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Japanese

Elon.io Mini Review: A Bit Messy

Elon.io

Rating 3.3
Price:

Free

Summary

Elon.Io is a website that teaches basic Japanese, Turkish, and Spanish writing, vocabulary, and grammar. As you complete each lesson, a checkmark will appear beside it in the table of contents. You can also sign up for a free account to keep track of your progress.  You can review concepts from your errors in the SRS quizzes, but these review lessons carry into every language. So, if you have reviews leftover from Japanese, you will review them during your Turkish and Spanish studies. In Japanese and Spanish, the lessons seem to build on one another. For example, you may learn some basic kanji and then use them in the next lesson with a new grammar concept. In Turkish, however, you will have to look at the “exercises” section of the lesson to succeed in the quizzes. Unfortunately, the lessons put a strong emphasis on translation, and the Japanese version often uses romaji instead of kana or kanji. Although it’s free, you might want to check out our other recommended resources first.

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The Japanese Page Mini Review: Engaging and Unintimidating

The Japanese Page

Rating 4.3
Price:

Free; free trial; premium subscriptions cost between $3/mo – $10/mo

Summary

The Japanese Page is a website with a variety of resources for beginner to intermediate Japanese learners. Each lesson’s explanations will make you feel like you’re quickly moving through the material, and they are often accompanied by exercises, examples, audio files, and comics to diversify your experience. Beginners can check out the Beginning Japanese Phrases podcast with an accompanying transcript. These two-minute episodes introduce you to a new word in context while encouraging speaking practice. The Nihongo No Tane podcast is for upper beginner and intermediate learners. Becoming a Makoto member gives you access to a transcript of these episodes, plus other benefits, like the monthly e-zine and shadowing exercises to learn everyday Japanese. The interactive e-zine has articles on grammar, kanji, culture, and art — not to mention short stories with audio recorded by native speakers. Beginners can enjoy an excellent introduction to hiragana, katakana, kanji, and basic grammar. Upper-beginner and intermediate learners can check out stories, dialogues, blog posts, and songs. Although the content does not go as in-depth as other sites, like Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese or Imabi, they provide a helpful and manageable introduction to complex concepts. Overall, The Japanese Page’s content seems well-thought-out and would be an excellent place for beginners to gain a better understanding of how Japanese is spoken beyond the parameters of your average textbook.

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Marugoto Mini Review: Astonishlingly High-Quality and Free

marugoto

Rating 4.0
Price:

Free

Summary

Marugoto Japanese Online Course is a free interactive online course that teaches A1 to A2 Japanese learners. The explanations are available in multiple languages, including English, Indonesian, Spanish, Chinese, and French. If you’re unsure of your level, you can take a placement test on the website. There are two types of self-study courses: one for casual learners (Katsudoo) and one for more intensive learners (Katsudoo and Rikai). Both courses contain dialogues, videos, and speaking and writing activities. Katsudoo and Rikai adds a level of intensity by getting you to read and write short compositions and dive deeper into grammar topics. There is also an option to pay for group classes with a Japanese tutor while following the Marugoto curriculum. Overall the courses are of considerably high-quality, with lots of opportunities for listening and speaking practice. One of the most impressive features is the way the course quizzes you on vocabulary in context through a variety of dialogues recorded by native speakers. You will not find yourself repeating the same basic sentence structures; instead, you will learn the multiple ways that Japanese is spoken in everyday life. Additionally, some activities allow you to take on the role of one of the characters and speak as if you are part of a dialogue.

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Imabi Mini Review: Thorough, Text-Based Lessons

IMABI.NET

Rating 4.0
Price:

Free

Summary

Imabi is a thorough website that teaches Japanese vocabulary and grammar through text-based lessons. There are over 400 lessons that cover beginner to advanced topics, including over 30 lessons that teach classical Japanese. The website is entirely text-based and should probably not be used as a standalone resource, as there are no audio files and only occasional exercises. However, there are lots of thorough explanations and extensive examples of how to use new concepts in various contexts. Becoming a member gives you access to four kanji lessons that cover 60 characters. In these lessons, you will receive a basic explanation of the kanji, learn how it is used in a list of words, and differentiate between different readings. It is important to already have a strong grasp of hiragana and katakana before taking on these lessons. Overall, it is a comprehensive and well-organized reference guide to support your Japanese studies. You can also check out Tae Kim’s Guide to Learning Japanese, another free resource for learning Japanese. It has similar text-based explanations, but also some accompanying videos and comics.

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DeerPlus Mini Review: Fun Supplementary App

DeerPlus

Rating 3.7
Price:

Freemium; $8.99/month, $35.99/year, $59.99/lifetime

Summary

DeerPlus, also known as LingoDeer Plus, is a cute, gamified app from the makers of Lingodeer. It sets out to teach you words, phrases, and grammar through 11 different games, but it’s best used as a supplementary tool. You’ll drill vocabulary, build phrases, select the right particles, decide if a sentence is grammatically correct or not, do conjugation exercises, answer listening comprehension questions, and more. What you won’t do is learn the material prior to being tested like you do with LingoDeer (review), DeerPlus’ sister app.  DeerPlus is a fun supplementary tool that would work well alongside most resources, but especially LingoDeer. However, it’s a shame that there aren’t SRS features in what is essentially a review app. A word of warning: you can study in a range of languages, but not all the games have been translated. We were shocked when we switched from studying Japanese via Spanish to Japanese via English and discovered grammar and “integrated” games in addition to the five vocabulary and phrase-based ones we had been playing.

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Lingo Mastery Short Stories Mini-Review: Lots of Unique Words

Lingo Mastery Short Stories

Rating 3.7
Price:

Kindle Books cost $4.60

Summary

Lingo Mastery provides 20 short stories in a series of advanced beginner books (about A2 on the CEFR scale) for various languages. Each book has a vocabulary list, reading comprehension questions, and a summary in both English and the target language.   If your primary goal is to acquire new vocabulary, then Lingo Mastery’s Short Story series may be helpful to increase your skills. Each chapter has a specific language focus, such as directions, verbs, nouns, or activities. These stories have a considerable number of unique words, so you may find yourself referring to the vocabulary list more frequently than in other graded readers. Keep in mind that the stories are not as engaging as a novel you might read in your native tongue, but the repetition is helpful to familiarize you with different concepts. Other graded readers, like those by Olly Richards, ESLC, and Mandarin Companion follow a single storyline — each chapter in Lingo Mastery, however, follows a separate storyline. Therefore, although the chapters are a manageable length, finishing one may not make you eager to move onto the next. If you do decide to invest in these readers, make sure to buy the Kindle version, which is about 20% of the paperback price.

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Internet Polyglot Mini-Review: Word Lists With Games

Internet Polyglot

Rating 1.3
Price:

Free

Summary

Internet Polyglot is a website for memorizing vocabulary words in dozens of languages. It has 44 “lessons” that cover topics like cars, time, religion, politics, feelings, measurements, and more. Each lesson is essentially a word list with native speaker pronunciation, an English translation, and a link to a picture to help you remember each word. There are picture games, matching games, guessing games, and typing games, plus a word search and a slide show that reviews all of the words in the lesson. Given that none of the vocabulary words in Internet Polyglot are taught using example sentences or context, learning vocabulary using this site may not be the best use of your time. You are probably better off using Anki to curate personalized vocabulary lists and downloading native speaker audio files from Forvo to accompany your flashcards. Nevertheless, you may find it useful if all you are looking for is a site that already has lists of vocabulary words with native speaker audio. If you are looking for audio files for less commonly-studied languages in context, you can check out iLoveLanguages.

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Complete Language Lessons Mini Review: Almost Useless

Complete Language Lessons

Rating 0.2
Price:

$8.99 for the CD/$1.29 per track on Amazon, free on Spotify

Summary

Complete Language Lessons has audio courses for numerous languages on Amazon, Spotify, and Deezer. We tried out the Swahili audio course, Learn Swahili Easily, Effectively, and Fluently – and were extremely disappointed. The audio tracks we sampled consist of Swahili phrases repeated over and over again, with no translations, explanations, or anything in English. The audio quality isn’t great, either, and the occasional muted club music adds to the bizarreness.  It feels to us like the audio tracks are supposed to accompany a textbook, but we couldn’t find one. If one existed at some point, we suspect it’s no longer available. If you already speak the language and are looking for native audio recordings to help you improve your listening and pronunciation, you might get some value out of Complete Language Lessons. However, if your aim is learn the language, we would skip these CDs.

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Vocabulearn Mini Review: Unlikely to Teach You a Language

Vocabulearn

Rating 0.6
Price:

$29.99 on Amazon, free on Spotify

Summary

Vocabulearn has so-called audio courses for numerous languages on Amazon and Spotify. We don’t believe you’ll learn much from them, but they could help you practice your pronunciation. For this mini review, we tried out the Vocabulearn Swahili/English Level 1 course. It’s split into four CDs, each with its own theme, and then each theme is divided into four lessons. The themes are: Nouns; Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositions, Conjunctions 1; Expressions; Verbs. In each track, we listened to long lists of words and phrases. First, it was said in English; secondly, it was said in Swahili. However, there were no grammar or contextual explanations, drills, or activities to help you remember the material. In short, we’re not convinced that you’d be able to make your own sentences or even remember the vocabulary after listening to these CDs. However, if you’re studying a language with fewer resources, we think you could use it to practice your pronunciation by repeating each word after the speakers say it.

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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.

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