All Language Resources is an independent review site. If you click a product link, we may earn money from a seller at no cost to you. Writing and analyses are author opinions. Learn More

Search Results for: italki review

My Language Exchange Mini-Review: Millions of Active Users

My Language Exchange

Rating 4.2
Price:

Freemium, Gold Memberships start at $6/mo

Summary

My Language Exchange has been growing since 2000. Although the website seems out of date, it still has an active community of millions of language-learners who speak almost 200 native languages (including less commonly studied languages). You can choose a pen pal by reading their bios, or there is a chat room available for you to instantly connect with a language exchange partner — note that if you create a Gold account, you can initiate chats with other users, but as a regular user, you will have to wait to be contacted. Using the Cormier Method, the website provides tools to help intermediate speakers effectively practice with other learners. It advertises a Chat Companion with lesson plans to accompany your exchange, or lesson plans developed by teachers (although the quality of these resources varies drastically).  You can also find language teachers on the site, but given that the transactions take place directly between you and the teacher, you may feel safer using a 3rd party platform like italki or Verbling Although there are outlines on how to participate in language exchanges, how these outlines are followed depends entirely on you and your partner(s). My Language Exchange will help you build connections with other learners, but it’s up to you to plan how to practice. The concepts can also be used with any language exchange platform, such as Lingbe, italki, Tandem, and Amikumu.

My Language Exchange Mini-Review: Millions of Active Users Read More »

Maayot Mini-Review: Best For Those Who Struggle To Stay Motivated

Maayot

Rating 3.7
Price:

Freemium, with paid plans starting at $10/mo

Summary

Although you can get unlimited reading practice through Du Chinese and The Chairman’s Bao for a lower cost, some people may be overwhelmed by having to remember to do their daily Chinese practice. Maayot helps to motivate you by delivering daily bite-sized reading activities to your inbox. The free activities include 5-minute stories for beginner to advanced learners (although the advanced lessons don’t seem to contain very complicated grammar structures), while the standard subscription adds audio recordings by native speakers and a daily quiz. With a premium subscription, you will get corrections to your daily writing responses and private tutoring once per week. To customize a similarly enriching experience, you can get free written corrections from the LangCorrect community, and find a community tutor on Italki. You can expect beginner stories to contain about 70 characters, while advanced stories contain about 250 characters. Clicking on characters you don’t know will send you to the MBDG dictionary website, so you may want to download the Zhongwen Chrome Extension extension instead. The Gymglish Series (Frantastique, Frantastique Ortho, Hotel Borbollón and Wunderbla) also takes the daily e-mail approach, so if you are studying French, German, English or Spanish, you can check them out (although the series is quite pricey).

Maayot Mini-Review: Best For Those Who Struggle To Stay Motivated Read More »

An Honest Review of Duolingo With Image of Man on Tablet

Duolingo Review: Useful But Not Sufficient – 2 Language Learners Test It (With Video)

Duolingo

Rating 4.0

Summary

Duolingo is a super popular free language-learning app. It’s available for desktop as well as mobile and offers over 90 different language courses in over 20 different languages — there are currently 35 languages with English instruction. The Duolingo approach is gamified and easy to use, but the bite-sized lessons don’t offer much in the way of in-depth practice. The Duolingo tag line is “Learn a language in just five minutes a day.”


Quality 4.0

It’s easy and fun to use, but some pronunciation and grammar instruction is of low quality, especially for Asian languages.

Thoroughness 3.5

The app works well for learning the basics, but there’s little speaking practice and grammar instruction is limited.

Value 4.5

It’s a lot of content for free, but you’ll need to use supplementary resources.

I Like
  • The short lessons are ideal for quick, convenient practice
  • The game-like features make the exercises engaging and fun
  • The community aspect is motivating
I Don’t Like
  • There’s no opportunity to create your own sentences
  • Grammar instruction isn’t part of the lessons
  • Text-to-speech audio is sometimes low quality
Price

Duolingo is totally free. Duolingo Plus offers a few additional features and is available for:


$12.99/month (paid monthly) $6.99/month (12-month subscription)


Their family plan is $119.99 a year

What is Duolingo?

Duolingo is one of the most popular language-learning programs out there. It’s been on the scene since 2012 and offers instruction in 35 different languages. It even offers courses in three constructed languages (perfect for brushing up on your Esperanto or High Valyrian).

Duolingo Review: Useful But Not Sufficient – 2 Language Learners Test It (With Video) Read More »

Rosetta Stone Review — Updated and Improved…And Needs More Improvement

Rosetta Stone

Rating 3.2

Summary

Rosetta Stone is one of the most well-known resources for learning languages. It takes an immersive approach to teaching and is widely used by corporations and individuals alike. High levels of repetition and an absence of translations or explanations are hallmarks of the course. Rosetta Stone course could be most suitable for learners that don’t mind repetitive exercises and prefer to learn from pictures and context rather than translations and explanations. It’s probably not a good option for anyone wanting to significantly improve their speaking or writing skills, or those looking for an engaging course.


Quality 3.0

The platform is a bit clunky on desktop, but the material is accurate and presented clearly; lesson mechanics are fairly intuitive.

Thoroughness 3.0

Without much opportunity to build your own sentences, I don’t think you’ll reach a conversational level with any notable speed.

Value 3.5

Rosetta Stone’s Lifetime Subscription ($199 on sale) is quite attractive if you like the Rosetta Stone Method. Shorter subscriptions are quite reasonable, too.

I Like
  • The audio quality is very good.
  • Lessons progress naturally and logically.
I Don’t Like
  • It’s repetitive and boring.
  • You don’t get to generate your own sentences.
  • Speech recognition doesn’t work very well.
  • No grammar explanations in core material.
Price

A three-month subscription to one language is $35.97, which works out to be $11.99/month.
A year-long subscription to one course is $95.88, which is $7.99/month. Both of these subscriptions are automatically recurring.
Lifetime access to all Rosetta Stone language courses is available for $199.

ALR Readers Exclusive Holiday Deal!! Get the Lifetime Subscription for 25 languages for $179 (everywhere else it’s $199 right now!). See details on the website.

Chances are, this isn’t the first time you’re hearing about Rosetta Stone for learning languages. The company has been hugely successful since its early start in the computer-assisted learning scene in 1992, and part of that is thanks to stellar advertising efforts.

Rosetta Stone Review — Updated and Improved…And Needs More Improvement Read More »

Polly Lingual Mini-Review: Phrasebook With Simple Games

Polly Lingual

Rating 2.0
Price:

Freemium, yearly subscriptions start at $2.99/mo

Summary

Polly Lingual is a phrasebook app and website with a series of basic word lists, flashcards, and memory games. Some of the phrases are pronounced by native speakers, while others use text-to-voice. Unlike other phrasebook apps that focus on phrases alone, Polly Lingual introduces the basic alphabet in languages with non-romanized scripts. You can quiz yourself on the basic vowels and consonants in Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, and Arabic. Polly Lingual may be helpful for a quick review of what you’ve already learned, but if you’re keen on learning to write a new script, you may want to check out Write It! or Write Me. There are also Polly Ambassadors — tutors who will provide short videos of language learning tips throughout the site. You can send them a personal message or hire them as a private tutor. Overall, Polly Lingual only teaches basic phrases and will probably not help you learn how to construct your own sentences. If you’re just beginning to learn another language, check out French in Action, Red Kalinka (Russian), Chinesefor.us, 90 Day Korean, Portuguese lab, or Pimsleur to get more out of your time. Also, Italki will give you more options for private tutors, if that’s what you’re looking for.

Polly Lingual Mini-Review: Phrasebook With Simple Games Read More »

Instituto Cervantes Mini-Review: Expensive, But Worth It

Instituto Cervantes

Rating 4.7
Price:

Freemium archives, lessons start at 20€, courses start at 75€

Summary

The Instituto Cervantes is a non-profit Spanish organization developed by the Spanish government to promote the study of Spanish language and Culture. On their website, you can find self-guided courses for levels A1 to C1. Sixteen 30-hour courses cover 48 topics, each with videos, reading material, and interactive exercises. There is a 3 month limit on access to courses, and a 3-week limit on the individual 10-hour lessons. You can also purchase an affordable 1-year membership to their library of digital content, which has thousands of books, audiobooks, databases, online dictionaries, and more for studying Spanish. Although the user interface is not very modern, the Instituto Cervantes has some of the few online platforms that meticulously takes you through each of the CEFR levels with structured, high-quality, and interactive lessons. If you know you can motivate yourself to self-study and have some spare cash to invest in your learning, it will probably be time and money well spent. Unfortunately, each course must be purchased separately and they are quite expensive. You can take a look at the archived lessons here and decide if you want to purchase the full course to provide more structure.  Beginners may want to download the Readlang Chrome extension to help with translation, as most of the webpages are entirely in Spanish. Also, nothing beats learning through speaking the language, so check out italki, SpanishVIP, and Baselang for online Spanish tutors.

Instituto Cervantes Mini-Review: Expensive, But Worth It Read More »

SpanishVIP Review — Unlimited Online Classes

SpanishVIP

Rating 4.5

Summary

SpanishVIP is a service that connects students and teachers of Spanish for online video lessons. It offers an “unlimited lessons” model for a monthly subscription and could be extremely cost effective for learners that take several lessons per week. It’s best suited for learners of Latin American Spanish at any level that want to improve their listening and speaking skills. It might not be the best fit if you’re mostly interested in Iberian Spanish or if you live in an Asian time zone.


Quality 4.5

The teachers are well trained and the materials are of high quality.

Thoroughness 4.5

You can really study whatever you like; the teachers are focused on helping you achieve your own specific goals.

Value 4.5

If you can take enough classes each week, the price is excellent.

I Like
  • Highly-personalized classes.
  • Great teachers.
  • It’s affordable.
I Don’t Like
  • There could be scheduling limitations for some students.
Price

In total there are 9 different subscription options with SpanishVIP: three for group classes, three for private classes, and three for SpanishVIP+ classes . Group classes come with a 7-day free trial, though you’ll still have to provide payment information upfront.

Group Classes – 1 Month: $99 3 Months: $249 6 Months: $399.

Private Classes – 1 Month: $149 3 Months: $399 6 Months: $699.

SpanishVIP+ Classes – 1 Month: $249, 3 Months: $649, 6 Months: $1,195.

Mention ALR to get a free month of group classes with any private class purchase.

There’s something about getting a human involved that is still unbeatable when it comes to language learning.

SpanishVIP Review — Unlimited Online Classes Read More »

Pimsleur Review — Learn While You… Do Just About Anything

Pimsleur

Rating 4.0

Summary

Pimsleur is one of the most popular and longest-standing resources out there for learning a foreign language. Its courses place a strong emphasis on aural and verbal communication skills, paying less attention to grammar explanations and reading or writing skills. There are over 50 language courses available with Pimsleur, and the bulk of the material is taught with audio lessons.


Quality 4.5

The platform is extremely well designed and easy to use. The content seems to be of high quality at all levels.

Thoroughness 4.0

Timely repetition and active practice work well, and lessons build on each other nicely, but the “intermediate fluency in 30 days” claim may be a stretch.

Value 3.5

The subscription option provides good value for some, but there may be more efficient ways to learn some languages.

I Like
  • The lessons are structured well and are an appropriate length.
  • There are both male and female native speakers.
  • Lessons build on each other nicely.
  • The platform is easy to navigate and visually appealing.
I Don’t Like
  • There’s very little visual content.
  • Lesson speed isn’t customizable.
Price

Subscriptions of either $14.95/month or $19.95/month are available for courses with at least 60 lessons. Prices otherwise range from around $20 to over $500. All purchases come with a 7-day free trial.

What is Pimsleur?

Frankly, it’s an institution. The name comes from linguist Paul Pimsleur, author of many books on language acquisition and applied linguistics, and developer of what is now known as the Pimsleur Method.

Pimsleur Review — Learn While You… Do Just About Anything Read More »

iLoveLanguages Mini-Review: Another Phrasebook SIte

ilovelanguages.org

Rating 1.6
Price:

Free

Summary

iLoveLanguages seems similar to iLanguages and Learn101 in that every language has the same content and grammar. The eighteen 30-minute beginner ‘lessons’ in every language are essentially lists of phrases and vocabulary words, with audio recordings by native speakers. The site seems to provide a local teacher for each language, but for some reason, the same teacher offers at least 11 of the languages (including Gaelic, Basque, Filipino, Marathi, and Cantonese). Oddly enough, this teacher also appears in stock photos around the internet. Considering that the website advertises each language class as being taught by a native speaker, perhaps be cautious if you are considering taking a class from this site — maybe try italki or SpanishVIP for private lessons instead. iLoveLanguages may be helpful if you want to hear native speakers pronounce words in South-Eastern languages, like Marathi, Gujarati, Vietnamese, or Malay. You can compare the pronunciation with the speakers from either iLanguages or Learn 101 (but not both, as they use identical audio files). You could also check out Forvo, which is probably the most extensive pronunciation database on the internet right now. 

iLoveLanguages Mini-Review: Another Phrasebook SIte Read More »

Japanese With Noriko Mini-Review: BIte-Sized Listening Practice

Japanese With Noriko

Rating 4.6
Price:

Free

Summary

Noriko is a qualified Japanese teacher with an education degree who provides podcasts, YouTube videos, and Italki classes for Japanese learners. On her website, you can find transcripts of her podcasts and videos with translations of difficult vocabulary words. Her resources seem most appropriate for upper beginner to intermediate learners. Noriko speaks at a relatively natural speed but articulates clearly in her bite-sized episodes. She speaks almost entirely in Japanese, except to occasionally translate one word here and there (although some YouTube videos have full-sentence translations). She also repeats new vocabulary words multiple times throughout the episodes to help with retention. Although she only started her episodes in February 2020, there are already hundreds of podcasts for your listening enjoyment. Her YouTube videos have various focuses: sometimes she will publish a short story with subtitles, other times you may listen to her talk about vocabulary words specific to everyday contexts. For example, you may learn what to say when you are sick, how to talk about your work, or how to describe the textures of food or drink. Listening to one of Noriko’s episodes can fit into anyone’s schedule; you will surely feel accomplished even after a 5-minute lesson.

Japanese With Noriko Mini-Review: BIte-Sized Listening Practice Read More »