Digitaldialects.com is a free-of-charge website for any language with no requirements to sign up. Its features include games, verb sections, advanced topics (mainly vocabulary) and spelling. The vocabulary section is learning through icons which then turns into a text or audio game. After that it prompts you to a spelling game. I thought of it mostly as an interesting website with cute designs and a variety of fun games that help you learn and practice.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Italki.com doesn’t actually consist of tutorials. Here’s how it works; the user buys italki credits, schedules a session with a teacher, the teacher teaches the lesson, the user confirms the lesson so that the credits get transferred to the teacher. The charge for a lesson varies according to the teacher. I saw teachers charging $0.10 and others $3 or $4. You can set up your own profile, make friends, “follow” them (just like at twitter) or even chat with them if you want. You can also post any kind of language questions on the website and get feedback from other users. I found the concept interesting and different from everything I had seen up to that point but don’t think I would trust a native speaker to just teach me a language since anyone (even you) can apply to be a teacher for the website. The cost is the following: $5 for 50 italki credits, $20 for 200 italki credits and $500 for 5000 italki credits which doesn’t include the processing fee.
Mylanguageexchange.com is a cute website for any language, offering lots of features like penpals, word games, text chat, translations etc. It primarily promotes interacting with native speakers. According to the website itself: "In this method, small mixed groups of native speakers of two languages spend half the time speaking in one language and half the time in the other language. Activities are structured to ensure all areas of language acquisition are exercised such as vocabulary, pronunciation and listening comprehension”. There are specific instructions for everything which really helps but in general I find the set-up quite confusing and old-fashioned. There aren’t actual tutorials or cool or astounding designs and this, along with its complexity, makes it hard to stay motivated and concentrated.
online – spanish – course.com is one of four websites I researched that were focused on the Spanish language. Shortly after I started exploring the website, I realized that its main focus was to build/improve the user’s vocabulary more than anything else. All the features focus exclusively on practicing Spanish vocabulary through flashcards, sentences with translating tools, and games with multiple choice and fill-in-the-gap exercises. There’s also a text analyzer feature, which works like a translator and text categories where you can read jokes, quotes, poems, proverbs etc. It’s a free of charge website, but you have the option of paying $5/month if you want to hear the pronunciation of the words. Overall, it’s a nicely organized database but it doesn’t seem to have a lot of potential since it doesn’t offer anything but vocabulary tutorials. If you’re looking for something more than just practicing your vocabulary then this definitely isn’t the website for you.
Babbel.com is for any language and its trial-options include matching the Spanish sentence to the English one and putting the parts of a sentence in the correct order. Its courses have features to help you practice your grammar, knowledge of numbers, listening, and Spanish idioms; there are also "express training" (short exercises to bring your passive knowledge up-to-date and ready to use), refresher courses, themes and situations, basic and advanced vocabulary, 1000 useful sentences, tongue twisters and writing exercises. I didn’t find its methods very effective mainly because of the fact that it didn’t have actual tutorials. It was more like a game which isn't worth the time or money. 1month-$12.95, 3months-$8.95/month, 6monts-$7.45/month
Languagesonline.org.uk is a free of charge old-fashioned looking website which basically consists of revision exercises on grammar and vocabulary in Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Latin and French. It’s fun at first with all the games and crosswords, matching exercises etc., but it soon becomes boring. If you just want play around and refresh your grammar and vocabulary in a fun way that would be a good choice.
Learnspanish.language101.com is a remarkably expensive website ($527 for Spanish 1, 2 and 3) with a very short free trial which left me with mixed feelings. The creator of the website explains in much detail how it works and takes you through the steps. It seems to involve a lot of listening and repeating of what you hear as a single way of learning which I don’t think is quite helpful. Also is suggests spending 30 minutes on each lesson which depending on how long that is might be reasonable or not. A last thing that I found interesting was that it promoted self-evaluation for which I actually I almost felt like a got judged about. On a side note there is a 60second video on what the program is like on the homepage of the website in case you’re interested in checking it out too.
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