolitan, there is one location for language learning that may surprise you. It’s deeply interior and high above sea level.
(more…)Comics, manga, graphic novels: whatever you call them, they’re fun, interesting and can be a great tool for learning a language.
If you raised an eyebrow at that last phrase, I understand why. Comic books might not come with homework or, in most cases, grammar lessons. They don’t feel like serious learning. In fact, you might even consider them a distraction from proper studies.
But don’t write them off too soon. Comics and graphic novels have a surprising number of benefits, and some platforms have even started publishing comics with in-built language-learning tools, from pop-up translations to grammar breakdowns.
Let’s explore the pros and cons of studying a language through comics, as well as the study practices that will help you get the most out of them. We’ll wrap up with a look at the different apps and platforms available to you.
Chatting with someone in your non-native language is one of the scariest yet most rewarding parts of learning a language. You’re stepping out of the airplane, solo sky-diving – but fortunately, with less gory results should you mess up.
Talking to people is, for most of us, the reason why we’ve spent hours studying courses, poring over grammar charts and doing pronunciation drills until our throats hurt.
And ironically, when we finally start talking to people, those courses and grammar charts tend to get much easier.
So, although it’s scary, language exchanges are worth doing. Remember, nobody really cares if you make a mistake. We’re all language-learners here. We’ve all muddled our sentence structure and failed to understand questions.
And when an exchange goes well, it is amazing. You’ll share experiences, make friends and feel your confidence in the language grow.
Thanks to the internet, there’s no shortage of places to find a language partner, join in with an existing language group or even get feedback from other language-learners. Let’s look at how to make the most of a language exchange site or app, the options available to you and what sets them apart.
I am text block. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
italki is a market leader for online language classes, and it’s easy to understand why: it has a huge range of teachers for everything from Arabic to Zulu; it’s cheap; and the app has some fantastic community features, including free feedback on your writing and audio clips.
However, italki isn’t for everyone. Perhaps you’re fed up with all the hidden fees and payment idiosyncrasies that make you feel like you’re buying tickets from a budget airline. Maybe you don’t like choosing between the buggy italki Classroom and Skype. Or it could be that you’re looking for a platform that offers more structured learning, whether it’s a syllabus, flashcards, or simply regular feedback on your level.
Fortunately, if you’re getting frustrated with italki, there are plenty of competitor platforms to choose from. Let’s take a look at some of our favorite italki alternatives and what sets them apart.
Duolingo is one of the most popular and well-known language apps around, and it’s not hard to understand why: it’s free, easy to use, and will teach you over 30 languages.
Yet Duolingo isn’t everyone’s ideal app. Perhaps you’re looking for something that will teach you traveling phrases right off the bat, instead of Duolingo classics such as “the duck is swimming in money” and “the groom is a hedgehog.” Maybe you’re looking for more grammatical information or better audio. Or it could be that Duolingo doesn’t teach your language (or is pretty bad at it).
In fact, even if you like Duolingo, you might find your language studies will benefit from using it alongside another app. Let’s take a look at some of the other gamified phone apps that will help you learn a language in just five minutes a day.
Lexilize is an SRS flashcard application that adds slightly more interaction than the average SRS app. When you learn each deck, you will engage in matching, guessing, recall, and typing activities to test your memory. You can later choose specific activities for review, making it somewhat more engaging than simply flipping over the card and seeing if you got it right or not.
When you add a language, you can add default categories, like fruits or feelings — however, it’s probably best to make your own set of flashcards, as these probably won’t help you learn to speak a language very efficiently.
For each new card you add, you can insert a transcription, example sentence, and image to your card. Lexilize seems to automatically insert text-to-voice, so if you don’t mind listening to a robot, this feature can be useful.
Another option is Anki, whose user interface is a little outdated but 100% free. Brainscape is also comparable to Lexilize, but they each have their own strengths. While Lexilize has a variety of flashcard activities, Brainscape only has one type of card. However, Brainscape’s free decks for language learning teach you words and phrases that build on each other as they advance, rather than just focusing on simple vocabulary. Brainscape also has refined the SRS system by letting you identify your recall strength on a 5-point scale, while Lexilize only lets you identify ‘forgotten’ or ‘recalled’.
Lingbe is like chat roulette for language learning, instantly initiating voice calls between users who want to practice or help others learn different languages. After your call with another user, you can choose to become friends on the app and continue to message or call each other (although calling them still requires Lingos). As this app was created for Spanish and English speakers, learners of other languages may have more difficulty finding someone to practice with. However, the community is growing, so it may not be difficult for long.
Although it may be an introvert’s nightmare, this app might be the fastest way to practice languages with native speakers. By helping other users learn your native language, you can earn ‘lingos’ and then trade them in to practice your target language. You receive more lingos per minute by answering calls in your native language than in a practice language. Because making calls costs the most Lingos, you will probably spend more time speaking your native language than practicing your target languages. However, you can also earn lingos by answering questions or by increasing your level (through helping more people).
The Pro version seems to give you access to unlimited calls, take away ads, and let you know who you are talking to as soon as the voice call starts.
Unlike Tandem, which sometimes feels more like a dating app than a language exchange site, Amikumu’s users seem to be serious language learners looking to connect with other serious language learners. There are community chats and private messages, and users can arrange to meet in person (or online) to practice their skills. This is an awesome app for people who are travelling (or at home) and want to find fellow language learners.
The Amikumu community is mostly composed of polyglots, with an average of 5 languages per person. If you have been looking for a platform to practice minority languages, this is the place for you! The site was originally created for Esperanto learners, but has over 650 languages within the community, including several dialects of sign language.
Amikumu will display 100 people who are geographically closest to you that speak at least one of the languages you are learning; even if no one is physically nearby, you will always have someone to chat with through the app. Moreover, with a Gold membership you can ‘teleport’ your location and chat with people anywhere in the world.
