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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FrenchPod101 Review – Not Perfect But Offers Good Value

FrenchPod101

Rating 4.2

★★★★

★

Summary

If you want to learn French from the comfort of your own house, then Frenchpod101 is definitely a site worth visiting. It is a comprehensive learning tool that has lessons catered to your needs, whether you want to master the language or just learn a few common phrases. With engaging content in all forms of media, though primarily audio, this is a great way to learn the language of love.

Quality 4.0

★★★★★

The website is easy to use, but the pathways could be improved.

Thoroughness 4.5

★★★★

★

This website covers almost everything there is to know about the French language and culture.

Value 4.0

★★★★★

A subscription is required, but it offers great value for the money.

I Like

The use of audio and video files to enhance the learning experience.
You’ll learn a lot about French culture.
The different types of lessons available based on your needs.

I Don’t Like

There is no feature that keeps you motivated to keep going back to learn more the next day.
The app isn’t designed all that well.
The normal quizzes are too easy.

Price

If you choose to opt for just a one-month subscription, you’ll end up paying $4 for Basic, $10 for Premium, and $23 for Premium Plus. Use the promo code

“ALLLANGUAGERESOURCES” to save 25% on a subscription to FrenchPod101.

Try a free 7-day trial to FrenchPod101

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Comme une Française Mini-Review: Understanding French Culture

Comme une Française’s YouTube Channel

Rating 4.2

★★★★

★

Price:

Freemium, Courses cost between 49€ – 149€

Summary

The Comme une Française YouTube channel helps non-native speakers at a lower-intermediate level understand the subtleties of the living language. It’s run by Géraldine LePère, who lives in Grenoble, France. Géraldine’s engaging videos explain how French people really speak day-to-day, as opposed to textbook French. Some videos discuss pronunciation and real-life grammar; others touch on cultural topics, such as how to order coffee or make a toast like a French person. You can find written transcripts for the videos, as well as links to related material, free of charge on the Comme une Française blog. One potential issue with the Comme une Française videos, especially for more experienced French speakers, might be the high ratio of English to French. Intermediate learners seeking videos completely in French for learning about Francophone life might enjoy InnerFrench (for Metropolitan French) or Wandering French (for French with a Québécois accent). In addition to Comme une Française’s YouTube channel, Géraldine offers several premium plans, which we have not yet tried. These premium plans focus on different aspects of learning the language, such as speaking, conjugation, and “insider French.”

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Sublearning Mini-Review: There Are Better Uses For Your Time

Sublearning

Rating 1.3

★

★★★★

Price:

Free

Summary

Sublearning is a very simple website that supposedly helps you learn languages through movie subtitles. You will be presented with 1 to 6 lines of subtitles from your chosen movie, and then you can reveal the translation after thinking about the response. There are 62 source and target languages, which does make one wonder where the translations are coming from; be wary of Sublearning’s translation quality. Just to clarify, the subtitles do not seem to be sourced from the most iconic phrases from your favourite movies; rather, they seem to be random lines from the movie, sometimes as simple as “I don’t think so”. If you’re just looking to reminisce about anything that was said in movies you have seen, you can go to Sublearning to pass some time. However if you’re interested in language learning, I recommend checking out some of the many resource reviews we have on this site.

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Learn French With Vincent Mini-Review: Watch The Live Stream

Learn French with Vincent

Rating 4.0

★★★★★

Price:

Freemium, Courses cost between $100-$250

Summary

Learn French With Vincent is both a Youtube Channel and a full website (French4me) dedicated to supporting different styles of learners from beginner to advanced. On his website you can purchase videos, e-books, apps, audio files, quizzes, dictations and more. On Youtube, you can attend live stream classes, interact with Vincent through the chat function and participate in a variety of engaging activities. You can test your French skills with dictations, answering questions, describing photos, and learning about various idiomatic expressions or important people from history. The live stream classes seem to be some of his best resources. His website includes a step-by-step guide to which videos to watch depending on your goal — do you want to master French grammar, or cover the basics as a beginner? It should be noted that the website is slightly confusing with mixed quality resources; some of the videos from his purchasable courses are identical to those on Youtube. Additionally, some of Vincent’s ebooks do not seem to be delivered in the most effective format; they contain a series of phrases in English with a French translation and audio pronunciation. It’s best to preview the test lessons available under the product you want to buy.

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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.

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FunEasyLearn Mini-Review: Build Vocabulary The Fun Way

FunEasyLearn

Rating 2.6

★★

★

★★★

Price:

Freemium, monthly subscriptions starting at $11.99

Summary

Not only does FunEasyLearn have a slick app interface, high-quality recordings of native speakers, and a variety of activities to reinforce your learning, but it also allows you to learn from 61 mother tongues. The lessons were developed by a team of certified linguists and acting teachers; they cover reading, listening, speaking and writing. You have the choice of learning individual vocabulary or common phrases, both of which navigate between various common categories such as “Describing people”, “General Conversation”, “ and “Transport”. Unfortunately, FunEasyLearn does not seem to provide a foundation for learning more challenging scripts, such as Chinese or Thai; luckily they have a special feature where you can choose to omit the writing aspect and see transliterations; this will allow you to focus on speaking and listening. Ultimately, FunEasyLearn is a fun and easy way to develop some basic vocabulary, but it is probably not the most effective resource for hard-core language learners; you will need to use another resource if you want to learn more than basic vocabulary words.

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Speakly Mini-Review: Speaking, Listening, and Writing Practice

Speakly

Rating 4.3

★★★★

★

Price:

10.99€/mo, 27€/quarter, 49.98€/half-year, 69.96€/year

Summary

Speakly focuses on reading, listening, speaking and writing to improve your confidence in your target language. It uses a Spaced Repetition System to help you push vocabulary into your long term memory, and teaches you the 4000 most statistically-relevant words in your target language. Before using the program, you can take a placement test to estimate how many of the 4000 most common words you already know. Then, you will be placed in one of 9 levels. You will start with a series of sentences, learning words within context and then filling in the blanks for recall. After learning several words, you will be presented with a LIVE-situation where you will recreate a dialogue with the recording of a native speaker. The dialogues are also short enough that you can listen to them repeatedly, practice speaking along with the recording, and quickly notice improvement. Besides flashcards and dialogues, there are also reading and listening exercises with interesting content. You can download the audio to study offline, which is helpful because Speakly encourages you to listen to the same exercise 3-5 days in a row to see improvement. One of few downsides to Speakly is that for the basic flashcard sentences, all of the narrations use automatic text-to-speech rather than native speakers’ voices.

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Bite Size Languages Mini-Review: Good for Beginners

Bite Size Languages

Rating 3.8

★★★

★

★★

Price:

$99 per course

Summary

Bite size language was developed by the creator of the Actual Fluency Podcast. Each of the 5 languages consists of 100 lessons for beginners to develop their listening comprehension and pronunciation. You will learn grammar within the context of short dialogues and acquire relevant every-day vocabulary. Each lesson seems doable within a 15-25 minute study session; they contain lesson notes, transcripts, translations, vocabulary, and a grammar section. It seems like the dialogues speed up slightly as you advance through the lessons, but the final lessons do not reach a natural speed. This is understandable, however, as the program is aimed at beginners who have little or no exposure to the language (you can listen to some sound clips from various lessons here). You may be expected to repeat every lesson a few dozen times to get the most out of the course. If you are studying Russian, the creator emphasizes that you don’t need to learn the Russian alphabet because the dialogues are the core of the lessons. But, all of the accompanying materials, including transcripts of the dialogues, are written in Russian.

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Lingua Boost Mini-Review: Use Pimsleur Instead

Lingua Boost

Rating 2.2

★★

★

★★★

Price:

1 level costs $19.90, two levels cost $33.90

Summary

Lingua Boost’s website sells downloadable volumes of phrasebook-like lessons that teach everyday phrases in context. The lessons are about 10 minutes long; they are narrated by native speakers and focus on vocabulary within a specific topic. Although each lesson seems to contain something that resembles a dialogue, every phrase is spoken by the same person. Additionally, many of the lessons initially appear to be dialogues, but end up as a list of sentences. For example, the first line of a lesson might be, “what do you like to do?” followed by a series of statements such as “I like to read books,” or “I like to go swimming.” Furthermore, for languages that have more difficult pronunciation, such as Russian and Hindi, the lessons do not break down pronunciation. In Pimsleur, for example, they use an excellent technique of working backwards with each syllable in a word. In Lingua Boost, it seems that you are expected to just listen and gradually catch on, even from the absolute beginner level. Finally, each volume must be purchased separately, but you can test out the first 5 lessons for free on their website. If you’re looking for a similar course that breaks down pronunciation, has interactive activities and helps you learn full dialogues in context, check out Pimsleur’s subscription plan.

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