Language app reviews

Tandem Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Tandem is one of the fairly popular names in the language learning world for connecting language learners with native speakers of that language. Right from your phone, you can strike up a conversation with somebody who speaks a foreign language, get in practice, and make a friend!

In this Tandem review, let’s dive into what goes into this experience: the pros, the cons, and if Tandem is right for you and your language learning journey.

Oh yeah – we’ll go into Tandem Pro too, and see if it’s something that you can benefit from, or if you’re good to go with the free app.

Tandem languages

Because of the way Tandem works (meaning Tandem itself doesn’t really create content, it’s all the content [messages] that users create), there isn’t really a limit to languages! As long as you can find somebody on the app that is willing to talk to you in that language, you’re set.

Which is why on the website, Tandem lists its languages as:

English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian

Spanish
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
Other

In other words, open up the app and give it a shot, you never know!

Tandem app review: getting started

When you first download the Tandem app, you’ll get some pretty basic starting, qualifying questions. Unlike qualifying questions with other apps that want to know your level in the language you’re learning (’cause, spoiler alert, you should have the vocab/grammar down to participate in basic conversation), Tandem’s questions figure out who you are and where you’re looking to go.

Pretty basic stuff, right?

When choosing which languages you’re practicing, you can choose as many languages as you like at any level. And Tandem offers almost any language under the sun – basically, if there’s someone on the app who speaks your language, you’re set!

Once that’s done, you’ll get some more qualifying questions to help pair you up with a conversation partner that you’ll actually enjoy talking to.

Again, pretty basic, reasonable stuff.

I wouldn’t sweat these questions too much; I’m not sure they really show up anywhere major, and even if they do, nobody really pays attention to them. In my experience, you’ll get a GIANT influx of messages once you get going anyways! And, to be honest, I’m not sure anyone really ever sees your answers. Maybe it’s just an internal thing?

Oh yeah, and that last screenshot? I’m not sure if Tandem is trying to push Tandem Pro here or if there’s actually a “waiting line”, but my account was approved within like 20 minutes or so. Use your real name and a real photo of you (yup, that’s required!) and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Nonetheless, you do get this offer:

If you really love using Tandem you could find a lot of value in Tandem Pro. It’s very reasonably priced and gets you a lot more access to more practice as well as partners that you may have more chemistry with.

At the very least, I think the unlimited translation would absolutely be worth it. Find a friend or two that’ll help you build up your vocabulary and it’ll be an awesome learning tool!

After all that setup, it’s time to get in some practice!

Tandem review: finding a partner

The first place you’ll go is the Community tab. Here’s you’ll find a long list of potential conversation partners to help you practice the language you want to learn.

Everybody’s got a picture, their real name, and a “bio”, which seems to be their answer to the “what are your goals” question that we answered before. Sometimes it’ll be a complete sentence, and at the same time I’ve literally seen just “environmental” as a bio, so….grain of salt?

Here you see a couple of things. Most importantly, obviously, there are a few potential candidates for getting in some language practice.

Since I told Tandem that I’m a native English speaker and am learning Spanish, they’re recommending the opposite back: native Spanish speakers learning English.

Above that, you can see “featured learners” which…I’m not entirely sure what that means. Maybe really active texters?

And above that, you can search for members who are geographically near you. That’s only relevant if you’re a paid member and value in-person language exchanges.

BUT this option does provide great opportunities for language learners who are interested in local language learners but want to test the waters a bit and see if you actually enjoy talking to language learners nearby.

If you’re not finding anybody who you have any interest in talking to, hit the “settings” button in the upper-right hand corner to get this screen.

My favorite part of this is where you can select your gender and your age range. Especially considering you have to use your real name and your real photo, I get totally inundated by messages from dudes (like the guy who asked if my dad is an artist [cue massive eye roll]), so that’s incredibly helpful!

I found one person that I wanted to talk to and initiated a conversation with her. Then BAM!

So. Many. Texts. So. Many. Notifications.

I wonder if I was put into that list of “featured” texters?

I mean, it’s great for finding new conversation partners! The sky’s the limit!

It can also be incredibly overwhelming, which is why I’ve left most of these messages unread. Honestly, I just couldn’t keep up!

Oh yeah, peep that last one. What, you thought I was lying?! You think women don’t drown in messages from random men just because they’re women? Think again, mate!

Now, when you’re in a conversation, what options do you have available to you? Well….like all of them. Tandem is primarily a texting app, but you can easily enough also use it to video chat, send audio messages, images, GIFS…you name it, you got it!

Plus, one thing that’s really helpful if you want to be precise, is easy corrections within conversations.

It may be worth mentioning that Tandem doesn’t supply you with any special keyboards or anything, so you’ll need to make sure that your phone’s native keyboard supports the letters (accents and all!) that your target language uses.

Personally, I just use Google’s keyboard, and that gives me access to all the accents I need to text in Spanish, French…and pretty much every accent that I could possibly need for letters in the Latin alphabet.

Honestly, the few conversations I did have before I got overwhelmed (which I already knew was going to happen based on my HelloTalk review) were really enjoyable! It just…texting is really quick, you know? It’s meant to be instant, rapid-fire. Which is hard when you’re doing it in another language!

That includes not only reading and figuring out someone else’s messages in another language but also taking the time and energy to communicate in the language yourself. It’s really hard work.

Most of the conversations I had were mostly (if not all) in Spanish. Most of them also didn’t really volunteer corrections, but that’s an easy enough thing to just ask a person about.

Dani, on the right, was the first one to correct my texts, so I did the same back. It’s really nice, but it also requires a lot of mental energy, when you’re already using so much mental energy to translate these texts!

That mixed with all the messages I was getting from random Spanish speakers…it can be a lot for some people. And one thing we want to avoid with language learning is getting too overwhelmed/expecting too much from ourselves.

Tandem tutors

Lastly, we have one more section of the Tandem app: the “Tutors” section.

This is a kind of interesting model, to be honest. I mean obviously, anybody using this app would have at least some interest in a paid tutor, I guess I just wasn’t expecting it?

Nonetheless, Tandem handpicks tutors for you that they think are interesting to talk to. You pick a tutor, pick a time, and select how long you want your lesson to be: 20, 40, 60, or 90 minutes long (which is a really long lesson!)

This is just one example of one of the tutors you can try out. I mean, there are plenty of ways to learn to speak a language, but if you haven’t found one that you like just yet, maybe you’ll want to give this section of Tandem a go!

Who the Tandem app is for

After doing this Tandem app review, I love it! I think this is a great resource for language learners: the app is attractive and smooth, there are a ton of potential conversation partners (at least for Spanish, I can’t say for less popular languages), and it’s really easy to get thrown into some conversational practice.

But, like I said, I knew going in that it wouldn’t be for me. While the concept is great, Tandem is not for language learners who easily get overwhelmed by a lot of conversations/attention (i.e. introverts). If you have the social energy to keep it up, Tandem is great!

Tandem is primarily best for writing (or texting) practice, but the sky’s really the limit. Considering you can send audio clips or even have a video chat with anybody, that takes care of your speaking practice, as well. That’ll get you your reading and listening practice along with it!

It’s also worth reiterating that Tandem is not for absolute beginners – you should at least be able to carry on a basic conversation, or you’ll be totally lost. Otherwise, though, Tandem is a great way to get in all four of the major language learning skills!

Language Transfer Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Language Transfer is one of those language learning resources that not many people have heard about due to lack of marketing. There’s no marketing for Language Transfer because it is 100% free (and not free with ads like Duolingo…it’s actually free).

Not only that, but it’s a totally unique approach to learning to speak a new language in that it approaches languages not from “hello” and “my name is” like the more common approach, but from what’s easiest from your native language (so long as that language is English).

In this Language Transfer review, let’s talk about this approach, and whether or not Language Transfer can help you accomplish your own language learning goals.

Language Transfer’s background

The first thing I mentioned is that Language Transfer is free, and that’s an important distinction. Not only because it’s on the list of ways to learn a language for free, but because it’s born out of one guy’s method. One guy!

There’s no “team” (although Mihalis is currently trying to wrangle up some volunteers to help out with this project) – it’s just one simple method of approaching learning a language.

At the moment, you can use Language Transfer to learn:

Arabic
English (from Spanish)
French
German
Greek

Italian
Spanish
Swahili

So what does a Language Transfer course look like? Well, like this.

Yup, it’s literally just a playlist on SoundCloud, easily accessed right on the website. Or, if you prefer, Language Transfer also has a YouTube channel with all the lessons right there, too!

You don’t need to submit an email address, create an account, nothin’. Just have internet access and you’re good to go! You can download the files to your computer, stream them on any kind of device, or download the mobile app. Language Transfer does not want you to have any obstacles in accessing their content.

Language Transfer Review: a small disclaimer

Generally, when someone starts learning a foreign language, I recommend starting with the most commonly-spoken words and going from there. While the purpose of this Language Transfer review isn’t to say that that’s wrong (because it’s definitely not), this is another way to go about it.

When I tested the Spanish course, there were a few rules of thumb that I really didn’t agree with at first. Things like:

you’ll be and feel like a Spanish speaker after the first hour
don’t try to memorize what you’re learning, that’s destructive
don’t write anything down

Those rules/statements really put me off at first. I think a critical piece of information they’re missing is that all that is true with this particular strategy. I mean, although the concept of fluency is really vague and not a great approach to learning a language, memorizing is definitely not destructive, at least not if you’re doing it effectively.

So what is this strategy? What makes it better or worse than other strategies, and could it be beneficial to you? Keep on reading!

The Language Transfer methodology

Like I said, most other language learning resources will start you off learning things like greetings and how to introduce yourself, which totally makes sense. What’s the first thing you learn in the Spanish course?

Normal.

Specifically, you learn that English words that end in ‘al’ are generally the same in Spanish, but with different intonation (well, he doesn’t use that word, but that’s what he means) and different sounds (like you’ll learn using The Mimic Method).

So, words like normal can easily be guessed! You don’t have to memorize vocabulary or use a book to figure that out, so long as you understand that rule.

And you know what? He’s right. If you’ve ever practiced speaking Spanish and wanted to use a word but weren’t sure if you knew the translation, chances are you guessed. And chances are you were either correct or almost correct.

And right there, that’s the entire basis of how Language Transfer teaches languages without textbooks or expensive courses. It teaches the rules of how languages are connected, so you can figure it out for yourself! Or, in other words, cognates.

Who should use Language Transfer

Like I said, Language Transfer is more accessible than most language learning resources, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right choice for everyone. It’s almost a natural way to base learning a foreign language on your native language, but it’s missing a lot of information that’s important for some people.

It’s not visual

There is nothing visual. Nothing. You don’t learn to spell words. You don’t learn which letters are accented or what those accents look like. Sure, you learn to conjugate “querer” into “yo quiero”, but you don’t necessarily learn that there’s a ‘u’ in there. With this method, that’s not important.

That means that if you want to work on your reading or writing skills, you’ll be SOL. It’ll be hard to connect the things that you learn here with the other skills that you want to improve.

In my opinion, this is, without a doubt, the biggest problem for some language learners.

There’s no feedback

While the method is really simple and to the point, there is no feedback. It’s like watching people in movies from the 80s learning a language from a Pimsleur CD and totally butchering words and sentences, and all the CD does is say “great job!” Thanks for the compliment and all, but there’s no way to know if what I’m saying is actually right!

I mean, you’re probably not going to make any real mistakes, but don’t think you can avoid having real conversations just by using Language Transfer. Language is all about communication, and communication requires at least 2 people!

Mihalis’ accent

Look, I like to learn foreign languages. Accents are not the kind of thing that turns me off from listening to somebody. So I don’t want you to think I’m being judgmental towards someone who doesn’t sound like me.

However, this course is 100% audio. There’s no transcript (again, no visuals). The entire method is all about realizing the patterns between the two languages. Like me, over 70% of the people who read this blog are Americans. And there were a couple of instances where it took me a second to figure out what Mihalis was saying.

For example, the first word that was taught: normal. I thought he was saying “norman”! That seemed really weird to me. Clearly, it’s not a huge deal, but it can prove to be an obstacle, and make this whole thing just a bit more confusing.

I do have to say, though, that if all you want to do is impulsively move to Spain and figure out the language as you go…this is freakin’ solid.

How to support Language Transfer

Language Transfer costs $0.00, has zero ads, and doesn’t even ask for your email address. All in the name of accessibility! But what if you want to support the mission? There are a couple of options for us, fortunately.

For one, you can always send them direct cash donations via PayPal if you so choose. Or, if you want something back for your donations, there are a couple of other relevant choices.

The non-shop

The first option is the “non-shop”, which has products in two categories: dissemination material and learning material.

The dissemination material – things like postcards and tote bags that you can use to help spread the word – only cost enough to cover production and shipping. Consider these products to be their free marketing.

Or, you have the learning materials.

These products are the same exact things that are also available for 100% free right on the website. It’s literally just a way to support the method.

The Patreon

Finally, you can support Language Transfer through their Patreon. With a dozen different membership options ranging from $1 a month to $100 a month, you get more chances to share marketing materials, share Language Transfer with organizations, or get Interlinear Books for free (that part’s really interesting to me).

If you don’t already know what Interlinear Books is, it’s an independent organization that translates books into a variety of languages. Basically, it creates bilingual books.

According to the Patreon, “Interlinearbooks.com have offered supporters of Language Transfer free translated stories to help them practice their new language. These are available on $3+ tiers.” Yay perks!

Language Transfer review: I genuinely love it!

I think Language Transfer can be an excellent way to learn a new language, and I’ll definitely be trying some of the other languages at some point in the future as a way to make those connections between languages that I’d be making anyway.

And I absolutely respect how accessible it is! Money can be a huge obstacle for language learners, thanks to that expensive marketing that I was talking about before.

But, for literally any other skill outside of speaking, Language Transfer can’t help you. Apply this information to your own language learning strategy as you will!

uTalk review: tons of vocab in tons of languages

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

uTalk is a vocab app that brings languages to us that can be hard to find elsewhere; so whether you’re learning something common like Spanish or not-so-common like Cebuano, uTalk pretty much as you covered.

With 140+ languages, there are plenty of options to choose from. But that’s not all you should be thinking about when it comes to your language learning strategy! In this uTalk review, let’s discuss the pros and cons of using this app to learn a language.

uTalk review: languages

One of the best reasons to use uTalk to learn a language is that there are so many languages available that you can’t find anywhere else. uTalk currently supports 140+ different languages to learn, with new languages being added all the time.

You can use uTalk to learn:

Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic (Egyptian)
Arabic (Gulf)
Arabic (Lebanese)
Arabic (Modern Standard)
Arabic (Moroccan)
Armenian (Eastern)
Assamese
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Cantonese
Catalan
Cebuano
Chibemba
Chichewa
Chinese (Hakka)
Chinese (Mandarin)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Dzongkha
English (American)
English (Australian)
English (British)
English (Canadian)
English (Cockney)
English (Indian)
English (Scottish)
Esperanto
Estonian
Fijian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
Flemish
French
French (Canadian)

Galician
Georgian
German (Swiss)
Greek
Greek (Ancient)
Greenlandic
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Ilocano
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kachchi
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Kinyarwanda
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kurdish (Sorani)
Kyrgyz
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Manx
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Neapolitan
Nepali
Norwegian
Oriya
Oromo
Papiamentu

Pashto
Persian (Dari)
Persian (Farsi)
Persian (Tajiki)
Pidgin (Nigerian)
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Punjabi (Indian)
Punjabi (Pakistani)
Romanian
Russian
Saami (Southern)
Samoan
Sardinian
Scots
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Shona
Sicilian
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish (Spanish)
Spanish (Argentinian)
Spanish (Latin American)
Swahili
Swedish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Tok Pisin

Suffice to say…it’s a lot (151, to be precise). So many different languages, including different accents! Now let’s talk about what uTalk does with them.

uTalk walkthrough

When you first open up the uTalk app, you’ll be shown this screen, featuring every single one of those 140+ languages, with your most recent language at the top.

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward! No fancy tutorials or overwhelm, really. This can be nice for those who don’t need the complicated AI features or techy chatbots; uTalk keeps it simple.

Select your language
Select your category
Go!

Each category of phrases is provided with the following exercises.

Phrase practice

Your first exercise introduces these phrases to you. There are quite a bit of them, honestly, so you may want to take a few tries to get through them.

https://vimeo.com/1045387465/7d524a7bbc?ts=0&share=copy

And if this is too difficult for you, go back to the prior “first words” lessons.

Study each of these phrases by listening to the audio, understanding the phrase (try to depend just on the image to figure it out! It may be difficult, but I promise it’ll be worth it), and repeating it until you get the pronunciation down.

This is the last time you’ll see the English translations – for the rest of these quizzes, you’ll be identifying each vocab word by either its picture or its audio.

And it’s self-correcting, as well, so you can decide if your understanding is “good enough”. Like I said, no AI or speech recognition to complicate things!

Easy game

If you’re not sure if you studied the first exercise well enough, the next exercise will immediately tell you. Easy game takes your knowledge of the phrases a step further and gives you some multiple choice selections of the audio clips and imagery.

https://vimeo.com/1045390342/14c6123301?ts=0&share=copy

In this way, uTalk is very similar to Rosetta Stone: teaching you the language by letting your brain “figure it out”. As I said, this is more difficult in the short term, but much more effective in the long-term. If you’ve ever struggled with getting stuck translating in your head when you’re trying to communicate, this approach will circumvent that entire step.

And don’t worry: even if you don’t understand every single word at this point, that is totally normal. This sort of game trains your brain to differentiate between different inflections, vocab words, etc., not necessarily to have “correct” grammar or vocabulary.

Speaking game

In this activity…well, you can see for yourself how I tricked myself by trying to trick uTalk! Basically, it’s time for you to prove if you’re pronouncing the phrases correctly enough to understand yourself compared to the native audio.

This can technically be helpful for pronunciation (though I recommend Speechling more for that), but I’d say this would be more helpful for retaining the vocabulary into your memory.

Easy game
Speaking game
Hard game
Memory game
Recall game

Hard Game

The Hard Game is where you start testing to see how effectively you’re learning, and whether or not you need to study more. This is active use of your memory.

You get a number of images and an audio track. Your job is to select the image that belongs to that audio track. No more text, no more translations. Now it’s up to you to know which words mean what.

Once you get to this point, you should have a decent idea of if you need more practice or not. By now you’ll be tested on whether or not you kind of have a hang on this or not.

Memory Game

Memory Game takes it a step further by cutting your time shorter. With the Hard Game, you get plenty of time to process and think, and then make your choice.

With Memory Game, you’re flashed with images for a couple of seconds, and they’re instantly covered back up. Then audio plays, and you have to select which image (remembering which image is where) goes with the audio clip you’re hearing.

This is where uTalk gets intense! You only get to see these images for like 3 seconds before they’re covered up. When you tap on one card, only that one card flips back over, so there’s no getting around it!

Recall Game

Last but not least we have Recall Game! In this final exercise, you’ll be tested on this vocab with every skill you’ve been practicing: you get the English word/phrase and the image, and your job is to record yourself saying the correct foreign phrase.

Just like with the Speaking Game, there’s no attempt at speech recognition – you’re trusted to know for yourself whether or not you’ve got it. Once you make your recording and the English is translated, you have the option to:

replay your own recorded audio
play uTalk’s native audio
report that you got it wrong
report that you got it right

I love that it’s totally up to you to say how well you did on your own speaking portion, and whether or not you got the phrase right. Self-reporting is where it’s at!

uTalk review: prices

uTalk’s payment model is super interesting! uTalk gives you the option to earn more time, earn more information. Or, to make things simpler, you can just pay to play.

Click here for uTalk’s updated pricing.

For one, uCoins gives you the option not only to work your way through (earning uCoins as you play uTalk’s games) but also to only pay for a little at a time.

If 60+ different topics spanning 140+ different languages is too much for you (’cause that is definitely a lot), just pay for the topics that are actually beneficial to you.

uTalk review: who it’s for

I do genuinely love uTalk, both because it’s an excellent way to learn a new language, but also because of their ethics, and their commitment to making endangered and less common languages more accessible.

As for actually using uTalk to learn a language, this uTalk review proves that it’s a great app for those who are looking for a quick route to effective use and understanding of the language in very specific situations, without the hullabaloo of fancy add-ons or confusing features.

uTalk is simple, direct, and effective.

If that’s your way to learn languages, similar alternatives to uTalk include Rosetta Stone and Speechling; both are just as simple and focus on speaking, but Rosetta Stone is more modern while Speechling isn’t as effective for teaching the language as it is promoting your pronunciation.

Alternatively, if you need heavier gamification to keep you interested and engaged long-term, I might recommend something like Polygloss or Speakly.

Suffice to say, uTalk is a great option for language learners looking for resources to support lesser-known languages that aren’t available elsewhere. Click here to get 20% off uTalk!

Conjuguemos Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Conjuguemos is a study tool used to learn verbs, vocab, and grammar in a handful of languages. The vision behind it is a way to make learning these things fun for the classroom – it’s not a fancy app, but that also means it’s totally free to use (for individual students, at least).

So amongst all the other resources and apps out there for language learners, who is Conjuguemos for? What does it do right, and what does it need to work on? In this Conjuguemos review, I’ll discuss just that!

Conjuguemos languages

As always, let’s start this Conjuguemos review with the languages available themselves. Conjuguemos supports a handful of very popular foreign languages, including:

French
German
Italian
Korean

Latin
Portuguese
Spanish

However, not all these languages are totally complete – it looks like the more popular languages (Spanish) have significantly more material than less popular languages (Latin).

It’s kind of like Duolingo in that it’s totally free, but…you get what you get, ya know?

As an experienced Spanish language learner and considering Spanish is the most evolved language on Conjuguemos, let’s buckle up and focus there!

Conjuguemos review: verbs

Once you select a language, all the materials available in said language are shown to you in a pretty well-organized way. And, I gotta say, if this is supplemental to the tools you’re already using, there’s nothing better!

As an independent language learner who’s full up on vocab and really just needs to brush up on the past tense and subjunctive sometimes, I stick to the first section.

Under this section, all your options for studying these verbs are laid out for you by subcategory. You can practice all of your Spanish conjugations, or you can narrow it down by something as vague as Indicative/Subjunctive/Imperative moods, or as specific as stem-changing Preterite tense verbs.

You can chew up all these grammatical differences any way you choose, whichever way works for you and your grammatical weaknesses.

My past tense isn’t nearly as good as it should be, so I’m gonna go with the Preterite tense, regular verbs only.

Don’t know this tense at all, or very little? That drop-down menu on the right links you to all the learning materials you could ever need: conjugation charts, worksheets, flashcards, everything.

While you can get that information in so many different places online, it’s handy to have links right here to review before testing yourself. I won’t go too in-depth, though, ’cause that’s not where Conjuguemos shines!

Let’s start with Graded Practice.

This bit is simple but effective! For 5 minutes (or however long you set your timer for – I’ve found 5 minutes to be plenty to both get my practice in and also not exhaust myself) you conjugate your verbs.

If you need a hint, click “Show Hints” on the bottom right. If you just want to guess (like I do), try your best and you’ll be corrected and won’t be moved on until you get it right, correct accents and all! Conjuguemos also keeps track of what you struggle with and will show you those terms a couple more times.

Not quite an SRS algorithm, but more like common-sense practice!

Plus, if you have an account, you can opt to record your results and keep track of your improvements over time.

Next up, we have flashcards!

On the front you get the English verb – on the back you get the translation and all the conjugations you need.

Personally not my favorite method (I like translating on the fly MUCH more than this rote memorization), but I do appreciate the self-reporting, like Anki and Rocket Languages also do very well.

Last but not least (in this section), we have games!

If you’re not using Conjuguemos under a teacher (I’ll talk about what that means in a bit) you, unfortunately, can’t play those first 3 multiplayer games, but you still have plenty of options!

They’re all very simple and fun – here are some shots from Frog Game, Crossword, Wordsearch, and Memory:

Yeah, I know, not the fanciest looking. I mean if you’re into the whole 80s/90s video game vibe (I’m not sure that was intentional, but it’s the impression I get) the aesthetics are great!

But we’re talking about learning languages, so aesthetics aren’t necessarily the priority anyways.

Suffice to say, Conjuguemos offers a ton of methods for us to learn and practice our verbs. And that’s just the one section! Let’s move on to vocabulary.

Conjuguemos review: vocabulary

Conjuguemos takes an interesting approach to vocab. Because it’s primarily meant to supplement formal classes, we get two options: vocab by textbook and vocab by theme.

Under “vocab by textbook”, Conjuguemos has a list of what I’m assuming are popular Spanish textbooks in a variety of levels. If you’re using one of these textbooks, Conjuguemos has vocab separated by textbook and chapter, so you (or your teacher) can use it to help you through!

Selecting any of these individual chapters within these textbooks will send you to that same activity page with Graded Practice, Flashcards, and Games options.

The idea is that your teacher uses Conjuguemos to keep track of how you’re doing in these chapters, as well as provide you with a more entertaining way to do homework! Not bad at all!

Or, if you’re not using Conjuguemos for a class, you can also just sort vocabulary by theme and learn them that way. It appears to be the same words that you’ll study in any textbook (food, clothing, colors, etc.).

Spanish grammar

Next, let’s take a look at the Conjuguemos approach to grammar! While yes, verb conjugations are a part of grammar, Conjuguemos gives them their own independent sections, and rightly so.

Under grammar, we get concepts like Gustar, Por vs Para, and more. Each of these concepts sends you to a Graded Practice, which is basically a digital worksheet to use to practice your use of said concepts.

And just like in all the other sections, accents matter! If you don’t use accents, you will be marked as wrong. It’s tough, but it’s true.

Listening activities

Finally, we have some listening activities. These don’t really seem to relate to any subject in particular but are great for working on listening comprehension in a couple of ways.

All the listening activities are organized into Themes, Grammar, and Cultural Topics. They’re also in a variety of different accents, which is noted right on the activity page.

These videos are great snippets of real Spanish-speakers talking at native speed, though with easy vocab that relates to their themes.

For example, this exercise is a boy named Dani being “interviewed” about basic information: where he’s from, how old he is, etc.

It’s not the slow, crystal clear speech that you’d expect from beginner audio, so be prepared to not understand a lot of it. This is some serious comprehension practice!

From here you have two options to test yourself: the comprehension quiz and the listening quiz. Here’s the comprehension quiz, answering the same basic questions that Dani is answering.

For more of a challenge, the listening quiz gives you the transcript and asks how many words you want to fill in for yourself. Obviously, the more words you remove, the more difficult the challenge.

This’ll take some time and some serious thinking! This is a great way to practice listening comprehension, especially considering not only the number of different accents available but they’re also labeled as such so you can easily broaden the number of accents you can understand.

In other words, this is hella supplemental study content!

Conjuguemos review: pricing

The pricing plans here are interesting and are clearly different from most other resources in that it’s built specifically as supplemental content for more formal classes.

Independent language learners don’t pay a dime! This pricing is more for teachers and educational institutions who can use Conjuguemos to help communicate their students’ individual needs.

And independent language learners also aren’t missing out on a whole lot! The only glaringly obvious thing you’ll be missing if you’re joining without a teacher is that you can’t play the multiplayer games, since those are based on playing against other classmates.

Otherwise, teachers or institutions who opt for a paid plan for their students can use Conjuguemos for a very reasonable price.

Who should use Conjuguemos?

I love using Conjuguemos for one-off grammar practice as shown in this Conjuguemos review. Just five minutes here and there remembering my past tenses or other various grammar concepts gives me a little instant gratification.

I love the Graded Practice, that it’s just a simple but effective way to practice grammar rules in context. That bit’s my favorite.

Unfortunately, while Conjuguemos technically supports a handful of languages, many of them (namely Latin and Korean), this Conjuguemos review shows that they just don’t have enough content (yet) to make it worthwhile. If you’re learning any of the other languages, though, and need some basic grammar practice, Conjuguemos is gold!

Especially if you’re taking a formal course using a textbook that’s supported, this is an amazing supplemental resource! Or, if you’re a teacher looking for easy, convenient help for your students, see what Conjuguemos can do for you!

OkyDoky Review: very fun way to get useful vocab

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Note: this review is currently being updated. Some information may be outdated.

OkyDoky (formerly Hey! Lingo) is a new resource for foreign language vocab that offers language learners a ton of languages. What it lacks in history it makes up for in diversity (both in languages and in the ways you can learn the vocab in them).

In this OkyDoky review, I’ll explain all the ways in which you can learn all this vocab, and what kind of language learner OkyDoky is best for.

OkyDoky languages

OkyDoky is for learners of 38 different languages, including:

Albanian
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Chinese (Mandarin)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Italian
Japanese

Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese

Bonus! Just like Mondly, OkyDoky is great for language laddering: any language you can learn with OkyDoky can used to be learned any of their other languages as well.

Using OkyDoky

Once you create an account, you’ll immediately be walked through a tutorial of the app so that you’re aware of both how to use it, and what options are available to you to learn a language.

https://vimeo.com/1044386409/527c5bd612?ts=0&share=copy

At first glance, this seems like a completely reasonable way to approach learning a language, as long as you already have some beginner knowledge behind you. This tutorial assumes you know beginner vocabulary and verbs, which is worth noting.

Also worth noting? Just from this first glance, all I see is AI. I’m hoping that it’s just the tutorial and the cover art that is AI, and the rest is human made (let’s not take a lesson from Duolingo, please!).

Your path to 3000+ words (which leaves you a solid-sized vocabulary to practice actually speaking)
Courses (start with frequently used words & end speaking long sentences)
Vocabulary (learn useful words related to a single theme)

You can choose to learn vocabulary with either of these two paths, whichever one is more useful or interesting to you. For example, if you want to be conversationally fluent as quickly as possible, you’d go by way of courses; if you want to be able to talk about specific things, you’d go by vocabulary.

This right here is already a pretty good indication of the flexibility language learners can get from OkyDoky! This not only offers us a specific road map to achieve a specific goal, but it also includes several ways to get there.

And, no matter which path you choose, you can pick up whichever course you like, whenever you like. This allows us the flexibility to be spontaneous and creative in what we’re learning, while still working towards the same long-term goal of 300 words.

OkyDoky review: flashcard types

I’m a big fan of resources that allow us to switch up how we’re consuming our flashcards. There’s Anki, which has several different options that we can mix and match however we please. There’s uTalk which takes us through a predictable pattern to build our skills in multiple ways. How does OkyDoky do it?

Here’s what I got when I selected a French course. There’s a lot here, so let’s dissect it.

How many cards in the course, depending on if you’re a plus member or not (more on that later)
Different tabs to go through as you make your way through these cards: “Study”, “Review”, “Difficult”, and “Pinned” cards. These are great tools for keeping track of the terms that are more difficult for you
“Timer Speed”, which you can use to speed things up or slow them down if your comprehension is higher/lower than average. You can also turn this off if it’s putting too much pressure on you
Card types

Card types is the biggun’ here! We’ve got “Translate”, “Listen”, “Build”, “Switch”, and “Blank” (I told you, OkyDoky is all about options and flexibility!).

Here’s what some of the different card types looked like when I just selected “all”.

There’s a couple of things I really liked about how this session went. First of all, even though I left myself open to all the card types, it started easier and slowly got a little harder (i.e. “Build”).

Second, if you like all the fun little sound effects and graphics of Duolingo, you’ll love OkyDoky. With the little clicking sounds and the “success” sound effect, plus a big giant reward star that pops up every time you get 5 or 10 in a row right…OkyDoky’s got the gamification thing down pat. This will absolutely keep you interested in language learning.

Oh, and for the sake of building your comprehension, the term is repeated multiple times, whether it’s a “Listen” card or not.

If you get it wrong? No worries, it’ll show you the answer for you to review, and make a note of it to test you on again later.

And that’s pretty much it for the cards themselves! While you’re not going to get any grammar lessons or explanations, this can make for an excellent way to pick up grammar in context. Simple, yet very fun and effective.

Looking for more information? Scroll down to see a list of all the flashcards you’ve been working on.

Seriously, OkyDoky’s graphics are on point! The whole website gives off a great fun/easy-going/perky feel.

You can see a visual representation of how well you know each phrase, the translation (and transliteration for languages with non-Latin alphabets), two different audio recordings of said phrase, a little emoji describing the phrase, and a link to a forum to discuss (again, much like Duolingo).

Because OkyDoky is still so new, there’s not much in terms of discussion. However, just like Kwiziq was when they first expanded to Spanish, you’ll get a response pretty quickly.

Fair warning: if you head on over to the Discussions sections, you’ll find a lot of users correcting OkyDoky’s content and complaining that there shouldn’t be so many errors.

They make a fair point, but I can’t say how their content is created, and they consistently heed the advice and make the corrections. So, you know, take that bit as you will. A brand new website isn’t going to have all the kinks fixed just yet.

OkyDoky’s chat courses

Recently, OkyDoky has released 80+ new language courses in a new feature called chats! To access them, make sure you have the most recent version of the app (or just use the website on desktop) and click on the brown speech bubble courses.

With these chats, OkyDoky switches it up a little bit and goes from kind of random phrases to phrases that you’ll use in an actual conversation. You don’t have all the options of the other courses, but it is a good option for connecting the information you’re taking in into some more realistic “conversational” practice (you’re not actively having the conversations, i.e. speaking, but you’re still creating those connections between random words/phrases and getting used to real-life chats).

It’s pretty simple: you’re given a phrase, a few fill-in-the-blank options, and a timer. Your job is to make it make sense.

As you can see, your correct answers are in green speech bubbles, and incorrect ones are in red. In the end, you get your stats, which let you know how you did in that particular session.

And, per the rest of the app/website, you can replay the chat just with the phrases that you struggled with to really dive deep into the more difficult stuff. So it’s a challenge because you’re essentially throwing yourself into the conversation, but it’s not a challenge because you’re still not actually speaking.

OkyDoky’s other tools

Besides the main show, the flashcards, OkyDoky has a few other tricks to help us stay motivated, consistent, and interested in our language learning.

First we have the Leaderboard. As OkyDoky continues to improve I can see this as a really helpful motivation tool to keep us learning!

At the moment there are two versions of the site-wide Leaderboard: one by language, and one for all OkyDoky users put together. It’s pretty easy to rank at the moment because there aren’t that many users, but I hope once enough language learners join you’ll be able to compete just against those in a particular course.

I would love to see this develop into something along the lines of Duolingo’s leagues, where you’re pit against a certain amount of members every week. But, as of right now, they’re working with what they’ve got (i.e. not too many members).

Another option, if you have friends who are also using OkyDoky, is groups! Create a group and give your 4-digit group code to anybody you like in order to compete with your friends (a much easier and personal competition than everyone learning a certain language).

You can create a group with as many languages as you like, and edit which languages are counted at any time.

Next up we have daily goals! Go into your account page and see some simple statistics for your study habits.

Unfortunately, these aren’t really front-and-center – it took me a minute of exploring the website to find this. However, I do really like the calendar view. Some may want some more in-depth stats (especially for paid members), but at the moment this section is pretty simple.

Besides the fact that I really need to focus on one course at a time, you can see the percentage of the words I’ve learned, when I’ve studied, and how long I’ve studied for (excellent fodder for PolyLogger!).

Underneath, you also have the option to set a daily study goal and set a daily reminder, either via email or via the mobile app.

OkyDoky prices

Even for a paid language resource, OkyDoky keeps it pretty accessible. They don’t block out entire courses but instead give you a little bit of everything. Just in the French course I reviewed for this post, it included 38 free words and 329 extra for paid users.

So what does it take to get those extra words? Well, not much!

OkyDoky is very accessible. I recommend getting that membership now; like I said, it’s a pretty new resource, so these prices may very well increase over time.

And keep in mind, OkyDoky currently covers the most often-used vocab of 26 different languages, and we get access to every single one of them with an account. The sky’s the limit folks!

Who should use OkyDoky

That’s the end of this OkyDoky review. Do I like it? Yes. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Because it’s still in its beginning stages, there are a lot of errors that need fixing. While it’s easy enough to report errors and get them fixed, this does mean we need to take these flashcards with a grain of salt sometimes.

OkyDoky really shines in its use of gamification, giving us those little endorphin rushes whenever we click around the site. It also mixes up the flashcards really well and gives us the power to choose what kind of learning we want to be doing.

And, of course, I love the visualization of the OkyDoky goal. With that specific goal in mind, language learners who are looking to bulk up on phrases in a variety of different languages in a fun way are gonna love this!

It’s a lot like Duolingo, but strictly for vocab and phrases. Like I said, you’re also not going to get any explanations behind grammar rules or anything like that, so if you can’t figure out these phrases via context, you’ll need to go somewhere else for backup.

MosaLingua review: more theory than active language practice

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

MosaLingua is a combination website/mobile app that boasts its own unique method of learning a language, called The MOSA Learning Method. What is this method, what does it teach you, and how effective is MosaLingua for learning a language?

In this MosaLingua review, let’s find out.

MosaLingua review: languages

MosaLingua is an international company, and it’s pretty clear right from the get-go that they’re not English-centric in their communications. Currently, you can use MosaLingua to learn:

English
Business English
English TOEIC
English TOEFL
Medical English
Business Spanish

Arabic
Chinese
French
German
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish

Let’s talk about what MosaLingua’s method actually is; the last time I saw a resource so proud of their strategy was Pimsleur, which can be effective for the right learner, but generally (in my opinion) is a bit overrated.

MosaLingua review: the method

As this MosaLingua review goes on, you’ll see why this part is so important. Apparently based on “several cognitive science and psychology concepts”, the MosaLingua method includes:

Spaced repetition (my fave!)
Active recall
Metacognition
The Pareto principle
Learner motivation and psychology

Those are a lot of fancy terms. What do they actually mean for us? I’ll take these concepts and explain them in not-so-formal terms that we can understand pretty easily.

Spaced repetition: this one isn’t new to the language learning world at all, and it’s most popularly used with Anki. But you review words more or less depending on how difficult they are for you; you’ll also be shown old words just before you forget them. Very efficient.
Active recall: multiple-choice questions aren’t the best because it’s easy enough to get them right without thinking. It’s like choosing the correct sentence between 5 sentences, you hear the word for “school”, and you pick the only sentence that has “school” in it. So MosaLingua doesn’t do that.
Metacognition: once you answer right or wrong, report back on how easy or difficult it was for you. Again, something that Anki does very well.
The Pareto principle: something like 80% of the conversations you’ll have in a language will use only 20% of the vocabulary. Learn high-frequency words first to learn more efficiently.
Learner motivation and psychology: this is the concept that half of the struggle with learning a language is the barriers that we have in our minds. Defeat those to learn your language!

All that said, this method seems to be pretty much common sense.

MosaLingua review: getting started

Once you log in to MosaLingua, you’ll first be directed to take a 20-30 minute long test. I have never seen such a time-intensive start to learning a language, and especially not one that begins from such an advanced level.

I won’t put you through my whole test, but here’s how it started.

Feel free to take breaks when necessary (I certainly did), especially when switching sections. You’ll be tested on your use of all the language skills, and it’s tough even if it is multiple choice.

I do have to say it’s pretty accurate – MosaLingua judged my Spanish comprehension at a B2, and my grammar at an A2. At the end, you can submit your email to get these results in your email, but I don’t see any glaringly obvious “start here!” signs anywhere.

MosaDiscovery

Honestly, I spent about a week trying to find the meat of MosaLingua and I think I found it with their Chrome extension. It’s not clearly advertised within the online platform (or even the app, really), but MosaLingua’s strength starts with MosaDiscovery, the Chrome extension.

Find the link to download the Chrome extension within the “Premium” section of the app, as this is a premium feature.

Download MosaLingua’s MosaDiscovery Chrome extension, and collect new terms wherever on the internet you’re using the language! Just right-click, select “Add to MosaLingua”, edit the terms if you see fit, and then add them to your account.

Now you’ll have to download the MosaLingua app; be aware that there is a different app for each language, so pay attention and make sure you’re downloading the right one.

When you open the MosaLingua app, you’ll be directed to review these terms using the context in which they were found.

The app has you learn your new foreign language vocab using these strategies:

Listen & repeat (AKA shadowing)
Memorize
Write
Self-evaluate

It’s a perfectly decent approach, though not executed nearly as well as some other alternatives (which I’ll mention at the end of this MosaLingua review).

The best part of this whole strategy, though, is the process of collecting these words from the internet. This makes vocab collection easy and meaningful.

MosaLingua challenges

Next, on MosaLingua’s homepage (dashboard? The first page you land on when you log in) you’ll first see the option to choose a challenge after (or before, it’s up to you) you take the aforementioned test.

There’s no “challenges” section within the app. So basically, the idea behind these challenges is more of a mental note than anything else. When you select your challenge, you’ll get a few pointers for learning a language with books or music or whichever challenge you choose, but there’s no content or accountability provided.

MosaLingua’s courses

This is very confusing because MosaLingua labels these courses as optional, but they’re the only real content you can see if you’re on desktop. To access all the aforementioned vocabulary collection and review, you have to be on the app.

And no, MosaLingua won’t tell you this itself if you’re on desktop. I had to spend a significant amount of time figuring this out.

MosaLingua’s optional courses include MosaSeries, MosaSpeak, and MosaTraining.

MosaSeries

MosaSeries is a series of audio sessions that help you improve your listening comprehension, mostly. It’s targeted at beginners who are learning how to listen to and understand a new language.

There’s lots of words to read to guide you in a step-by-step for testing and improving your listening.

For the first lesson, for example, the image below the audio helps you gauge your abilities (as opposed to just a black-and-white “either you understand or you don’t” approach).

Then you’ll listen to a short, 2-minute audio clip starting the story of a man who wakes up with amnesia.

Lesson 2 is key vocab words in case you didn’t catch them, and lesson 3 is repeating lesson 1 again.

Finally, MosaSeries introduces the text (with the same audio) to help you build your comprehension.

To be totally honest, it’s nothing special. MosaSeries in particular is best if you want to practice building your listening comprehension with stories, but alternatives like StoryLearning and LingQ don’t quite do it for you.

You’ll quickly run out of these stories, but it can be helpful for nailing down how to use this particular strategy to learn a language.

MosaSpeak

MosaSpeak is more aptly named because its focus is on speaking the language. Though to be fair, a vast majority of this mini-course is texts upon texts upon texts explaining all sorts of aspects of speaking the language, not so much actually practicing.

To illustrate this concept, this lesson was several lessons into the first module. This is a legitimate approach called shadowing, but the app is so clunky it drove me bananas!

Trying to find the next lesson with active use of the language was so difficult because these courses aren’t the primary function of the app; to get here, you have to go more > Premium Courses > and then choose the course you’re working on.

With the amount of effort it takes to use a simple shadowing exercise that’s completely bookended by essays of text, I would just go to another app that does shadowing really well.

This isn’t to say that any of these strategies are wrong, but MosaSpeak is a mini-course, generally sold separately (hence the Premium), but it’s basically just a bunch of blog posts copied & pasted into an app.

MosaTraining

MosaLingua’s final major course, “MosaTraining”, is the priciest. Instead of focusing on one subject or one language skill, MosaTraining is more conceptual and teaches you “absolutely everything you need to know to successfully learn a new language”.

This is accomplished in 12 modules:

Introduction and prep
Immersion
Improving listening comprehension
Learning vocabulary quickly
Improving pronunciation
Learning how to learn

Common mistakes and preparing for your first conversation
Speaking
Grammar
Improving reading skills
Improving written skills
Continued language improvement

And just like MosaSpeak, it seems to be more of a book than anything else; in fact, I think MosaTraining would be easier to consume if it was a PDF, ebook, or audio book. Yeah, there are a few videos sprinkled in here and there, but it’s largely text-based.

While I agree with everything shared within MosaTraining’s lessons, I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely everything. Compared to The Method, MosaTraining lightly scratches the surface of some key elements of how to learn a language. You’ll get lots and lots of theory, but no execution of it.

MosaLingua Premium prices

MosaLingua is a paid service, and unfortunately the payment structure is just as complicated and clunky as the app and website.

I’ve mentioned quite a few different options in this MosaLingua review, and unfortunately they’re all separate payments. And between the monthly/biannual/annual/one-off payment options, it’s enough to go cross-eyed.

Here are the details:

MosaLingua Web: the all-in-one platform that hosts your vocab and whatnot: $4.99/month or $59.90/year; included for free if it’s necessary for another course you’ve purchased
MosaSeries: the audio series about a man who wakes up in the hospital with amnesia: $9.98/month or $58.80/six months
MosaSpeak: speaking practice recommended for levels A2-B2, and only available in Spanish, French, Italian, and German: $99
MosaTraining: teaches you how to learn a language quickly and efficiently, very conceptual: $130 for Premium, $180 for Premium+MosaWeb, $330 for Deluxe+MosaWeb

For the courses that do not come with that 15-day trial, MosaLingua does offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.

MosaLingua review and alternatives

I’ll be honest, this language app was not easy to review; I’m a tech-savvy millennial, and even I struggled to understand what I was supposed to be doing and where I was supposed to go. If ease-of-use is important for you, MosaLingua will not help you learn a language.

Regardless, MosaLingua does have its perks. My favorite is the Chrome extension, MosaDiscovery. This is a decently effective way to immerse yourself in the language while online, and save terms for later. I just wish the app to study said vocab terms was nicer, like Lingvist (much easier to use, and similar functionality).

I also like the concept behind MosaSpeak, though I wish there was more actual speaking practice than mountains and mountains of text. Pronunciation practice is important, though, even if I do prefer how Speechling and Fluent Forever actually accomplish it.

MosaSeries is also good idea, I just wish it were more fleshed out considering it’s a paid program. I wouldn’t be against starting out with MosaSeries, but eventually you may want to move on to something like Trancy or Kwiziq.

At the end of the day, I can absolutely see the value of MosaLingua web; it’s very well-priced and could be the exact thing that you need to connect to the language. Despite my qualms with how hard it is to maneuver, now that I *get it*, MosaLingua may be just what you need to learn a language.

Click here to try MosaLingua for yourself!