Audio lessons

Language Reactor review: learn languages with Netflix with ease

February 6, 2023 by Jamie 12 Comments

Language Reactor (formerly known as Language Learning with Netflix [LLN] and Language Learning with YouTube [LLY]) is a fairly new Chrome extension that language learners are loving to help them enjoy foreign language movies and series. And in this Language Reactor review, we’re talking about why.

Let’s dive into how to use Language Reactor, why, and the absolute plethora of options (+ counting!) that are available for language learners who want to use foreign language media to learn a language.

Language Reactor: an overview

Language Reactor’s job is to take the subtitles already available in any given video and present them in a way that is engaging and significantly more useful for learning a language.

This is an important distinction: alone, subtitles are meant for audiences that are hard of hearing, process spoken words a little slowly, or any number of needs that can benefit from accommodations.

And while they are helpful for foreign language audiences, it can take a lot of creativity to get the most out of them…without Language Reactor. That said, let’s look at the opportunities offered to us when watching our favorite Netflix series.

From the get-go, with Language Reactor’s most basic settings, you get the following tools:

current subtitles in the target language, front and center
their translation into your native language
an overview of the previous/next subtitles, with their translations
automatic pausing when reviewing specific words or phrases

And all of these options are completely customizable; over time, they can be used to highlight new words, highlight difficult words, or you can hide them altogether. We’ll look at these options more in detail later.

These options are just the tip of the iceberg of this Language Reactor review – let’s see what else we can do!

Learning new words with Language Learning with Netflix

Language Reactor is most powerful when it comes to how many ways language learners can use subtitles to learn a language. This includes simple features, like getting the translations of words when you roll over them, to the most advanced use cases, like building up your vocab in order of frequency words (i.e. the most common words in the language first, the least common ones last).

While this tool is best for intermediate or advanced language learners – as beginners likely don’t have the comprehension level to understand anything – this does make Language Reactor more of an option for beginners! It’s easy to focus on the most useful beginner words first, before diving into more complex, niche vocabulary.

Watch the above video to see features in action like:

roll over words to pause and translate
click to see:
- translations
- synonyms
- other occurrences of the word in the episode
- links to the word in your favorite online dictionary
find other example sentences with the word in Tatoeba (a commonly-used source of sentences for language learners, like in platforms like Clozemaster)
read, listen to, translate, and save any sentence, be it in the episode itself or one of the sentences sourced from Tatoeba
sorting the words presented in the transcript from most common to least common

And, finally, the option to color-code your vocabulary words to easily differentiate between words that you know, words that you’re learning, and words that aren’t important to you, so you can ignore them.

Holy options, Batman!

Note: in the above video, the audio clips don’t match up at all when choosing other occurrences of a word in the episode, but the Tatoeba clips match up just fine. I can’t say whether that’s a platform glitch or a ‘me’ thing.

Speed options in Language Reactor

Depending on any particular show or movie (or your comprehension level in different languages), it can be helpful to have finely tuned controls when it comes to speed. Fortunately, Language Reactor’s tools here are both helpful and very easy to find and use.

Specifically, it can take a few tries to process the meaning of a sentence. This is why Language Reactor offers users the ability to:

automatically pause after every line
repeat sentences with just a keystroke
speed up and slow down audio in real time

It is worth noting that while it’s super accessible to be able to slow down audio, I don’t personally recommend doing so, or at least not long-term.

If you’re just starting out, that’s fine, but your intention should be building up your foreign language comprehension so that you can understand the audio at its native speed – this is because depending on slower audio will teach you to recognize different sounds.

Therefore, unless you’re only interested in listening to media where you can control the speed (so limited understanding of things like conversations and music), I’d make sure to build up your comprehension to not depend on that particular feature!

How to customize Language Reactor

Because Language Reactor depends on the content already on Netflix and YouTube, this Chrome extension truly succeeds in giving language learners the power to customize the tool for themselves.

Many of these settings can depend on the media you’re watching – for example, if you’re watching Las Chicas del Cable like I was in preparation for Language TV Club, don’t count on switching to something like Thai without double-checking.

In this case, you can use the Catalogues, which we’ll see in a second.

Clicking around the settings, you can customize options like:

audio language (i.e. the language native to the show/movie, or dubbed audio)
subtitle language
translation language (your native language or another advanced language)
show/hide subtitles
playback speed
keyboard shortcuts for efficient playback

Netflix and YouTube Catalogues

There’s no disagreement about how powerful this Chrome extension is, but where do you start? There is so much content on both platforms, it can undoubtedly be overwhelming to not only search for something that any given language learner will enjoy but also supports their target/native language.

Fortunately, right on the Language Reactor website, you can browse their searchable catalogues!

Select the appropriate platform and have fun exploring the content available based on settings like genre, country, number of subscribers, and even just directly searching for a show or keyword you’re interested in.

While you can click directly into whatever you choose, I do wish the Netflix movies/shows linked you to the “more info” page, not directly to the media. This just adds an extra step to browsing media that can get really frustrating really quickly.

You can also see new options available shortly, including using text or video files to create your own experience, which would put Language Reactor in direct competition with LingQ! I’m excited to see how these features turn out.

Saved & highlighted vocab

Once you’ve picked your media and consumed it however you like, Language Reactor’s final magic trick is how it helps you to learn vocab!

This is a powerful ability, although it’s a paid one (but only like $5/month). Based on the aforementioned ranking of words (most commonly used to least) and combined with the words you save as you watch Netflix/YouTube, the options are essentially limitless.

Thanks to Language Reactor’s help, it’s easy to pick out new words as they come up in your watching and fill in the blanks based on your level (or not).

Once you have your words picked out, easily export them into whatever flashcard tool you prefer, like Anki or any other platform that allows you to create your own flashcards by uploading an Excel sheet.

At this point, this Language Reactor review is a bit more for the technologically savvy language learner, or at least those who have their own flashcard system for bulk-uploading terms, especially via .csv or similar.

However, this does have more to do with the flashcard platform than Language Reactor itself; it’s easy enough to download the file, not necessarily quite so easy to upload it to various resources. Looking for a flashcard system? Try the “bulk upload” option in my app search.

Language Reactor review: the pros and cons

This Language Reactor review undoubtedly proves that language learners who already enjoy using YouTube or Netflix to learn a language should not sleep on this tool. Just install the Chrome extension, and you’re good to go – while there are tons of options to customize your subtitles, you don’t have to make any decisions until you want to.

Language Reactor is already wildly helpful just as a free Chrome extension, but the paid subscription (priced at only $5/month) makes the process of learning a language with Netflix and YouTube exponentially more useful. I’ve been a fan of this tool since its inception.

However, because of the immersion style of learning, you’ll likely need to have at least an intermediate level of comprehension in your target language. Beginners can find value in this tool, but you’ll have to be picky about what/how much you want to understand.

You’ll also need regular access to a computer, as Language Reactor is a Chrome extension and therefore only works on a desktop or laptop computer.

Otherwise, you’ve got nothing to lose – click here to try Language Reactor for yourself!

Pimsleur review: barely keeping with the times

March 15, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Back in the days of pre-internet language learning, you had 2 ways to learn a language: attend a class, or buy one of those CD sets that had you go over words and phrases in the language over and over again until you got a hang of it. The CD method is basically this Pimsleur review – yeah, it’s old-school.

This Pimsleur review will talk about what exactly the Pimsleur method is, Pimsleur’s promises, and what to expect if you do choose to buy the course. Is Pimsleur right for you?

Pimsleur review: languages

Right off the bat, Pimsleur boasts a significant number of languages:

Albanian
Arabic (Eastern)
Arabic (Egyptian)
Arabic (Modern Standard)
Armenian (Western)
Armenian (Eastern)
Chinese (Cantonese)
Chinese (Mandarin)
Creole (Haitian)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Ojibwe
Pashto
Persian (Dari)
Persian (Farsi)
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Spanish (Latin American)
Spanish (Castilian)
Swahili
Swedish
Swiss German
Thai
Turkish
Twi
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

Pimsleur is an audio-based resource, which means the specific accent of any given language can be very important. So, if a certain “version” of a language is important to you, then Pimsleur may be an excellent match for your needs.

The Pimsleur Method

The Pimsleur Method is based on the research of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, whose interest and research were based on memory.

The Pimsleur Method itself is a very strict one: 30 minutes of practice every single day (no more, no less), of pure listening and speaking work. Do not attempt to read or write while you listen.

With this approach, Pimsleur promises you’ll be able to converse at an intermediate level in just 30 days. 30 days of 30 minutes of practice today means Pimsleur promises intermediate-level fluency after just 900 minutes (15 hours) of listening and speaking.

Pimsleur review: lessons

The first 30-minute lesson of every language on Pimsleur is absolutely free. You can work through any language you like, as many times as you like, but it’s only that first lesson. This can give you an idea if the approach is something that you’d like to use, without any financial risk.

For some, this first minute-long snippet is all you need to know about Pimsleur. You’re listening to an audio clip of a man slowly explaining (in English) a basic exchange of basic phrases.

If you find that boring, go to my language app search instead to find something better for you. If the slow pace and the excessive English narration don’t bother you, continue reading this Pimsleur review.

As mentioned early, Pimsleur was designed to be listened to and repeated (a common language learning strategy called “shadowing”) while you’re doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

When going through these lessons, you’ll start out with pretty basic, usable phrases: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and “No, I don’t”, for example. Great for tourist-level learning, and getting a pretty solid background of the language.

Pimsleur will take these phrases apart and really drill you in on each individual aspect of the words and phrases, which is good for absolute beginners. It’s definitely all about training your ear to figure out what you’re listening to and saying. Excellent for listening practice as well as pronunciation – understanding the exact sounds that the language uses, not just the word itself.

Pimsleur’s reading approach

While Pimsleur is primarily focused on practicing speaking conversational phrases, it’s also recommended that you continue on their reading practice (but only after the initial lesson is done).

Here you’ll break down the pronunciation of important words and patterns bit by bit, by preparing you for common pronunciation mistakes as well as comparing the sounds of your target language with the sounds of English.

This is truly a slow, methodical approach to pronunciation via shadowing.

It’s not really reading as much as it is pronunciation, which is confusing. In fact, nothing about Pimsleur’s method could be considered effective reading practice.

Pimsleur review: other activities

The two samples above are really the meat of the Pimsleur app. There are other features (discussed below), however, it should be noted that that is THE Pimsleur Method. The rest of the features mentioned in this Pimsleur review are more of Pimsleur’s attempts to keep up with the times than anything else.

As in, not completely necessary.

For example, here are the practice games Pimsleur uses to help you truly drill the lesson’s vocabulary into your brain.

I do like that they’re trying to make the content just a little more engaging for the 21st century, but remember that Pimsleur is very clear that all these fun and games are after you listen to the initial lesson, not instead of.

While it feels like Pimsleur missed the mark a bit with those games, I do enjoy Pimsleur’s voice coach (it’s a chatbot….anytime you hear a language app talking about chatbots, it’s this).

In the future, I’d really like to see Pimsleur expand this section. Personally, I find this much more engaging than listening to a 30-minute recording that’s mostly in English anyway.

Pimsleur review: price

In the past, Pimsleur was very financially inaccessible – you would plan to spend a few hundred dollars for just a basic language education. Fortunately, time and tech have changed, and Pimsleur has negotiated their prices accordingly.

As aforementioned, you can access the first lesson of any language for free at any time.

If you decide to continue with the Pimsleur Method, you can opt to pay monthly, either for just the language you’re learning or for all languages Pimsleur offers. You can see updated pricing here.

Fortunately, gone are the days of spending $1,000 and waiting for your new CD set to come in the mail (and hoping for the best that you’ll actually use it) – now you can get started instantly!

Pimsleur review: who it’s for

We’ve reached the end of this Pimsleur review, so should you try it?

As I said, if the slow pace, the relaxing cadence, or the heavy English narration are distractions for you, then Pimsleur may not be the best way for you to learn a language. In that case, I would suggest Language Transfer or the LanguagePod101 series.

Or, even simpler, find videos for beginners on YouTube! That free content combined with the Language Reactor Chrome extension…the sky’s the limit.

However, if you enjoyed listening to the videos in this Pimsleur review and are happy to repeat words and phrases until you can have simple conversations, Pimsleur may just be the language app for you. Get your 1-week free trial here!

LyricsTraining review: effective learning thru music

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The LyricsTraining app and website…well they do exactly as the name suggests! It’s for language learners to train their listening comprehension in a foreign language using the lyrics from popular music. That part of this LyricsTraining review is obvious.

And yes, while you could just go to Spotify and look up lyrics, LyricsTraining has a couple more options meant specifically for listening comprehension that takes using music to learn a foreign language to the next level.

In this LyricsTraining review, let’s talk about what’s to love, and what it could do better, so you can decide if it’s the right resource for your language learning.

LyricsTraining review: languages

LyricsTraining hosts popular, high-quality music videos in a ton of different languages:

Catalan
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
German
Italian

Japanese (Romaji)
Korean (Romanized)
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

That’s a pretty good mixture of foreign languages that are both very commonly learned (like Spanish and French) and not-so commonly learned (like Swedish and Finnish).

An account with LyricsTraining gives you access to music videos in all 14 languages (I love when they do that!) and even specifies which accent each song is in with a flag of the particular country the artists are from.

Very handy for language learners!

LyricsTraining review: using the app

Okay, let’s try this LyricsTraining review out. I chose Spanish not only because it’s my go-to, but also because it’s the only foreign language where my listening comprehension is advanced enough to try to listen to music.

When you first create your account, LyricsTraining sets your level at 0. This level isn’t at all associated with your actual level of listening comprehension, but how much music you’ve listened to and words you’ve “learned” (yes, I put that word in quotation marks for a reason, you’ll see).

So I clicked onto a video, pretty much at random.

See how this video is from Vevo? That’s always a good sign!

First I was given the option of multiple choice or karaoke; once I chose multiple choice, I was asked what difficulty level I wanted, each level of difficulty differentiated by how many words you have to fill in via multiple-choice; out of the 293 words in this song, I could choose to fill in 34, 66, 129, or all 293 words.

It’s kind of confusing to explain, but it’s a simple concept, don’t worry!

And there you go! This platform is really smooth, by the way, and I really love using it.

You play the music video you chose, and you get the lyrics all displayed, with however many words you chose redacted. It’s your job to listen to the lyrics and choose the right word. And with music, that’s sometimes easier said than done. Don’t worry – if you get it wrong, you can keep trying until you get it right.

Remember, music takes a lot of liberties with pronunciation, so a lot of these words sound completely different than they would in any normal conversation.

And because it’s music, it goes really fast. The lyrics do help, but with this app, you’re clearly not trying to understand the concept of what they’re saying, but individual words. I wish there was a way to slow it down and take the time to figure it out.

First complaint: give us the option to slow it down!

Nonetheless, this song was really good and I had fun listening to it and just tapping on the words. It’s a genuinely entertaining way of getting in some language practice! And if there’s one issue a lot of language learners face, it’s avoiding boredom.

And hey, if you need to hear the line a couple of times before you can try to answer (totally legit – even with my advanced comprehension, music is tough!)? No problem.

Swipe left to repeat it as many times as you need, or swipe right to skip it altogether. Let me reiterate: even if it is multiple choice, it can be tough to get the correct word the first time! Or the second time. Or third. (Don’t judge me.)

Or you can opt for straight-up karaoke, which is…exactly what you think it is.

If karaoke is your thing, this is a cool option that I haven’t seen elsewhere. It would be really cool to be able to put this on a TV or a computer or something (how awesome would foreign language karaoke parties be with your friends!?), but otherwise it’s pretty simple.

This way, you can focus more on pronunciation and moving your mouth in the right ways to form these words. Still lacking in giving language learners a chance to figure out what the song is even saying, though.

I don’t think LyricsTraining is as great as it could be (we’ll get there in a sec), but the part where you’re casually listening to foreign artists and training your ear to pick up on the words is honestly great listening practice!

Once you finish a song, you’ll get some very basic stats. I don’t personally find these particular stats the most helpful, but I know many language learners might. If anything, this could be great motivation. Green bars in stats = positive emotions!

That first stat, in particular, I don’t like. If you go into the “Vocabulary” section, you’ll find all the words that you’ve filled in the blank. Technically yeah, I’ve added 32 words to this list, but I didn’t choose the words, nor do I struggle with them.

This is not helpful at all for intermediate/advanced learners because, well, look at the words! That’s beginner vocab right there. I don’t need to review those words. LyricsTraining automatically pulled them for me for some reason.

It makes sense why these are the words that were filled in (something like the first 2,000 words of each language make up 80% of all conversations), but this vocab list isn’t helpful for me at all.

In fact, this part reminds me a lot of Beelinguapp: both apps pull out vocab that it thinks you need, based on pretty much nothing (considering this was the very first time I had tried this app), which is an unfortunately wasted opportunity to provide language learners with helpful vocab tools.

Not all of LyricsTraining’s stats are totally useless, though! They may be a little messy, but if you go into the “Activity” section, you get this.

Now that’s pretty helpful! Keep track of the songs you’ve listened to, how many times you listened to them, difficulty, success rate, etc.

LyricsTraining Premium

Again like Beelinguapp, LyricsTraining offers you a set amount of content for free, otherwise, it’s hidden behind a paywall.

Basically, you get to play music for free 3 times every 30 minutes. That’s a slightly strange way to measure free access, but at the same time, that’s a lot of free practice. We like free (high-quality) practice!

Or, if you’ve got $5/month to spare, you can get more out of your language learning.

You get full access to all the music your heart could desire, plus translations!

Now, the ability to translate sounds good, but what does that actually look like? Well, it looks like this.

In my opinion, this translation option is…meh.

On the bright side, you have the option to translate into a million and a half languages (not literally, folks) – no matter your native language (or even another upper-level foreign language), you can probably use it with this translator.

On the not-so-bright side, you can’t do anything with the words you translate. It doesn’t save it in a new flashcard set or give you the option to export it anywhere. If you want to save this word, you’ll have to do so manually, with your Quizlet, for example.

So, at that point, you’re better off using your own preferred method of translations, too. Which would render this tool totally useless.

LyricsTraining review: the verdict

At the end of this LyricsTraining, I find LyricsTraining to be a pretty decent resource. Exploring a language’s artists is a great way to not only practice the language but also get involved in a country’s culture, and this app makes it more accessible.

I do like both the fill-in-the-blank and the karaoke options – both are excellent strategies for building your listening comprehension and practicing saying the words (respectively). So if this is a language learning strategy that you enjoy and will help you build the skills you want to build, I’m a fan!

However, keep in mind that listening to music is rough. Even in your native language. Plus, LyricsTraining doesn’t offer a way to slow it down (which I don’t usually recommend with normal speech, but music is a different story).

The translation/vocab sections are left wanting, too. If you want to use music to find new vocab, you’ll be better off picking out that vocab manually and using another resource.

But if those factors don’t break it for you, give LyricsTraining a shot!