DIY flashcards

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!

Clozemaster review: customizable, engaging, and simple

February 4, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Clozemaster is a retro-themed website & app with a huge collection of sentences for intermediate+ language students to practice their vocabulary and grammar. These sentences are grouped into tons of categories, with the option for users to create their own categories, so the sky is the limit with this Clozemaster review.

In this Clozemaster review, you’ll learn where Clozemaster shines, its flaws, and whether Clozemaster is best for your language learning needs. And, if it’s not, keep reading for the Clozemaster alternative for you.

Clozemaster review: languages

While Clozemaster is not for beginners, it is for learners of a ton of languages:

Afrikaans
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Basque
Belarusian
Breton
Bulgarian
Cantonese
Catalan
Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese (Mandarin)(Traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French

Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Guaraní
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Kazakh
Korean
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Occitan

Persian (Farsi)
Piedmontese
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Welsh
Yiddish

Because Clozemaster sources their sentences from an external website (more on that later), it is clearly accessible to a huge variety of foreign languages.

It is worth noting, however, that the options and opportunities are not equal across all languages. After deciding if Clozemater is a language learning app that you’re interested in using, you’ll then need to take a look at your target language and see the variety of content you’ll have to work with.

But what is Clozemaster?

The name “Clozemaster” wasn’t created out of thin air; if you’re not familiar with “clozes”, they’re a type of activity that’s very common in language learning, basically a fill-in-the-blank deal. Specifically, a “cloze” is defined by them as:

Of, relating to, or being a test of reading comprehension that involves having the person being tested supply words that have been systematically deleted from a text.

Thus, Clozemaster is the master of clozes.

It’s worth mentioning that Clozemaster isn’t the only resource that offers clozes, but clozes are all that Clozemaster offers. And I do have to say, Clozemaster is absolutely the master when it comes to learning a language online with clozes.

Clozemaster review: a walk-through

After creating an account on Clozemaster and selecting a few different options, you’re spat out onto the dashboard. It’s a retro-themed view (with retro sounds, too) that adds a touch more fun to the process, since you feel like it’s more of a game than anything else.

At first glance, Clozemaster isn’t very user-friendly. You’re presented with a ton of different options without any obvious indication as to which option to take or what you’re supposed to do. It’s a little bit better than LingQ’s lack of usability, but it can still take a minute to get your bearings.

Across all languages, you get some form of “beginner” content, like:

Most Common Words
Fluency Fast Track
Cloze-Collections

The third one is your own collection of sentences.

You would think that these would be beginner-friendly, but they are definitely not! Clozemaster requires at least an intermediate understanding of the language, and it’ll be abundantly clear if your language skills are up to snuff the second you try using Clozemaster.

While those “beginner” collections are free for all, premium subscribers also get Grammar Challenges, which are collections of sentences that are meant to help you master traditionally difficult grammatical concepts. These are different in every language, as every language has different grammar concepts.

But again, the concept is simple: fill-in-the-blank sentences.

Depending on the language, you also get a few settings to decide how you want to play:

vocabulary
listening
speaking

Not all languages feature all skills, so make sure you take a look at your target language before you commit. For example, audio recordings are only available in a fraction of these languages. Expect them in more commonly learned languages, not-so-much in others.

You can also choose how many sentences you’re shown per round: 5-∞ (yes, the site really says that). Then, either multiple choice or text input. Choose text to really challenge yourself! You’ll also earn 2x the points.

If I’m already at an intermediate level in a language (or at any point, personally), I prefer to manually type in the answer. This helps cement words and conjugations into your brain, as you’re forcing yourself to spell correctly as opposed to going off a general idea of what the correct word looks like.

This is the difference between vaguely recognizing a word and truly learning it.

I also love that Clozemaster holds you accountable for appropriate accents (including offering the letters if you don’t have your keyboard set up for that yet), and encourages you to try, one letter at a time. That can make the difference between making an educated guess and just giving up.

Clozemaster also approaches languages less from an academic standpoint and more from a colloquial one. In the lesson above, you learn phrases that are actually used every day in Spanish, and not necessarily the ones you’ll learn in a textbook.

And then, at the end of all that, you’ll level up with a super fun GIF. Doesn’t quite match up with the retro theme, but I’m willing to let it slide 😉

Creating flashcards with Clozemaster

Clozemaster’s premade collections can do a lot of good (my favorite being the grammar stuff), but some language learners may have specific goals, or find these general and unpredictable collections boring.

No worries – using the Clozemaster system, you can create all the collections you want! You can either create them manually, or you can search through already-created cloze sentences and organize them as you like.

When using these options, it is totally possible to use Clozemaster for beginner content; however, it does take some extra work and is probably not great if you’re not a seasoned language learner.

Experienced language learner starting a new language? Sure. New language learner just trying to figure everything out? Not ideal.

Speaking of options, you also get the freedom to dictate how you’re learning the language every single time you press play. These settings take Clozemaster’s sentences and create entirely different exercises based just on the skills you want to practice.

(Again, not all languages will necessarily have all these options.)

How Clozemaster gets its sentences

Clozemaster has access to so many sentences because they’re sourced straight from Tatoeba.org, which is an open collection of sentences and translations. Anybody can hop onto the website, search for a word, and find sentences to give their words some context.

While it is an amazing use of an open-source website, it has limitations.

For one, it’s not unusual to get sentences like these.

No need to read too into it – they’re just sentences that someone in the world uploaded in Spanish/English, and maybe they’ll pop up as you study. At any time, you also have the option to remove these sentences from your collections.

Besides that, Clozemaster provides not only sentences with a single cloze, but you can also use it for a whole passage!

This is an option to vary up your studies and keep you on your toes, as well as throw some reading comprehension into the mix.

Okay, clearly it’s not perfect, but it is an option. Once you apply the right settings, this could be great for reading comprehension and finding new vocabulary, which you can easily add to any cloze collection at any time.

Clozemaster review: should you go pro?

Let’s talk about becoming a Clozemaster subscriber. Certain aspects of Clozemaster are always free, i.e. the “Fluency Fast Track” and all the reading practice.

Honestly, though, Clozemaster Pro opens up a ton of doors when it comes to both reading and listening practice.

Pro subscribers get access to all of these lessons, both as reading and listening, all as fill-in-the-blank, contextual questions. It’s a lot of simple yet very useful content and considering Clozemaster themselves don’t “create” anything per se, Clozemaster Pro is very reasonably priced: $8 a month, and even cheaper as an annual subscription.

Honestly, if Clozemaster is something that keeps your interests and matches your language goals, I’d spring for Pro. For $8/month, you’ll get a step more of a holistic language education. If you enjoy Clozemaster free, I’d recommend Clozemaster Pro for pretty much any kind of language learner and their goals.

Clozemaster review: who’s it for?

Clozemaster is an excellent resource for intermediate-advanced level learners looking to build their vocabulary and drill some of the more difficult grammar concepts they face. It’s also excellent for language learners looking for more context in general: just search for a term and Clozemaster will bring you all the sentences you need from Tatoeba for you to create a collection.

Easy as pie.

However, beginner language learners should definitely be looking elsewhere, maybe at something like Lingvist (a bit more pricey, but provides similar context) or maybe Anki (much less user-friendly, but great for clozes).

If you need more direct, clear-cut grammar lessons, go somewhere else (maybe Busuu or Babbel?), because Clozemaster assumes that you know the basic idea of these concepts, and you only need practice and repetition.

Or, if you’d rather apply clozes to texts you’re already reading, VocabBoost may be for you.

That said, repetition is important for any language learner, and Clozemaster is an excellent option!

Lingvist review: absolutely gorgeous vocab app

February 4, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Lingvist is a beautiful, modern way to learn vocab, both with their curated lists and a great opportunity for you to create meaningful vocab lists for yourself with the tap of a button. In this Lingvist review, you’ll learn all you need to know about this way to learn foreign language vocab.

In particular, this Lingvist review will touch on what kind of language learners can benefit from it, who won’t, and Lingvist alternatives that may be better if you’re of the latter category.

Lingvist languages

For native and higher-level English speakers, you can use Lingvist to learn:

Dutch
English (American)
English (British)
Estonian
French
German

Italian
Japanese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Russian
Spanish (Castilian)
Spanish (Latin American)

However, Lingvist does teach English from a variety of other languages – in fact, you can learn English from just as many, if not more, languages than the other way around! Simply visit Lingvist’s website to see your options.

Lingvist review: getting started

As you create an account and get funneled into the Lingvist process, you go through an assessment to see where your vocab and reading comprehension is. It’ll start out at the very very beginning, and it’ll go about as far as you can!

To get you started in the Lingvist mindset, this initial assessment is 50 flashcards long. It might take a minute, but be patient and help Lingvist get a good idea of where your foreign language skills are at.

Get an answer wrong? Lingvist will correct you and have you try again – even if the only thing you got wrong was missing an accent. This may seem like a small detail, but it’s an important one – many language learners underestimate the importance of accents.

Without making any decisions on the content you’re learning (you can, and I’ll get to that in a sec), Lingvist puts you through a 50-card set of flashcards every day. Apparently, 4 days of this and you’ll “really start feeling the difference!”.

What else does Lingvist have to offer besides their automatically generated selection of flashcards? Let’s walk through Lingvist decks, Challenges, Insights, and Grammar.

Lingvist review: decks

Basically, Lingvist decks are collections of vocab words organized into themes. You can use the ones that Lingvist generated, or you can generate them yourself.

These flashcards follow the same rules as the others: Lingvist will start you out basic and easy, and continue to push your knowledge of the language until it can get a gist of your level.

When you go to create a course, you have several options:

Type in a couple of words and let Lingvist expand for you
Upload an image with words on it
Copy & paste text from somewhere else

Lingvist has their own walkthrough for you to see these options at work.

Note: the following 2 videos are from a previous version of Lingvist (hence the different look), but I left them in as more examples of this unique feature.

When you select this option, all you have to do is throw a couple of related words in there, and the app will automatically (like, within seconds) spit out a whole list of related words for you to add to your arsenal. Excellent feature for those who need specific jargon!

And, like Lingvist’s own curated decks, you’ll automatically get sentences to provide some context.

Don’t like those particular sentences? You also get the option to choose from a variety of other sentences that uses that same word in different contexts.

Or, if you already have your own context or something like a book or magazine that you want to study, Lingvist has a similar feature for pulling out the vocabulary words in any given text and creating a deck straight from that.

And yes, if the app already knows you know any of the words, it’ll put those terms to the side.

Honestly, this feature in itself is worth the price. No other language learning resource on the market does anything like it!

In my professional opinion, don’t sleep on this feature if it’s something you’re likely to use.

All three of these options are meant to improve your vocabulary, and they all do so through sentences to A) not get boring and B) be much more efficient.

So, if you’re looking to work your vocabulary muscle, Lingvist gets an A+!

Lingvist review: Challenges

The second tap of the Lingvist app is labeled Challenges. You can either pick one from the whole list of Lingvist challenges, or you can filter by Conversations, Grammar, Listen, or Read.

These challenges are all very quick, very easy activities that you can use to practice speaking, grammar, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension, respectively. They’re also all labeled by level, so if you’re at a more advanced level, just scroll down.

While the platform is undoubtedly gorgeous, you can see the challenges can be a little glitchy. As a user of Lingvist for German (which isn’t yet advanced enough to use these challenges), I don’t personally use this section of the app, so don’t let this feature make the decision for you.

The Conversations challenges feature an honestly really beautiful chatbot to help get you used to the flow of a conversation. Just follow along with the pre-made script, practice some pronunciation, and get yourself in the mindset of someone fluently speaking the language.

Suffice it to say, the challenges are a cool bonus, but definitely not the star of Lingvist’s show.

P.S. The actual fun facts at the end of these challenges are pretty good! You’ll come across more obscure language facts, rather than something simple, like “in Spain, people greet each other by saying ‘buenas’!”.

Lingvist insights

Another handy tool for consuming mass amounts of vocab: Lingvist’s insights. Under this section of the Lingvist app, you can not only see your 5 last seen vocab words, 5 most practiced vocab words, and your entire word list complete with:

native audio
contextual sentence
how long it’s been since you last saw it
and how often you’ve practiced it

…but also fun numbers like your success rate, how much time you’ve spent, and more.

These statistics are language-specific, so you’ll have to switch to studying a different language if you want the statistics for another one.

I’m normally not a fan of in-app statistics, but I love this. This view is on par with Anki’s statistics; they’re much more aesthetically pleasing than Anki’s stats, but a little less detailed.

Lingvist review: Grammar

While Lingvist does have grammar explanations and examples from beginner to advanced – which is a good sign that there is plenty of room for growth in your language – these sections don’t connect to any practice.

Lingvist does flashcards really well, so I’m disappointed that this grammar section doesn’t have flashcards (or at least some sort of fill-in-the-blank practice) connected to it. I would love to see these lessons paired with the beautiful, contextual sentences that Lingvist does so well.

What I would love is to be able to go into the grammar section, review a concept, and have the opportunity to actively practice that concept, either on the same page or through a simple link.

Unfortunately, this section looks like something that was just copied and pasted from a textbook or something. There’s no opportunity to truly use this information.

Lingvist Pricing

Lingvist is a paid app, and in my opinion, it is 100% worth the price! This is a wildly high-quality and effective method for learning foreign language vocabulary, as well as some comprehension and speaking practice on the side.

You can view Lingvist’s current pricing here, but it’s generally around the $10/month range (less if you pay annually).

Whichever subscription type you choose, you can also start out with a free trial, during which Lingvist will show you how it matches up with your level based on your initial 50-term deck.

Plus, all subscribers get access to all languages at the same time and are able to switch languages as they please.

And remember: you’re not just limited to the vocab they’ve put together, you can also (instantly & easily) create your own vocab lists that are relevant to whatever it is that you’re working on.

Who should use the Lingvist app?

Lingvist is genuinely beneficial to language learners of all levels, from total beginner to advanced, who want to improve their vocabulary with a beautiful, effective resource. Personally, I am a huge fan and hope that Lingvist expands to more languages for English speakers in the future.

I’m honestly hard-pressed to think of language learners who wouldn’t benefit: those who don’t want to grow their vocabulary, obviously, and maybe those who need excessive levels of gamification. While the Lingvist app is absolutely gorgeous, it’s definitely more modern and “grown-up” than many other vocab apps.

If you’re looking for that heavy gamification, you may be better off with something like Quizlet, though it doesn’t have the handy “create a course” features, advanced vocab, or comparable high-quality context built-in.

For what it does, I feel safe saying that Lingvist can’t be beat!

LingQ review: probably not worth your time

February 3, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

LingQ (pronounced like ‘link’) is excellent for language learners who want to pick up vocabulary through reading and listening to audiobooks, stories, podcasts, etc. Given that it’s such a huge, popular resource, there’s a lot to say about it – some of it good, some bad. In this LingQ review, you’ll get a taste of it all.

In this LingQ review, learn if LingQ is the language app for you, or if it’s just not worth it.

LingQ review: languages

One thing that’s excellent about LingQ is that you can create your own content (more on that later) in the following languages:

Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
Czech
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Italian
Japanese

Korean
Latin
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian

LingQ review: your dashboard

LingQ’s dashboard has been modernized in recent years, in an effort to be a more “bingeable” way to learn languages.

There’s a lot of information to take in, and I wish there were some sort of tutorial or something first because if I hadn’t been using this platform for years, I would have no idea where to start!

LingQ has a history of being…not very user-friendly, and that hasn’t changed. There’s a lot to take in here.

every video shows you how many words you know and how many you don’t*
you can see the percentage of words you don’t know*
while each cover photo is in your target language, it’ll automatically translate as soon as you roll over it
you can scroll through different categories of audio lessons, including Steve Kaufmann (co-creator of LingQ)’s podcast
you can search for specific content based on level or keywords

*neither of these stats is accurate if you don’t use LingQ religiously

Of course, like any other Netflix-esque platform, the more you use it, the better it can recommend you content that you’ll actually use.

So let’s move onto what it’s like to actually learn a language with LingQ.

LingQ review: basic lesson

Click to any video that you can see on your dashboard to get started with a LingQ lesson.

Once you press play, you’ll hear an audio recording in your target language, and it’s your responsibility to follow along with the written words.

Don’t get distracted or lost, though, because there’s literally no way to find your way back if you do. There’s on highlight to follow along with…the audio doesn’t even automatically turn the page, so you can be at the end of the audio but still on the first page, and you wouldn’t even know.

Plus, collecting new vocab words (i.e. LingQs)? What a pain. Not only does the audio not automatically stop to give you a second to learn the new word, but it gives you a robot voice for that word instead of just rewinding the audio a little bit.

I hate it. Maybe I’m spoiled by Language Reactor which makes it genuinely easy to learn new vocabulary by watching foreign language movies and TV. But just in that clip alone, I was stumbling so hard to pause the audio and catch up wit the word I just collected, I completely lost track of everything.

The idea is to make language learning easier, not more difficult.

LingQ review: words and lesson history

To find the LingQs (vocab words) you’ve collected within these lessons, click over to Vocabulary.

Again, LingQ’s usability is…wanting. While you do get to see how (theoretically) well you know any particular term, it’s hard to see what you’re supposed to do here. Again: mild inconvenience for some, completely handicapping for others.

The actual system of learning these LingQs definitely has potential, but it could also use some real help.

Fortunately, if you like finding your vocab using this method but have your own flashcard deck elsewhere, you can export all of your vocabulary to a CSV file, and upload that to any resource that’ll accept it.

The last tab, Playlist, holds your place if you’re in the middle of a book or series. This is definitely handy for when you click something in your Library feed, and it’s in the middle of a playlist or book.

Importing content to LingQ

LingQ has a plethora of practice options – tutors, forums, challenges, etc. – but I don’t want to spend time on those because they’re not really worth your time. There are plenty of other language learning resources that already do these things much better than LingQ could.

The important feature to know about LingQ is the ability to import content to use with LingQ’s technology

Anybody with an account can upload whatever content they like to the platform, and LingQ will stick it right into your feed. Either click the import button right from your dashboard or download the Chrome extension to import from anywhere on the internet.

You have three options: lesson, ebook, and vocab.

And, honestly, it’s pretty cool if you’re looking for a place to host your content all in one place, plus keep track of the vocabulary you’re learning in a centralized platform.

LingQ review: price

You can access any content at any time for free!

However, if you want to use LingQ as your primary language learning platform, you’ll definitely need to pay for premium due to the unlimited LingQs and unlimited imports.

You’ll also get access to all the other perks that I haven’t really mentioned in this LingQ review since other resources do those things much better, but if you decide to pay for premium, it might be worth taking advantage of them.

You can find updated prices for LingQ Premium here.

LingQ review: the bottom line

At the end of this LingQ review, it can be a great resource for you if the lack of usability doesn’t get in the way for you. If it’s as handicapping for you as it is for me, though, there are plenty of alternatives.

Readlang is my favorite for finding words and articles on the internet.

Lingvist is excellent for creating themed vocab lists, or lists from books you’re reading.

Language Reactor is best for new vocab in YouTube and Netflix media.

But if the cons mentioned in this LingQ review don’t dissuade you, LingQ is a solid option for finding new foreign language vocab through a variety of content available online!

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:

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!