How do you learn foreign language vocabulary fast? Let’s talk about the two strategies you need to focus on if you want to learn your foreign language vocabulary quickly and efficiently.

Spaced repetition

The first strategy that you need to learn foreign language vocabulary fast is called spaced repetition or SRS. Spaced repetition is really just a fancy way of saying that you see your more difficult concepts more often and the words and phrases that you learn fastest, you don’t see as much.

This is different from how we’re taught to learn foreign language vocabulary because we generally have a whole bunch of flashcards. We go through those flashcards time and time and time and time again. Some of them are easier and kind of get into our brains much quicker. And some of them we just have to really force them into our brains, if we ever can really.

While the original strategy isn’t bad, it is a waste of time because if you’re spending 50 to 75% of your time studying words that you already know, then that’s all that time that you don’t have to really focus on the words that you’re struggling with.

So if you’re used to just going through all the words all the time, how do you make the switch to spaced repetition so that you’re using your time more effectively? The easy answer to that is most modern language learning apps will teach you vocabulary and teach you whatever concepts you’re trying to learn using spaced repetition.

So everything from Anki to Babbel to Drops to Lingvist, basically anything that when you use it, it keeps track of which words you’re responding to really well and which ones you aren’t and shows you the more difficult concepts more often. And if the app doesn’t say that they do that themselves, then it’s easy enough for you to find out.

Just take two words, get one of them right, get one of them wrong, and see if it shows you the same two words the same number of times and with the same consistency. Or see if the one that’s easier for you just kind of falls away and the app doesn’t bother you with it. This strategy will save you a ton of time because while it might feel like you just kind of have to force a difficult word into your brain, consistency really is king and you do not need consistency for vocabulary words that are really easy and almost second nature to you.

So instead of spending a whole hour refreshing the same vocabulary you already know, give that amount of time to more difficult concepts and you’ll learn them a lot quicker because you’re dedicating more study hours to them.

I like to offer you guys suggestions for which language learning resources are best to support any strategy that I’m talking about in a given video, but this particular strategy is actually really common across most language learning resources that offer you practice with your vocabulary.

That are some apps that don’t necessarily do this, and they’ll just like give you five words and make you go through each of those five words three times. But the easiest way to know if any particular resource is going to have space repetition or if it’s just going to give you the normal flashcard method that’s really not the most efficient, time-wise, just take a look around at the resource and see if it looks fairly modern. If it still looks the same as it did when it was built in like 2000, the strategy hasn’t changed, which means it isn’t updated with space repetition or any modern-day strategies that are available in a zillion other current language learning resources that have been built in the last like 15 years.

And you’ll definitely know if you’re using a resource that isn’t using spaced repetition if you find yourself bored learning the same words over and over and over and over and over again, it gets really boring. Which gets language learners checked out really fast. And that’s a bonus, that spaced repetition will also keep you engaged in your language learning because you’re consistently challenging yourself and not just rehashing the same stuff over and over again.

Learning with context

And the second strategy to keep in mind, if you want to learn foreign language vocabulary fast, is learning within context. Going back to the flashcard idea, there’s a difference when you’re using physical flashcards, which is fine as long as you’re doing it appropriately, there’s a difference between using flashcards with just the translation on the front and the English on the back, and you flip back and forth and just like learn the word and its translation.

There’s a difference between that and learning like a sentence and filling in the blanks of the sentence. Or for example, if you find a certain word when you’re reading a book or listening to a song or any number of things, and you take the sentence that you heard and you put it on a flashcard and you try to remember what it is that they’re talking about, that’ll make a huge difference. And here’s why.

When we are treating foreign language vocabulary just as a translation of our native language words, that is all our brain will recognize it as. Basically what you’re teaching your brain to do is keep a file cabinet of glossary terms. So, for example, instead of hearing the word árbol and automatically registering it as a tree, like in your mind, in your thoughts, in your imagination, you might hear the word árbol and think, “what does that mean in English? It means tree. Okay. How do I respond?” And you have to go through a whole translation with like all of these different thought processes, which, (a), is really, really difficult, and, (b), it really just takes too long.

On the other hand, if you have yourself like a picture book with a picture of a tree and you have like “ella le gusta el árbol” and you recognize that as “there’s a girl and there’s a tree and she likes the tree”, it makes it so much easier for your brain to put two and two together and help it to understand: “that’s a tree, and sometimes we refer to it as an árbol”.

When I talk to language learners and I talk to my clients, I always recommend context, context, context, context. Because learning words just as translations of English words or whatever your native language is, while that might work if you’re just testing yourself to translate, it’s not going to help you actually understand or use the language because you’re just teaching your brain a collection of words and not a collection of words that interacts with each other and you conjugate them and you use them to communicate certain things and you’re basically breathing life into the language that you’re learning.

And just like with spaced repetition, learning foreign vocabulary through context is going to make it much more interesting and much more engaging. So you’re less likely to get bored, which will help you stay consistent.

So what kind of resources should you look for if you want to find context for your foreign language vocabulary? This is anything where you are learning the language in a natural way. This means reading stories. This means listening to audiobooks, this means having conversations. So for example, if you’re using Trancy to watch YouTube videos and you get the subtitles and you learn a new word in a YouTube video, learning a new word within the context of a video you’re watching, within the context of a sentence or a story, is going to be much easier for your memory to grasp than just a single word with a translation.

Because when you have the context, it reminds your brain of what it was doing and what you were thinking about, and maybe a story that you were enjoying or any number of things. Or if you enjoy reading something like Olly Richard’s Short Stories books, those are really interesting because they are really just short stories created to teach you new vocabulary and help you to gain that contextual understanding of the language.

Basically, your focus here is to make sure that you’re picking up new vocabulary in a natural way where there are no orphan words, which means the words are not by themselves, they’re within a phrase or a sentence or some other form of context. This will help you learn foreign language vocabulary fast because it gives your brain something to stick its teeth into.

Now that you know the best way to learn vocabulary in a foreign language, the best way to find resources to support these strategies is by using my free language app search. All you gotta do is choose your language, choose your level, and choose a skill that you want to use to pick up vocabulary and you’ll get a ton of resources to learn your target language doing just that.

How to become an intermediate language learner

Anybody can be a beginner language learner, but how do you make that transition to intermediate language learning? Let’s talk about going from beginner to intermediate in learning a language, everything from language apps to go from beginner to intermediate, to what to expect, how to shift your strategy, and all that good stuff.

Intermediate language learning resources

The first difference between beginner and intermediate language learning is what you’re looking for in your resources. Specifically, we’re looking for a little bit less surface-level stuff and something a little bit more complex.

So if you’re used to beginner language apps like Duolingo, maybe Mondly, for example, it’s really easy to enjoy the fun little bits of the app, maintaining a streak, getting those little boosts of dopamine. That is really fun and really exciting and really motivating at first.

But a lot of language learners find that after a while it just kind of feels empty, like you’re not really learning anything. And it’s situations like this where you need to be looking for something a little bit more intermediate level.

So this means looking less for, you know, multiple choice and basic vocabulary to something like building sentences and communicating. Now, this is going to be the difference between something like Drops, which is really great for beginner vocabulary words, and Lingvist, which is also good for beginner vocabulary words, but goes a lot farther into intermediate and even advanced learning.

Or it could mean going from beginner Rosetta Stone where you’re just looking at pictures and repeating simple phrases to something like Busuu, which encourages really active use of the language. You get a picture, sure, but you have to explain the picture in your own words.

And I know what you’re thinking: “that sounds really difficult, I have no idea how to do that. And even if I try to do that, it doesn’t work. I can’t do it. I get flustered and I give up.” This is why it’s really important to go to intermediate language learning resources when you’re ready.

If you spend all your time tapping buttons and doing really simple multiple choice and not really learning anything, then you’re never going to get to the point where you can use the language in the way that you actually want to. Basically, you’re looking for more everyday use of the language in ways that feel safe comfortable, and interesting.

Of course, you can totally jump into a language exchange on Tandem or HelloTalk, but that really isn’t necessary. There are tons of steps in between like Duolingo and full conversations. It’s somewhere in between those points that you really want to focus on.

What to expect as an intermediate language learner

The next thing to know about the difference between beginner and intermediate language skills is shifting your expectations about what success looks like. So like I said, if you are stuck doing a little tap dance on Duolingo or something really simple and really basic, then you are used to looking at the daily streaks, building your XP fun little sounds, fun little noises, and just every little hit of “you’re doing a great job, keep going!”

This is perfectly fine in the beginning, but if you want to move to the intermediate levels, you need something a little bit more. You need intermediate-level growth. Unfortunately, this is where things can get a little tricky because we’re so used to the constant wins and the constant motivation.

Once we move over to the intermediate side of things, it can feel really demotivating because all of a sudden you’re not constantly bombarded by positivity and congratulations. You are learning more, and your language learning is getting better, but it looks different. You’re not going to feel like you accomplished something every 2 seconds, every single day. Sometimes you go like a week without feeling like you accomplished anything. And that’s normal.

This is why when you go from beginner to intermediate language learning, you need to focus less on every day, constant wins, to enjoying the process and enjoying the language. So instead of focusing on your daily streak, this could mean developing relationships in the target language.

This could mean watching Netflix or watching YouTube. This could mean listening to podcasts or something with a little bit more depth and not so many basic phrases that you can use to like, travel around at tourist level. Once you have that basic vocabulary and you have that basic grammar down, it’s really important to go into the actual language.

You have to realize that these beginner language apps, a vast majority of their job is to keep you hooked on the app so that you keep going with your language learning, you stay consistent. So when you leave those beginner apps and you start getting more complex and more intermediate, you have a much harder time staying consistent just because you don’t know what to look for. We don’t have those small everyday wins. So it just kind of feels like we’re not winning at all. So what’s the point?

Find an activity in your target language that you genuinely enjoy and study in that way so that you’re actually enjoying the process and less focused on how much XP you’re building up or how many words you’re collecting.

Learning intermediate concepts

The next thing to know about how to become an intermediate language learner is to focus less on the small details and more on the big picture. When we start learning a language, we start with the very basic stuff, right? We start with very basic vocabulary, very basic grammar, things like that, where the details are very, very important. You can get dinged for having the accent right or wrong. You can get dinged for all sorts of things because your job is to really get a handle on the language and start to recognize the patterns.

Becoming an intermediate language learner, though, you want to focus more on the content and the gist and understanding what’s going on. This is where things like comprehensible input come in, you’re learning to understand the totality of the language and you’re less focused on memorizing specific words. You want to understand more complex ideas. So you’ve got to focus more on those and less on like learning a different word for the color brown.

Yes, those things are valuable and important, but if you’re trying to become an intermediate or even advanced language learner, you need to focus more on understanding and using the language like native speakers would. And not like a beginner language learner would.

Best intermediate language apps

So now that we understand the difference between beginner and intermediate language learning apps, language learning skills, and language learning strategies, how do you make that distinction? How do you find the best resources for your intermediate language learning?

My recommendation is to go to my language app search where you can search by language and by level. So if you are learning German, for example, and you want to become an intermediate German level or you feel like you’re just kind of you’re done with the beginner stuff and you want to get more serious, it’s easy enough to select German, go to intermediate and you find a whole bunch of language learning apps that will suffice for this.

Now keep in mind that differences between beginner, intermediate, and advanced are not particularly cut and dry, which is why when you have the information I just gave you in this video, you can use that to apply to all my language app reviews and see if this is the app for you based on the criteria mentioned in this video.

It’s basically the difference between, “Yeah, you could kind of learn a few intermediate things using these resources” or “This resource will take me from intermediate to even advanced. There’s a lot of opportunity for me to learn a lot of new things in the way that I want to learn.”

Because remember that that’s really important. We really want to focus on the language skills that we want to build for our own language learning. And if you want to learn more about that, check out my free course here.

Comprehensible input

Comprehensible input is such a buzzword for language learners. Let’s talk about what it actually means, if you need it, and if you do need it, how to get it.

What is comprehensible input?

In simplest terms, comprehensible input is basically just getting input that you basically understand. So input means you’re listening to it or you’re reading it to understand. Comprehensible means you can comprehend it within reason.

This does not mean you have to understand every single word, every single phrase. It basically means you can read a chunk of words or listen to a chunk of words, and you can get a general idea of what’s going on.

This is especially true for my fellow perfectionists out there. It’s okay if you don’t understand every single little thing, if there are gaps in there, that’s totally cool. Comprehensible input is just a general understanding of what’s going on. And then you can use that general understanding to fill in the blanks and understand the words and phrases that are new to you within context and build from there.

Do you need comprehensible input?

So now that we understand what comprehensible input actually is, let’s talk about if you need it. And when I talk about your specific level in your target language, this is pretty vague. There’s no hard and fast rules about what makes a beginne, intermediate, or advanced. Honestly, in real-life language learning, those labels don’t really matter. But for the sake of this video and for most language learning as a whole, this is just some basic housekeeping.

Beginner language learners

Let’s start with beginners. This could mean total beginner, which means you don’t understand a single thing, or beginner as in, like you took one class, you can understand one or two words, but really there’s not really a whole lot of understanding going on there.

And this is the important thing to realize because when you’re a beginner in a language, you can’t understand any of it. None of it. Like you can’t understand the gist, you can’t understand the concept of what different words are like, how they’re put together in a way that makes sense. You can understand individual words, maybe a couple of phrases, but beyond that, you’re just not quite there yet.

And therefore, if you’re a beginner in the language, I don’t want you to worry about comprehensible input at all. Actually, let me backtrack that a little bit. I like to stay pretty objective and keep my opinion out of things. So I will say that some people who are beginners like comprehensible input, even though they don’t understand everything, they like to basically throw themselves into a language and wait until their brain picks it up because your brain will figure it out eventually. But eventually is the keyword here.

A lot of language learners, myself included, do not enjoy learning a language just by brute force. And if you don’t enjoy it, you’re not going to stick to it. So if you are one of those people who is perfectly happy just listening to a language, reading a language and not understanding anything, but just waiting for your brain to figure it out as you go on, then you know, once we get to intermediate and advanced, then you can listen in.

But for most beginners, I would say don’t worry about comprehensible input because it’s going to be very overwhelming. And if you are like me and you cannot get overwhelmed or else you won’t do it, then I would really just stick to the simple apps. There are honestly more resources for beginner language learners than intermediate and advanced so there is no problems here. This is as easy as pie. And if you’re looking for beginner language apps, I would recommend using my language app search where you can literally just choose your target language and beginner and you’ll get a whole bunch of different resources that will teach you the beginner level of your target language.

But when you’re at the beginner levels, you’re focused on learning the simple basic words and simple basic grammar. You’re learning the building blocks of putting the language together into comprehensible input. But you’re not at comprehensible input yet. You’re still building sentences together and understanding sounds and things like that.

Once you start feeling more confident and more aware of the language and how it sounds and being able to understand a little bit more, then we can talk about comprehensible input because that is intermediate stuff. Speaking of, let’s talk about our intermediate learners.

Intermediate language learners

So for the purposes of this video, Intermediate, I’m basically referring to those who get the basics of the language. They get like they can recognize when it’s the language, they can pull out a bunch of different words, they can understand some grammar for the most part, you’re starting to get the hang of the language and while the apps, the fun apps and the buttons and the Duolingo and all those, while those are still okay, you’re starting to get to the end of where using those apps is sufficient. You might have built up your skills for some time and you’re starting to see where there are some holes in your skills.

So, for example, if you’ve been using Duolingo from the beginner and now you’re feeling much more comfortable with the language, but you still can’t understand it in real life, you still can’t use it, then this is where we start expanding how we’re taking in the language. And comprehensible input is definitely helpful in these scenarios.

And I’ll mention a few resources that I would recommend in a second. But in general, for intermediate learners, I would really recommend you take advantage of subtitles and books where there is an audio component so you can listen to the language and read it at the same time. Any little tools that maybe you feel guilty about using because you feel like it’s a waste of time or you feel like you’re not learning enough or not working hard enough, intermediates, I would really highly recommend you use these tools because these tools can really, really help you to learn.

And no, they’re not cheating at all. And especially if you’ve ever heard of or ever experienced the intermediate plateau. This is where comprehensible input is a really big deal because generally speaking, the intermediate plateau is basically where you’re using the beginner apps, you’ve been learning the easy stuff, but you’re not growing anymore because you need to start using comprehensible input or speaking practice or, you know, these more advanced skills that aren’t just like fun little apps.

Advanced language learners

Now for our advanced language learners to get advanced, you’ve probably used a fair amount of comprehensible input. You understand a good deal of what’s going on, and there might be some things you’re confused about, but you’ve got a pretty good understanding of the language and you can use it in a lot of situations. You’re getting pretty confident.

So how do you challenge this and how do you grow once you pass the advanced levels? While still using comprehensible input, you can find specific comprehensible input that is a little bit more advanced. And also you can take away some of those tools that you used at the intermediate levels and really challenge yourself to understand these things just point blank, without the subtitles, without the audio supports, any of that stuff.

So for example, when you were at the intermediate stages and you were watching a movie and you found a movie that was really difficult for you to understand, you put it away, you went to something else, go back to that movie and really work hard to understand, you know, maybe it’s the accent that was weird. Maybe the vocabulary was just, you know, kind of old-timey, or if it was region-specific and you could really not understand it. Or they were talking about, you know, a lot of concepts that are a little bit more mature. If they were using some very specific slang, using comprehensible input to really expand your ability to understand different accents and different types of vocabulary is really going to skyrocket your ability to understand the language, even at the advanced levels. Read some classic novels, all that good stuff.

Remember, the easiest way to go about this is to get rid of the subtitles. I mean, they’re okay if you need them, but if you don’t need them and you’re trying to expand your ability to understand, get rid of the help, get rid of those tools. You might be in a position where you don’t need them anymore. You’re just comfortable. So now that we know what comprehensible input is and we know what exactly you’re looking for, dependent on your level in the language, what kind of resources are there available for people looking for comprehensible input?

Resources for comprehensible input

Remember for comprehensible input, we’re staying away from the fun apps and we are going to focus instead on the language itself and how people use it. And basically, you just kind of join in with the community. The easiest one that I would say is watching TV or watching movies. There are plenty of resources to help with that.

For example, the Chrome extension Language Reactor that I talk about all the time. Using Language Reactor with YouTube or Netflix to pull the subtitles and use them to understand, especially for intermediate language learners who are using those subtitles, this is excellent because it just pulls the subtitles right out that are already available and helps you to see them better.

Language TV Club is also excellent for this. It’s a little bit less accessible just because it is group program, so you have to sign up and it’s not like a constant access thing, it can be fun if you want some more of that community aspect of learning your target language.

Then you have Lingopie, you have Yabla and you have FluentU which are all resources that use – I think Lingopie is Netflix and Yabla and FluentU I’m not sure if they’re YouTube or if they have their own videos. I don’t remember. But all of them are video platforms for you to watch videos and learn your target language, which is great for comprehensible input. And I’ve talked a lot about listening because that is honestly what I find to be the most popular with language learners.

But if you also want to get in comprehensible input by reading, that is also easy. Two resources I would recommend for that are StoryLearning and LingQ. StoryLearning is a one-off course that you purchase and have forever access to. LingQ is a platform where you can find a bunch of free resources and then the platform itself where you click the vocabulary and the whole thing. That is a monthly service.

And bonus, if you like music and you find yourself really enjoying listening to music for comprehensible input, even though it can be more difficult, if that’s something that you find motivating, by all means, LyricsTraining can be a fun app for that if you’re learning the more commonly learned languages.

This is by no means an exhaustive list at all. I just mentioned a handful of really common, really easy-to-use resources for comprehensible input. If you want more information, if you want more potential resources, I would highly recommend you use my language app search I made it specifically so that you can find resources based on your target language, your level within that language, and how exactly you want to learn the language, whether it’s by listening to stories, reading books, whatever it is, you can narrow down your search based on those specific qualities of the resources you’re looking for.

And if you need a little bit more support in finding the right language learning resource for yourself, I highly recommend my free course.

Watch it on YouTube

Read the transcript

Can books make you fluent in a new language? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is not as clear-cut as a lot of people would like to think. Let’s talk about what you can expect from learning a language with books, specifically through a very common, very popular course called StoryLearning, also known as the Uncovered series.

What is StoryLearning?

So if you’re not familiar already, the StoryLearning strategy is basically just using stories to learn a language. You’re presented with very short chapters of a story, and then you use those stories to gain comprehension skills or vocabulary, learn grammar, and all that good stuff. But the idea is that you don’t really realize you’re learning because you’re so invested in the story.

Now, StoryLearning claims that they can teach you a language through story, but can StoryLearning make you fluent? Or can reading books in general make you fluent? No. Why? What’s the difference here?

This is the important thing to understand is that StoryLearning is primarily reading, you’re generally reading the story and picking up the vocabulary and grammar rules and whatnot through the story. While that’s all fine and dandy, reading is only one skill of learning a language, and that skill is not speaking.

So if you have the intention, if you have the goal to be able to have a conversation in the language, this isn’t the most direct route. It’s not the direct, the most simple strategy.

Can reading books help you to become conversational? Yes. While it’s not directly the skill that you need to be able to have conversations, it’s still information, it’s still using the language, it’s still learning new things. And I always like to say that any exposure that you have to the language, even if it’s not intentional, even if it’s not a challenge, even if you don’t feel like you’re actually learning anything, it’s always a benefit to your language learning goals.

However, don’t expect to spend all of your time reading stories and reading books and then think that in six months you’ll be able to magically have a conversation. That’s just not going to happen. This is because speaking and conversational skills in general are not a priority in StoryLearning or in reading books.

If you’ve ever tried StoryLearning for yourself, I know what you’re thinking:

Jamie, they have speaking sections in every single chapter of the story. At the very end, you have recommendations of things to talk about with a language exchange partner or a language teacher. You have a full lesson plan, all that jazz!

Unfortunately, if your goal is to speak the language, these sections are not enough. These sections are there to support the goal of being able to read and understand the language. But it’s not meant to get you conversational.

In order for me to consider this effective speaking practice, I would need any number of types of tools that you can find in so many other language learning apps, things like speech recognition, things like listening to audio and being led to repeat the audio and, you know, having you focus on how you are moving your mouth, like Pimsleur does, for example. This would be a really easy way to just make it a little bit more effective to be able to just open up that section of the course, get in some speaking practice, get in some pronunciation practice, and then move on to the next chapter.

But instead what StoryLearning does is they give you a lesson plan and they say, hand this off to a language exchange or a language tutor or whatever the case is. This isn’t bad, but it’s assuming that you have these connections, you have a language tutor, you have language learning friends, and not everybody has access to this.

Not only that, but it creates an obstacle. Because when I look at this course and I get to the speaking session, I see it and I say, Well, I can’t do that right now. So either I’m going to skip past all the speaking sessions in the entire course and then be frustrated that I can’t have a conversation, or I’m going to say, okay, I’ll come back to this course when I have somebody who I can hand this off to. And then I would just never come back to the course. It’s a lose-lose situation if you’re trying to build your conversational skills.

Now, I know I spent the majority of this video criticizing StoryLearning, criticizing using books to get fluent. However, that isn’t to say that it can’t be beneficial to some language learners. It really depends on your goals and your interests.

Should you use StoryLearning to learn a language?

So how do you know if StoryLearning or using books to learn a language is the best strategy for you? My suggestion is to just use common sense. Do you enjoy reading? Do you enjoy getting lost in a story? Do you wish that when you were reading a book you were just kind of passively taking in the language and your brain is figuring it out for you?

If that’s the case, then StoryLearning or books in general might be a really effective addition to your language learning strategy.

Now, of course, if your goal is to speak the language, it’s just an addition. It’s not the whole strategy. But if it’s something that you enjoy and you’re going to get something out of it, then I would definitely recommend it.

However, if getting lost in a story is really not your cup of tea and you want to get straight to having actual conversations, then I would recommend other things and I’ll talk about that in a second.

StoryLearning alternatives

Now let’s talk about alternatives. First I’ll talk about other alternatives to StoryLearning, meaning finding books that you enjoy, getting lost in a story, all that kind of jazz. Because while StoryLearning claims to be the only one who does this, this is just not the case. And there are other options to achieve this.

The most well-known alternative for this that I would recommend is LingQ. LingQ is a platform that has a lot of audiobooks and books and videos basically put into its platform and has a transcript for you to learn to comprehend the language.

Other language learners all over the place also use LingQ to upload their own content and use the same strategy to learn a language. Now honestly, the LingQ platform itself is not the greatest, but you can access all of the content for free.

The second alternative for those of you who like to use stories to learn a language is Kwiziq. Now, Kwiziq is only for Spanish and French language learners, but I really like it. It’s very similar to StoryLearning in that the stories are very short, very manageable, and very easy to consume. The platform is also a lot higher quality than StoryLearning’s, and you have a whole bunch of different types of stories because while StoryLearning focuses on one story and just breaks up the course into all these different chapters, the Kwiziq stories are their own individual stories, so you get all these different types of options to keep you interested, keep you hooked.

And because of the way that Kwiziq works, you have access to all of these lessons on every single little grammar point that any particular story uses. And so you can really kind of like deconstruct what you’re struggling with in a particular story and really strengthen any particular skills that you’re missing.

Now, what about alternatives if you want to have conversations in a foreign language and the story isn’t really your thing and you realize now that it’s just really not your thing, but you don’t know what else to do? I know a lot of us get really sucked into marketing with things like StoryLearning. And so if I just saved you a bunch of time and a bunch of money, I don’t want to leave you high and dry with nowhere else to go.

So if that’s the position you’re in, I would highly recommend you take my free course about how to choose a language app for you. It’s a three-day video course that you’ll get sent directly to your inbox with directions about how to use my language app search to find an app that will work best for you and your language learning.

Watch it on YouTube

Read the transcript

One of the easiest ways to learn a language is to make language learning part of something that you already do. Let’s talk about the best Chrome extensions that you can use to learn a language.

Language Reactor

The first Chrome extension to learn a language that I want to talk about is Language Reactor, formerly known as Language Learning with Netflix and Language Learning with YouTube.

Basically Language Reactor is a free chrome extension that you can use to turn any video that you find on Netflix or YouTube into a study tool. If you already really like to watch movies on Netflix and videos on YouTube from people, and for people who speak your target language natively, Language Reactor is easy peasy.

Trancy

Similar to Language Reactor, the next Chrome extension to learn a language that I want to talk about is Trancy. Now Trancy does a lot of stuff that Language Reactor does by giving you the subtitles and helping you to translate between languages, between your target language and the native language. But it also uses artificial intelligence to really bump up your studying a little bit.

So if, for example, you really value having a lot of activities about a video you’re watching or a book you’re reading, then Trancy is excellent because it basically takes the transcripts, the subtitles of the show or movie that you’re watching, and it creates a bunch of different activities like Fill in the Blanks, speech recognition, all sorts of stuff.

CaptionPop

Next on my list of best Chrome extensions to learn a language is CaptionPop. CaptionPop does a lot of the same things that Language Reactor and Trancy do. But the thing that I really love about CaptionPop is the Chrome extension.

Put the CaptionPop Chrome extension into your browser, and when you go through YouTube, it’ll show you what subtitles are available for every video. And it’ll not only tell you the subtitles are available, but it’ll also tell you which languages the subtitles are available in.

Unfortunately for us, this was a lot more useful back a few years ago when YouTube was really big into getting people to translate subtitles onto different YouTube videos. Since they’ve killed that option, it’s a little bit less useful.

But to keep YouTube accessible to people who are hard of hearing and really like captions like me, CaptionPop can still be really useful because again, if you’re looking at YouTube for vlogs in Italian, you can find videos where it says like, there are subtitles in Italian for this video and it gives you that extra step ahead in your language learning.

Obviously, this is a few fewer steps than Trancy and Language Reactor do. But if you don’t need those steps and you just need that little bit of, you know, help with your search on YouTube, then CaptainPop is a really solid option.

Readlang

The next best Chrome extension to learn a language that I’d like to recommend to you is Readlang. Now, we’ve talked a lot about video so far in this video. Now let’s switch over to texts and reading and writing and vocabulary and things like that.

Readlang is a very, very simple free tool that you can use to take any text from anywhere on the Internet, and make flashcards out of it, practice reading it, pick up the words that are new to you and need to work on more. All that kind of stuff.

Not only can you use it to translate the texts that you found, but you can also access all of the other texts that other users have imported into Readlang, and use that as practice for your target language. It’s kind of similar to LingQ if you’re familiar with LingQ, but it’s a lot more simple and less icky. It’s not pretty by any means, but it’s functional.

Toucan

Next on the list of Best Chrome extension to learn language is Toucan. And Toucan was just recently bought out by Babbel, so it must be good.

Toucan makes it really simple to casually immerse yourself in language while you’re reading English or whatever language, depends on what languages Toucan covers, but you get my drift.

But if you find yourself reading on the internet a lot and could use a little bit of injection of language learning as you go, Toucan is excellent because it will literally just translate words into your target language randomly. This can be a fun, interesting, pretty passive way of picking up new vocabulary if it’s a method that works for you.

Masterlingo

If you like the idea of Toucan, but you don’t like the randomness of it, the next Chrome extension to learn a language is Masterlingo. Of course, Masterlingo is a little bit less passive in that it doesn’t translate words from your native language as you’re reading your native language.

But if you’re already reading your target language and use Masterlingo, all you do is click on a word and it’ll help you translate and learn the word as you go. So yes, it’s similar to Readlang and LingQ, but it’s prettier and simpler than LingQ.

VocabBoost

On the topic of vocab, the next Chrome extension to learn a language is one called VocabBoost. VocabBoost basically turns any text into a cloze text. And if you don’t know what a cloze is, it’s basically a fill-in-the-blank sentence.

You have a sentence, you have a little square, and you have to put in the right word or conjugation or whatever it is into the square. This is the entire premise of another resource called Clozemaster, but it’s not its own resource.

It’s a this is a Chrome extension and you can make any text into this cloze. So if you like Clozemaster, but you want flexibility or you’re not quite at an intermediate level yet, VocabBoost might be a great alternative for you.

YouGlish

This isn’t a Chrome extension but is actually really vital and relevant here and that is a resource and a website called YouGlish. Honestly, I’ve had YouGlish on my list of resources for a long time but have never mentioned it for whatever reason.

Now, YouGlish is awesome and relevant in this video because it’s basically a search engine for YouTube videos that have specific phrases in different languages. So you can practice your listening comprehension and learn to understand different phrases from a bunch of different mouths, accents, situations, tones of voice, and all that kind of stuff.

If you are at all familiar with learning to understand a language, then you know that it’s easy enough to understand one audio clip, but it’s really hard to contextualize that information across all sorts of different voices and accents and men, women, young or old, all sorts of stuff.

YouGlish is a free website that you can use to pick the language that you’re learning, plug in a phrase or a word like “me llamo”, for example, and it’ll give you literally hundreds of video clips of people saying “me llamo”, and you can just train your ear to understand “me llamo”, from all these different accents, scenarios, etc.

If you like these suggestions, but you’re really not sure what to do with them or which ones to choose, I really recommend you take my free course on how to choose a language app. It’s a free short three-day video course. It’ll basically take you step by step to choose a language app based on what you like, what your goals are, what your language is, and all that jazz.

At the very least, it’ll teach you how to use my free language app search so you can stop searching for language learning resources and start actually learning languages.