Shadowing

Speechling Review: conversation-less pronunciation

January 12, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Need pronunciation help with feedback from a professional, but on your own time? In this Speechling review, I’ll share everything I love about this way to learn a language, and how to know if it’s the right language learning resource for you.

Speechling review: languages

Right off the bat, Speechling helps learners of a variety of languages, including:

Cantonese
Chinese (Mandarin)
English (American)
English (British)
French
German
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish (Latin American)
Spanish (Castilian)

With a subscription to Speechling, you get access to every single one of them. You’re also free to switch between languages (and any level within each language) at any time. This makes Speechling excellent for learners of multiple languages, or those who want a Duolingo dabble focused on speaking practice/pronunciation.

But I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I mentioned that Speechling makes for great Spanish-speaking practice for introverts, so that’s the next section of this Speechling review.

Speechling for introverts

There are quite a few options for language learners to practice Spanish speaking – resources like italki, Verbling, and BaseLang, all of which connect Spanish language learners with native Spanish speakers to get conversational Spanish.

While Speechling does connect you to native speakers, instead of having classes/conversations online, you submit words, phrases, answers, and more and get feedback on your pronunciation, while also getting fluency practice (depending on the exercise you choose).

Let’s get a behind-the-scenes look at Speechling, starting with the first screen you’ll see when joining Speechling.

Speechling review: getting started

When you first join Speechling, you’re presented with this very basic screen. It’s not the fanciest looking thing in the world, and it takes some learning to navigate, but it’s worth it.

Here’s a basic lesson and some basic definitions.

Here I’m being presented with the same basic word in 3 different formats, depending on which mode is selected:

Speak: practice saying the word or phrase
Understand: listen to the word or phrase, and report on the difficulty level
Lecture: a combination of listening, and then speaking.

You can see in the “Understand” section that you report on your difficulty level to tell Speechling how quickly you need to see it again. While spaced repetition like this is common these days (see easier words less often, more difficult words more often), I appreciate knowing exactly what time frame I’m looking at, as opposed to just trusting the app to do it right.

Now, this is really simple, but it can be a little more difficult to see the variety of activities you have access to. There are two different ways to change how and what you’re practicing. The first (and easiest) way is to scroll down and select from these lists.

This will give you the same kind of exercises, but using different kinds of content, depending on your selection. If you change your selection, it will not change the language/content outside of your current activity.

So as soon as you switch activities, you’ll be reverted to the options chosen in the Settings tab. This is the second way to choose how and what you’re practicing.

The Skill Tree: what you’re learning

Speechling essentially breaks up its content into 2 categories: the content you’re learning, and which strategies you’re using to learn it. The “Toolbox” tab provides you with a variety of different ways to use and express yourself using the sentences and phrases that Speechling has (which we’ll discuss later), and the “Skills” tab is where you choose the content you’re learning/practicing.

These words, sentences, and phrases are organized by skill level and category.

Every one of these icons contains countless native audio clips and opportunities for you to practice repeating those phrases. These opportunities include:

Speechling phrasebook: useful simple expressions for everyday life and travel

AKA: basic, tourist-level vocab

Asking for help
Basic expressions
Basic questions
Basic answers
Transportation

Health
Restaurant
Money
Weather
Clothing

Phone
Bad situations
Administration
Personal questions

Speechling foundations: build your vocabulary for the core curriculum

AKA: the very beginning foundations of the language

Numerals
Calendar
Nouns

Verbs
Adjectives+

Speechling core curriculum: use your vocab in context on thousands of sentences

AKA: build your vocabulary and learn how to use it right

Beginner 1
Beginner 2
Beginner 3

Intermediate 1
Intermediate 2
Intermediate 3

Advanced 1
Advanced 2
Advanced 3
Expert 1
Expert 2

Except, of course, at the very end where you can practice expressing yourself freely, which is incredibly important. The pre-made sentences and phrases give you practice saying the vocabulary, while the free speak allows you to practice using the phrases and sentences yourself.

Speeching conversations: don’t just repeat sentences. Apply your skills.

AKA: take everything you’ve learned and practice using it naturally

Answer the question: pretend like you are in a real conversation
Describe the image: harness your descriptive skills
Freestyle mode (say anything): bring in your own curriculum/study materials

Once you’ve decided where you are on the Skill Tree, you can either return to the Study tab (shown above), or go to the Toolbox tab and select an activity.

Dictation

Dictation is one of my favorite ways to practice listening comprehension, personally, so I’m excited to see Speechling has it! This activity combines passive and active skills: you listen to what somebody else is saying, and then recreate that sentence by typing it out.

By selecting “automatically continue on correct” you can easily get in tons of practice understanding the language; if you struggle with a phrase (like I did in the above video), you can flag it for practice later.

And if you’re really struggling, just click “Give Up” to see the correct answer.

Yes, these are the same phrases that you would be learning in Speechling’s regular activities, so you can consistently review your new terms. Listen to the audio as many times as you need, slow it down, go to the next audio track…it’s all customizable so you don’t have to practice phrases that aren’t useful for you.

Listening Practice

The next activity is listening practice, where you’ll get a native audio clip followed by a translation. This helps you to make the connection in your mind between both statements.

I love the ability to change the settings, even mid-activity, by scrolling down and selecting:

target language
translation language
half speed
play original sentence after translated sentence
automatically pause activity after the original sentence

Plus, you get to see the list of sentences you’ve already heard, including their translations, and the ability to record yourself repeating the sentence and send off your recording to your pronunciation coach.

With this activity, Speechling makes it so easy to get in your listening comprehension however you need it.

Flashcards

If you prefer more of a flashcard-like activity, here’s what Speechling’s flashcard option looks like.

I honestly don’t like this method just because it trains your vocabulary to be dependent on your native language, as opposed to attaching meaning directly to the target language.

There’s nothing wrong with doing this method every once in a while, but I would recommend you try to avoid it if possible, or at least turn off the translations using the option I selected in the video above.

Multiple choice quiz

The next option on this “choose your engagement type” list is a multiple-choice quiz. This strategy leads you to get a general gist of a phrase by picking up on one or two words, making it less precise than dictation, but more precise than flashcards.

Again, I’m a huge fan of the customization, because you can change this activity from hearing the language and translating to your native language, to hearing the language (with the transcript turned off) and selecting the correct transcript.

As always, you can opt to record your pronunciation of a phrase at any time.

Fill in the blank

Similar to dictation is fill-in-the-blank (also known as clozes). While dictation requires typing in an entire phase, fill-in-the-blank only prompts you to type in one part of it.

If you want more hints, you can opt-in to get the number of letters you need to fill in; for more of a challenge, select the checkbox on the bottom labeled “use normal text field instead”.

Regardless, you can see in the above video that there’s no real mention of my lack of accents. Speechling automatically corrects it for you, without highlighting the accent, making you correct the mistake, or even noting that accents are important.

Many similar apps provide you with the option to turn accents on/off, as well as giving you buttons to press in case you can’t create the correct letters with your keyboard, but unfortunately, Speechling doesn’t seem to care.

Search

Speechling offers lessons in 13 languages, which means they have a lot of native recordings. Not only that but since you can listen to any given recording in a male or female voice, that makes for literally double the content.

Suffice it to say that Speechling’s search function can be highly useful.

Honestly, if you want to practice understanding and pronouncing words, and all you want is to be given a whole bunch of sentences to practice with, Speechling is your best option.

Premium Offline Content

As I was going through this Speechling review, I had the thought “This is all excellent, but I just know that someone out there would rather take these audio clips outside of the activities and simply listen to them over and over again”.

Speechling’s already ahead of me here!

I already mentioned the sheer number of native audio lessons available with Speechling (over 10,000 sentences, apparently) – from this page, active subscribers can easily download them all for their use.

This content includes:

10,000+ Speechling sentences
audio downloads broken up by skill level
Anki decks broken up by skill level AND speaking/listening practice

Speechling review: your pronunciation coach

Of all the content and features mentioned thus far in this Speechling review, there’s one thing we haven’t mentioned: when you record and submit your pronunciation of these words and sentences, where does it go?

If you opt to submit these recordings to a coach, they’ll be sent to a native-speaking coach hired by Speechling to give you feedback on your pronunciation within 24 hours. If your coach has any corrections, they’ll respond with another recording clarifying how you can improve.

And if you’re a subscriber, you can click over to Audio Journal to see your history of recordings.

All languages and all levels are grouped here, but you can also filter your recordings by the target language, topic, and feedback: if you need to work on something, you did just fine, or if you haven’t received feedback yet.

Your recordings are also color-coded:

Green: no critiques
Yellow: needs work
Brown: no feedback yet
Blue: rerecorded (in the event you had a correction and tried again)

Over time, you can get a great roadmap of your skills developing over time.

Speechling review: price

Speechling offers two categories of pricing: free and unlimited.

The content (meaning the curriculum and the audio recordings) is available totally for free. If you opt for the unlimited plan, you also get:

unlimited coaching (as opposed to the 10 you get for free)
audio journal
switch between languages at any time
offline premium resources

Unlimited plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Click here for Speechling’s updated pricing.

Speechling review: is it for you?

Speechling is the best language app for those looking for professional pronunciation help. It’s also really excellent for building up your vocabulary, considering its curriculum and the fact that it’s available for all free users.

It’s also excellent for introverted language learners looking for speaking practice, with its more advanced options to speak freely and submit it to an online coach (or not).

However, it’s not the prettiest platform. If you need something easier on the eyes, maybe with some fun notifications or any of the other common motivation hacks, try something like Yask which won’t teach you the language, but will get you practicing and speaking it.

Another Speechling alternative is Busuu, which has a nicer platform and similar speaking prompts, but also has more of a focus on grammar; in fact, speaking the language is more of a side quest on Busuu, rather than the whole enchilada.

Ready to try it for yourself? Click here to give Speechling a try!

LanguagePod101 Review: A+…except for pricing

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

One of the more popular online resources to learn a language is LanguagePod101 (or JapanesePod101, SpanishPod101, etc.). Should you join the hype? This LanguagePod101 review will help you decide.

Learn about how the LanguagePod101 series (under the Innovative Language umbrella), how they teach languages, and whether it can help you achieve your language goals with this LanguagePod101 review.

LanguagePod101 review: languages

The LanguagePod101 series is available in a ton of languages, including:

For this LanguagePod101 review, we’ll look at SpanishPod101.

LanguagePod101’s free content

When you first sign up for an account, you’ll instantly be smacked in the face with a bunch of sales copy. They really want you to know that they’ll take your money!

Literally, that’s my first impression, that it’s really salesy. Which, I mean, if they can back it up, I’m ready to look past it. It’s when the paid product is crap that this becomes a serious nuisance.

As usual, my first step is to see what options I get for narrowing down the lessons: if it asks me about my experience with Spanish, tests my Spanish knowledge, and whether or not they actually use that information to help me.

SpanishPod101 (boy is that a mouthful) offers a diagnostic test. You can see below how I started with the bottom of the barrel, level 1 assessment, quickly understood what was expected, and then went through the levels until I was stopped.

Definitely beginner grammar. If that’s the level you need, then you’re all set! The issue is if you’re at all above that beginner level. If that’s the case, and you want to start out from where you already are, you’re gonna have to splurge a bit on the paid features.

I will definitely be addressing this, but first, we haven’t actually looked at the actual content yet! For this, I’m gonna stick to just stating that I’m at a vaguely intermediate level.

The next step is to choose a pathway! LanguagePod101 has a ton of content, and their solve for this is to create “pathways” depending on your skill level and goal. Here’s some examples.

As you can see, this pathway feature is almost like my language app search, though just for SpanishPod101 lessons. You can filter by how you like to learn (audio or video only), what subjects you’re interested in, and your current level.

When you click on the pathway of your choosing, you’ll basically get a playlist of the lessons included in the pathway. You can pick and choose lessons as you please.

Let’s get started with the pathway I’ve chosen!

I chose video because I’m not much of an audio person (Pimsleur, for example, bores me to tears), but considering this is basically just a YouTube playlist…it’s not much better.

So let’s go down a pathway that’s a SpanishPod101 “original”.

I’m impressed! What they’ve done here is come up with a short conversation to teach specific vocabulary/concepts, recorded, then split it up in a whole bunch of ways to give you a ton of options to study. With just one audio clip, you can

slow down the original audio
follow along in the target language or English
take the audio one line at a time, with the option of further slowing down each audio
listen to teach line, record yourself repeating it, and compare the two (a strategy called “shadowing”
do all the above with teach individual term introduced

That’s a lot! This is a seriously effective approach if you enjoy dissecting audios like this. You could literally spend hours on each audio.

You can also see lesson notes and grammar, but these are just basic written explanations. This is more functional for those who want to pick up the grammar implicitly (i.e. “figure it out on your own”) and might get stumped somewhere. If you need something more, I’d go elsewhere.

If you don’t want to use the available pathways, LanguagePod101 also offers a variety of vocab lists…with a HUGE caveat.

While you can view all sorts of vocab words, this is clearly built just for paid customers. I really like this platform, but any aspect of this section that would be really really great is stuck behind that paywall.

And I’m guessing part of their strategy is to show you that paywall enough times that you get frustrated and fork over the money.

LanguagePod101 review: paid content

With a free account, you do get access to a lot of stuff – basically, all the content itself. Paid subscriptions have access to all the content presented in a variety of different formats. So, really, it’s up to each individual language learner if a paid membership is worth it.

What’s more, there are three paid options. This makes things kind of confusing (in my opinion), but I’ll let the website speak for itself.

Remember how I talked about how salesy the whole site is? This is where that bait and switch comes back.

Those advertised prices don’t seem too bad at first glance! But see the asterisks? Those asterisks are there to let you know that that monthly rate only applies to 2-year subscriptions…which means you could be paying up to $550.

Holy crap!! That’s…incredibly misleading! Especially because when I go to purchase a $12.58 subscription for one month of Premium Plus, and it ends up being $47. Literally almost 4x the advertised price.

If you’re able to commit, then you’ll start to see the more reasonable monthly cost, but you’ll be paying it upfront and hoping that “new language learning resource energy” doesn’t die out.

Fortunately, these subscriptions also include a 60-day money-back guarantee, which…helps.

Regardless, this is what I really wanted to test out: getting my own teacher and personalized assessments. If this section is decent, then it’ll absolutely be worth $47/month.

The first questions are more qualifying questions: your current level, where you’re from, and the reason you want to learn Spanish.

Then we get into the assessment itself.

In just 10 questions, the assessment quickly goes from beginner Spanish to advanced to see where you’re at. It’s a pretty good test – even I wasn’t sure about a lot of it!

That was a tough test! It tested every aspect of learning Spanish (except speaking), and it touched every level.

When you submit your responses, you’ll get an automatic result, plus a verification by a “resident Spanish expert” within 48 hours.

When that email arrives, it’ll really break down the process that they recommend you use with the content they give you. It’s very, very, very in-depth. Here’s what the email says about the podcast episodes and lesson tools:

Listen to the main audio track
Read the lesson notes
Listen to the audio track with the lesson notes. If you don’t understand 80%, listen a third time
Review difficult vocabulary

On top of all that, you also get a Student Manual which, among other things, basically forces you into a weekly schedule of listening practice, vocabulary review, and writing practice.

Your teacher is there to help answer questions, guide your curriculum, assess your progress, and more.

LanguagePod101 review: should you try it?

If this LanguagePod101 review taught me anything, it’s how detailed and well-rounded this language learning resource is. All of the content itself is free to all users, but paid members get the benefit of a more personalized, hand-held approach to their Spanish.

All that said, who’s it for? Well, the free lessons are great for listening practice. You can find seemingly unlimited free podcasts that guide you from ultimate beginner to native-level audio with transcripts included for you to pick and choose the vocab you need to work on.

And the paid membership?

If you’ll really benefit from taking apart the content in several different ways, then the lower tiers would be beneficial to you. Do keep in mind, though, that unless you commit to 2 years’ worth of lessons (which adds up to a few hundred bucks alone), you’re not going to be paying $4/month. It’s misleading and I really don’t like that.

But the higher tiers? Those are definitely for language learners looking for structure. Like a lot of structure. LanguagePod101 is meant to be treated as seriously as an in-person class, which helps you keep yourself accountable, mixed with the flexibility of a one-on-one tutor, at a fraction of the price.

That Premium Plus level is very much so worth it if that’s what you’re looking for! LanguagePod101 does everything…EXCEPT for speaking practice! You will not get effective conversational practice using this resource.

If you want a great vocab/grammar/reading/listening education, this might be a great option for you. If speaking is your primary concern, though, this might be a waste of your time. In that case I’d recommend something like Language Transfer or Pimsleur (still audio-based, but for speaking).

And even though the advertised rates for the Premium Plus membership are not completely honest, it is a genuinely good deal to have someone holding your hand and providing you with personalized homework for $25-$50/month (depending on how long you want to commit yourself to this).

Click the appropriate language below to get started:

Lingopie Review: the best foreign language subtitles

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

Lingopie is a platform created by and for language learners who enjoy learning foreign languages by watching TV. The idea behind this Lingopie review is that you’ll be so motivated to keep watching good shows, motivation will be easy peasy.

That said, how do you know if Lingopie is the right language learning resource for you? In this Lingopie review, we’ll discuss its benefits, limitations, and Lingopie alternatives.

Getting started watching foreign language TV

You can use Lingopie to learn 10 languages:

Chinese
English
French
German
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish

Your Lingopie account grants you access to all 10 languages at any time. There’s no effort in switching languages either, which we’ll see in a second.

Lingopie review: watching and learning

You’ll see a Netflix-like page with all the shows Lingopie has to offer, separated by genre and, more importantly: every show and movie has an icon, front and center, of the country the media is from, which makes it easy to find the most relevant content for your language learning.

This dashboard/TV catalog is truly beautiful and genuinely motivating to start expanding into all sorts of languages. It’s easy to see that using Lingopie to learn a language requires minimal effort, especially if you’re in the habit of watching TV for hours on end once you’re hooked (guilty as charged).

I have one qualm about the search function: I like how you can search for different accents and genres (a la Yabla) but there is no option to search accents AND genre AND length, which is very basic functionality.

Because of this limited searchability, I stuck to Castilian Spanish content and chose something that looked interesting.

Roll over the show you want to watch to get a very brief synopsis of the plot, as well as how long that content is. The show I chose was only 3 minutes long, which surprised me. Usually we think of shows to be anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour long, which can be overwhelming when it’s in a different language.

These short little clips are more like YouTube videos than anything else, if you don’t want to make the time commitment.

Before the show starts, you get a preview of the important vocab on the righthand side. While it’s labeled “Vocab for your level”, it’s mostly just an indication of the level that show is at – if you’re comfortable with these words, you’ll mostly understand the show.

For what it’s worth, that’s all you’ll need to know if you need to go up or down in difficulty. You don’t need to know all of the exact definitions of all of the words, nor do you need to know which context each word should be used, or all of its conjugations. These are the details that you’ll learn as you immerse yourself in the shows you’re watching.

Then, as soon as I pressed play, I got a “grammar coach” pop up. Judging by the answer I got, this is basic AI. Obviously with my first attempt the grammar is very simple, so I tried it again with a sentence with more complex grammar.

It’s not amazing, but it is a start. As of this latest update, AI is still pretty new so we’ll see how this develops. I hope that it’ll go from just naming the verb tenses (which is undoubtedly better than nothing) to explaining the concepts and/or linking to helpful content.

After clicking out of the grammar coach, here are Lingopie’s basic features in action.

Lingopie’s platform allows you to easily:

read the transcript while watching the show
translate any word or phrase in real time
listen to any word or phrase independently
save vocab to review later
practice shadowing (listening to native audio and repeating)
loop lines from the transcript
change the speed of the show
add/remove the native/target language subtitles

Lots of handy tools that are intuitively placed within the platform itself, and very aesthetically pleasing! These two features help Lingopie to stand out in the world of streaming foreign language content.

Reviewing vocab with Lingopie

After watching for some time, you’ll want to review the vocabulary you’ve collected. Lingopie offers a couple of ways to do this, all of which are slightly different and depend on your goals for any particular study session.

Let’s take a look at all 3 options.

Pop Quiz

The first type of vocab review is right within whatever you’re watching. Just click over to the “My Vocab” tab after collecting a few words and try the Pop Quiz.

This is a very simple way to connect the vocabulary you’re learning with the meaning in which you learned it – review the vocab with the exact video clip you found it in. This is a 10/10 execution of this concept, and blows the competition out of the water (looking at you, Trancy).

The pop quiz function is the easiest way to review a particular piece of media, especially right after seeing the terms for the first time. You don’t have all of your terms from all of your shows all in one quiz, so you can easily get this fresh vocab into your brain.

Flashcards

If you want to review all of your terms from all of your media in one study session, you’ll have to click over to the “Review & Practice” section.

Just like with the pop quiz, the flashcards section reviews your terms paired with their content. There’s slightly more functionality here though: click the card to flip between the word and its translation, and then tell Lingopie how well you know the term: know it, not sure, or no idea.

Lingopie also keeps track of your progress for you, including where you got the term, how many times you’ve reviewed it, when it was last seen, and the option to listen to it again or remove it from the list.

As you can see, if you want the actual native audio, it has to be in one of the features where the term is shown with the video clip. Otherwise, you’ll be listening to the robot recording.

Word Master

Lingopie’s third method for helping you review the vocabulary it teaches you is via Word Master. This vocab game is the only one that does not use the original video content to help you remember the words.

I’m not blown away by this option. The thing that makes Lingopie special is using the video content to connect the vocab words to their meaning.

If this featured another more active activity – typing in the words, for example – it might be more useful, but otherwise this isn’t much different from creating your own flashcards yourself.

Lingopie’s Chrome extension vs Language Reactor

While Language Reactor has essentially cornered the market for using Netflix to learn a language, Lingopie now has a similar Chrome extension that you can use with your normal Lingopie account.

With the Chrome extension you can see which Netflix shows Lingopie has translated for you, giving you that many more options to learn your target language.

As I said, this puts Lingopie in direct competition with Language Reactor, so let talk about some pros and cons, Lingopie vs Language Reactor.

Quantity of content

Language Reactor is a free Chrome extension that helps language learners use YouTube and Netflix to learn a language by pulling out the subtitles that already exist (most of which are automatically generated by YouTube) and make it easier for us to use them.

This means that Language Reactor’s content is essentially limitless; as long as there are new shows on Netflix and new videos on YouTube, there will be new content to learn a language.

Lingopie, however, is limited by the content they have available on their platform.

Quality of subtitles

Because Language Reactor tends to use automatically generated subtitles, they’re not always totally precise. And while this may not be a make-it-or-break-it kind of thing for many language learners, it can lead to confusion.

For example, it can be very difficult to recognize if it’s a particular vocab word that’s new, or if it’s a new phrase, or if it’s region-specific slang. This can require significant research that some language learners would rather not do.

Lingopie’s subtitles are not automatic. So if you want to just be told what a word or phrase means, there’s no competition.

Vocabulary review

As we’ve discussed in this Lingopie review, this platform makes it very easy and enjoyable to review the vocab you learn within its original context. You don’t have to do any other work, besides clicking over to a different section.

Language Reactor, however, takes some elbow grease. If you already have a flashcard system that you enjoy, like plugging new vocab words into Anki for example, then this may not be an issue. However, if you’re looking for a new approach for learning new vocab by watching videos, Lingopie makes all that much easier.

Lingopie review: pricing

Due to Lingopie’s high quality platform and subtitles, it is a paid resource. However, if the ease of use is what you need to learn a language consistently, then it is absolutely worth it. Plus, Lingopie offers a 7-day free trial to try everything out.

Click here for Lingopie’s updated pricing.

Lingopie review: alternatives

While I believe Lingopie is the most beautiful and user-friendly, it’s not the only way to learn a language by watching TV.

If you enjoy the curated content but want some more flexibility in how you’re studying the language, FluentU may be a good Lingopie alternative for you. As I mentioned, it’s not nearly as pretty as Lingopie, but what it lacks in design it makes up for in study strategy.

A similar alternative to both Lingopie and FluentU is Yabla. Again, not very pretty, but it can be fun to play around with.

Finally, if you’re willing to do some behind the scenes tech and macgyver your language learning just a little bit, Language Reactor paired with an Anki or Memrise deck is a budget-friendly alternative that could work just as well.

Should you use Lingopie to learn a language?

Lingopie is an excellent way to learn a language with TV and subtitles. In fact, it’s the best in the market in 2 ways:

teaching you new foreign language vocab with the context of video, and
providing top tier, easy-to-use subtitles.

Especially for that first bullet point, context is key when learning new vocabulary, so if you’re looking for a way to pair new vocab with a TV show you enjoy, I would recommend giving Lingopie a try.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that regardless of what they say, you do need to be at a certain level of listening comprehension to make the most out of a resource like Lingopie. Even in the beginner level video at the beginning of this Lingopie review, it uses intermediate-level grammar.

If you’re a total beginner, I’d recommend you start out with basic vocab first.

Want to use Lingopie’s 7-day free trial? Click here to get started.