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An Honest Review of iTalki With Image of Man Working on Computer

italki Review – The Good, The Bad, & The Just Alright

italki

Rating 4.5
★★★★
★
★

Summary

italki is the most flexible and affordable place to find a tutor for the language you’re learning. They have a huge number of teachers offering classes to students of over 100 different languages. As a learner, you’ll be able to find a tutor that best fits your learning style, schedule, and personality. Teachers are able to set their own prices and make their own schedule.

Quality 4.5
★★★★
★
★

You’ll find everyone from long-time professionals to brand new teachers.

Thoroughness 4.0
★★★★★

The overall platform has tons of useful features but also some room for improvement.

Value 5.0
★★★★★

Huge number of teachers, low prices, and flexible scheduling.

I Like
  • There are large numbers of teachers available even for less common languages.
  • You can find skilled teachers even at low prices.
  • The flexibility to schedule lessons whenever convenient. The huge number of teachers guarantees you’ll find someone to fit your schedule.
  • The extra features in the italki Community make it easy to ask questions, get your writing checked, and find a free language exchange partner.
I Don’t Like
  • Community features are only available through the app.
  • You may need to try several tutors before finding one that fits your learning and personality style.
  • It’s easy to not take classes as often as you should.
Price

The prices vary by teacher and language with some being as low as $5 and others as high as $60 per hour. Most will fall somewhere near the $10 per hour range. Right now italki is offering a $10 credit with your first purchase.

BUY 1 ITALKI LESSON GET 1 FREE

It’s very rare for me to recommend a particular resource for everyone, regardless of the language that they’re studying. Usually each language will have their own unique resources that are great specifically for students of that language.

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italki Review – The Good, The Bad, & The Just Alright Read More »

Bluebird Languages Mini-Review: Over 160 Languages Available

Bluebird Languages

Rating 2.5
★★
★
★★★
Price:

Free, Premium subscriptions cost $13.99/mo, $144.99/year

Summary

Bluebird Languages has several types of lessons you can choose from, including a daily lesson, core vocabulary, essential verbs, creating sentences, powerful phrases, and conversation. Each topic seems to have a beginner, intermediate, and advanced lesson, although it’s not clear how advanced “advanced” is. In each lesson, an English-speaking narrator will ask you to listen to and repeat translations of various phrases. The recordings in each language seem to use native speakers’ voices, which is quite the feat considering they have lessons in over 160 languages. Bluebird Languages’ phrases don’t construct a replicable dialogue, so the phrases don’t seem to have a lot of context other than the topic at hand. Furthermore, the topics seem to be identical in all languages, so most of the phrases will not be culture-specific. They also don’t break down complicated pronunciation, but you can try to break it down yourself by slowing down the recording to 0.5x speed. Bluebird Languages seems similar to Pimsleur but appears less organized and will probably not improve your communication abilities as quickly. Nevertheless, it may be a good free alternative for beginners, and the program will probably help you develop some confidence in speaking languages that have less challenging pronunciation. The conversation and personalized lessons require a monthly membership, but there is enough free content that these add-ons may not be necessary.

Visit Bluebird Languages

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Brainscape Mini-Review: Adaptive Flashcards

Brainscape

Rating 4.0
★★★★★
Price:

Freemium, Premium subscriptions start at $9.99/mo

Summary

Brainscape is a flashcard app that uses a Spaced Repetition System, also often referred to as ‘adaptive flashcards’, to help you memorize new vocabulary and facts. It has a team of scientists, engineers, and education experts working to optimize their program for effective learning. Brainscape is quite similar to Anki, but has a more modern and colourful interface. They also have Certified Classes, which are decks that seem to have been developed by experts in the chosen topic. The app adds what they call Intelligent Cumulative Exposure (ICE) to some of their Certified Classes; it seems to combine a Spaced Repetition System with gradually introducing new concepts, increasing the difficulty of the concepts, and providing context so you can build your own sentences. It has several Certified Classes for various languages (and other topics), and many more decks created by users. Unlike Anki, edits that creators make to user decks seem to sync up even after you have downloaded the deck. With the free version, you have limited access to premium decks but unlimited access to user-made decks.

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An Honest Review of Assimil With Image of Woman Reading Book

Assimil Review — A Fresh Look at a Longstanding Resource

Assimil

Rating 4.0
★★★★★

Summary

Assimil is a French company that has been selling language-learning resources since 1929. Assimil materials are available as books, CDs, and downloadable e-courses; there are a variety of available course types, and instruction is based on interacting with phrases in the target language. The popular Sans Peine or, With Ease, courses are for absolute or false beginners that would like to reach the B2 level, but we think you’ll need to incorporate some other study materials to make this happen.

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

The language materials are reliable, the audio is high quality, and the program is fairly easy to use after a bit of practice.

Thoroughness 4.0
★★★★★

Assimil is chock-full of explanations and thorough translations for all material, but you might need more to reach the advertised B2 level.

Value 4.0
★★★★★

There are cheaper resources out there, but Assimil provides super solid instruction for the price.

I Like
  • The audio quality is great.
  • The culture notes add a lot of value.
  • There are plenty of grammar explanations, but they aren’t a focus.
I Don’t Like
  • The mobile app isn’t super intuitive.
  • The pronunciation feedback method could be better.
  • The exercises aren’t especially engaging.
Price

Prices vary by course. The Spanish e-course is €49.90, the Spanish With Ease book (no audio) is €26.90, and the Spanish With Ease Superpack is €74.90

Try Assimil
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Assimil Review — A Fresh Look at a Longstanding Resource Read More »

LangCorrect: Unlimited, Free Writing Practice With Feedback

LangCorrect

Rating 5.0
★★★★★
Price:

Free

Summary

LangCorrect is a free community-driven writing site where users can both contribute to editing others’ work and receive feedback on their own writing. After writing your piece, you may submit it to receive feedback from other site users. In order to ensure accurate feedback, multiple users can cross-check the corrections that were made and add comments. Volunteers and Patrons have access to writing in up to 10 languages, but typical users can write in a maximum of two languages at a time. Everyone is encouraged to both write and correct others’ work on the site. If you are looking to improve your writing skills in one of the over 100 languages available, trying out this resource is a must! However, if you’re studying a less common language and not finding many users to give you corrections, consider trying the exercise section in italki’s community features.

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

Visit LangCorrect

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An Honest Review of Cudoo With Image of Man Working on Computer

Cudoo Review — I Wouldn’t Even Use it if it Were Free

Cudoo

Rating 0.6
★
★★★★★

Summary

Cudoo is an online learning platform that offers courses in over 160 languages. The platform also offers courses teaching soft skills and other professional development courses. Certificates are available upon course completion, and courses are provided to libraries and non-profits for free. We feel that the quality of the language courses is quite low, and that the prices are relatively high.

Quality 1.0
★★★★★

It’s nice to have native speaker audio, but I personally found the course to offer very little learning potential.

Thoroughness 1.0
★★★★★

The course didn’t cover everything listed under “Course Content” and offers no explanations.

Value 0.0
★★★★★

This course is way overpriced in my opinion. I wouldn’t even use it if it were free.

I Like
  • Audio by a variety of native speakers.
I Don’t Like
  • I wanted more explanations
  • Practice opportunities felt severely limited
  • I found the material unengaging
  • Content doesn’t build on itself logically.
Price

Price varies by course, from $4.99 to $24.99, with language bundles costing up to $199.

https://www.alllanguageresources.com/recommends/cudoo/

This seems like a reasonable list of goals, depending on the meaning of “…and more!” even if it is a little bit light for the $25 price tag.

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Cudoo Review — I Wouldn’t Even Use it if it Were Free Read More »

An Honest Review of Speaky With Image of Girl Using Phone

Speaky Review: Better Than Other Language Exchange Apps?

Speaky

Rating 3.7
★★★
★
★★

Summary

Speaky is a social language-learning app for people interested in language exchange. It’s available for iOS, Android, and the web. Users can chat with other language learners, share photos, leave voice messages or even have voice calls. The basic features on Speaky are free to use, but access to more than five translations per day requires a subscription.

Quality 3.0
★★★★★

There are some dedicated language learners on Speaky but not as many as similar apps.

Thoroughness 3.5
★★★
★
★★

The platform is easy to use but lacks advanced features.

Value 4.5
★★★★
★
★

Speaky is mostly free to use, extra features are available for a subscription.

I Like
  • It’s mostly free.
  • It’s easy to use.
  • There are a lot of users.
  • There are tons of languages
I Don’t Like
  • Many community members don’t actually seem interested in language exchange.
  • The web version doesn’t work well.
  • There are no extra social features.
Price

The basic features on Speaky are free to use. A premium membership is available for a subscription.

https://www.alllanguageresources.com/recommends/speaky/

Speaky is a language exchange app. It facilitates exchange by allowing users to chat with others in the language they’re learning. Its function is pretty simple and straightforward — search for a partner with a reciprocal language combination and say hello.

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Speaky Review: Better Than Other Language Exchange Apps? Read More »

An Honest Review of Mango Languages With Image of Girl on Computer

Mango Languages Review – Pretty Good For Beginners

Mango Languages

Rating 3.5
★★★
★
★★

Summary

Mango Languages is a pretty good resource with numerous languages available along with their regional variations.  It’ll work the best for beginners or for those interested in studying a few languages at the same time. Anybody past the intermediate level won’t find Mango Languages very useful.

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

It is well designed, has a beautiful interface, and is intuitive to use.

Thoroughness 3.0
★★★★★

There are some gaps in terms of writing and grammar, along with a lack of materials for intermediate or higher level students.

Value 3.5
★★★
★
★★

The price is fair and will give you access to materials for over 70 languages.

I Like
  • It’s very easy to use and has a slick design.
  • The intense drilling of useful real life sentences and words during lessons will really help you remember them.
  • Cultural and grammar notes incorporated in the lessons are well-prepared to help you understand the language you’re learning better.
  • The subscription gives you access to over 70 languages.
I Don’t Like
  • Most courses finish around the intermediate level with some less popular languages ending before that.
  • There’s not enough grammar practice.
  • During drilling, when a student is prompted to complete a task such as coming up with an appropriate translation of a sentence, the command is read out loud. Listening to someone repeat very similar commands over and over again is tedious.
  • The Google Translate plugin is a rather lazy and disappointing way to give students answers about words or sentences they’d like to translate.
Price

A subscription to Mango Languages costs $14.99 a month or 179.99 yearly.

Visit Mango Languages

Mango Languages has high-quality beginner to intermediate level lessons in tons of different languages.

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An Honest Review of Clozemaster With Image of Boy on Computer

Clozemaster Review: Limited Focus But Fun Way To Grow Vocab

Clozemaster

Rating 4.2
★★★★
★
★

Summary

Ideal for people who are already at an upper beginner/intermediate level, Clozemaster will help you build your vocabulary and learn new words and sentences in context. While you won’t learn much grammar or improve your speaking and writing much, it is great at what it does and the videogame aspect makes it fun and addictive to work though. Although the exercises are all pretty much identical, there are various ways in which you can increase the difficulty and Clozemaster’s free account is almost as good as the Pro User one.

Quality 4.0
★★★★★

Very easy to use with thousands upon thousands of sentences for you to work through, Clozemaster’s main exercises are well-designed though some features are a bit hit and miss.

Thoroughness 4.0
★★★★★

Although you aren’t given any explanations, Clozemaster’s huge database of sentences allows you to learn words in context.

Value 4.5
★★★★
★
★

The free version offers a ton of value, but for those who use Clozemaster regularly, it may be worth upgrading to a Pro account.

I Like
  • There is an insane number of words and sentences for you to learn, and you’re exposed to them within the context of a sentence.
  • Just using the free account you are sure to learn a lot with only some extra (and undoubtedly useful) features being included in the Pro plan. This makes learning accessible to everyone.
  • Lots of languages available to learn, and you can do so from a wide range of languages, making it very useful for non-native English speakers or those who want to study two languages at once.
I Don’t Like
  • A couple of features such as the Cloze-reading and the speaking exercises seemed like they could have benefited from a bit more thought and effort put into them.
  • There is no real progression and you are basically given an endless array of different words and sentences to work through and the various exercises are all pretty much identical.
  • Sentences are sourced from
Price

The free version is very useful, but you can upgrade to a pro account for $8/month or $60/year.

visit clozemaster

Having never heard of Clozemaster before and having no idea what it was all about, I was immediately taken by its videogame-looking aesthetics and fun fill-in-the-missing-words exercises.

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Clozemaster Review: Limited Focus But Fun Way To Grow Vocab Read More »