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Rocket Languages review: scripts from 0-fluent

February 6, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Rocket Languages is a genuinely well-rounded way to learn languages that has the potential to help language learners achieve many different kinds of goals. In this Rocket Languages review, we’ll walk through some lessons and talk about what Rocket Languages does well, not so well, and if it’s a resource you should consider.

Language options

You can use Rocket Languages to learn:

American Sign Language
Arabic
Chinese (Mandarin)
English (American)
French
German
Hindi
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Russian
Spanish

For this Rocket Languages review, let’s test Rocket Languages Spanish.

Rocket Languages review: level 1 interactive audio

Rocket Languages has its material organized into 3 levels (as well as some other courses for practice, depending on the language), and each of those levels has its own dashboard. Starting with the very first lesson in the very first dashboard, you’ll learn the very first phrases you’ll ever need: how to say ‘hello’.

First, you’ll get an audio file introducing you to everything, all in English (which makes sense, considering if you’re starting at level 1, you probably don’t understand much Spanish). It’ll introduce you to that first conversation.

Or, as I did in the video below, simply skip past the English introduction and jump right into the audio itself.

I do love the modernized interface – you have complete control over the speed of the audio, which part of the audio you’re listening to, and have a clickable transcript for us visual learners. You can also download the mp3 for independent practice without having to go back into the course itself.

I still don’t like how much if it is in English (that’s my main issue with the Pod101 series, too), but it is easy enough to skip past it and get right into the goods.

Regardless, this script is very slow – excellent for beginners, but not for you if you have experience with the language (at least, not level 1). But you’ll go through a normal greeting conversation with some helpful tips: how native speakers speak, any important cultural knowledge, etc.

If this is too slow for you (and you’ve already purchased the course), you can jump right to the lessons at your level. There is no need to complete any lessons – move around Rocket Languages as you please.

Next, you’ll take that same conversations and break it down even more for you to act out both sides of the dialogue.

In this first lesson, you get an incredibly simplistic conversation, and a ton of options for digesting said conversation:

Play the conversation
Play Mauricio’s side of the conversation (for you to role-play as Amy)
Play Amy’s side of the conversation (for you to role-play as Mauricio)
Play each individual piece of dialogue independently
Record yourself saying each individual piece of dialogue independently

This offers fresh new beginners plenty of opportunities to learn the way that they need to learn. And if it’s too easy for you (which is totally understandable – this is at a snail’s pace), click the gear at the upper right-hand corner to manage the settings.

With these extra settings either checked or unchecked, you can give yourself more of a challenge by:

Blurring the English translation (practice thinking in the language)
Blurring the Spanish text (practice listening comprehension)
Removing a word or character for a fill-in-the-blank
Having Rocket Languages grade your recording

In these sections, Rocket Languages uses speech recognition to grade your pronunciation. I generally don’t like to rely on this tech, but I do like being able to see what it thinks I’m saying.

After this “extra vocabulary” section – vocab that is relevant to this conversation but doesn’t actually appear in it – it’s time to “make it stick with Rocket reinforcement”! Using the same conversation, you’ll continue to:

flashcards
more speech recognition
transcription (type the statements)
verbal translation (see the English words, say them in the target language)
multiple choice quiz

In all these reinforcement tools, Rocket Languages also prompts you to report how easy or difficult any given term is! This is my absolute favorite and I wish I saw it more.

It keeps track of what you’re learning, kind of like Anki and LingoDeer do – literally just tell Rocket Languages how well you know the term. Then, once you’re through with those flashcards, you have the option to just study the more difficult ones again.

It’s important to notice that the transcription exercise corrects you if you don’t use appropriate accents. Always write the language correctly – the accents are more than just annoying pronunciation marks.

But, at the same time, whether you got it right is completely self-reporting. So technically you could just not make an effort to use the accents, but they did their due diligence to tell you. If you don’t have an accurate understanding of the language, that’s on you.

Language & culture lessons

On the dashboard, under the “interactive audio” lessons, you’ll find “language & culture” lessons. These lessons are here to give you some key background information of the language, including pronunciation tips, grammatical patterns, and more.

Basically, this is where Rocket Languages takes important knowledge that can be dry (and therefore normally avoided), and applies it to their methodology to make it a bit more intriguing.

For example, the first lesson explains the difference between the B and V sound in Spanish – it’s not a make or break kind of thing, but definitely helpful for pronunciation.

This is honestly great – most resources don’t explain things like the alphabet from the get go, as most resources (as well as most learners) don’t tend to find these things important.

Interactive audio level 3

As we’ve already seen, level 1 is very, very slow and simple, great for total beginners. Rocket Languages is broken up into 3 levels, so how advanced does level 3 get?

Honestly, more advanced than I’d expected!

This particular conversation is around an upper-intermediate level. Considering how slow and simple the first level was, I’m pleasantly surprised by the content here. It’s played at a decent speed as well, and very clearly.

If you want a more native-level speed, you’ll have to find native content.

If you want to challenge yourself more (which I highly recommend if it’s not too much of a stretch for you), go into the gear icon and turn off the English translations. At this level, your comprehension likely can take a bit more pushing – do it if you can.

My only issue is that “cheesy” clarity. For some it may be beneficial, as it’s easier to understand, but it’s almost unrealistic unless you’re in an elementary school classroom.

However, this doesn’t reflect on the approach as a whole, which I tend to agree with. For example:

Grammar isn’t crucial to being able to make yourself understood in a conversation.

I mean, it’s true. If conversing fluently is your goal, you don’t have to be too concerned over grammar. Which is probably why they don’t formally address grammar at all. It’s nodded at in contextual examples, but that’s about it.

Nonetheless, I don’t see you ever running out of conversational practices. Once you’re done with all 3 levels, you can click on to “Travelogues” for even more conversational practice: 20-30 minutes of advanced-level conversation, where you need to actively go to the English version if you want the translation.

Rocket Languages review: pricing

I can honestly say that Rocket Languages is a high quality resource, which means it comes at a high quality price. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars for all 3 levels, or if you don’t plan on needing every level, you can lower the price by purchasing courses individually.

Click here to see up-to-date prices.

Buying Rocket Languages includes access to only 1 language.

If this Rocket Languages review shows you that this may very well be the best language learning resource for you, that price tag may make you a bit nervous. Keep in mind that not only does that price include lifetime access to all updates, but you can also always trial the first few lessons of any course for free (this review is based on those very same trial lessons).

The first free lessons, at every level, are available to you forever. No obligation, no nothing.

Who can benefit most from Rocket Languages?

Rocket Languages is a very well-rounded resource that can take you from day 0 of your language to a pretty advanced level for one program. It presents a variety of different ways to study, based on what’s engaging and important to you, with no obligation to use any of them if you don’t want to.

However, if you need fun sounds, bright colors, and heavy gamification, Rocket Languages’ clear, lightweight activities won’t keep you interested.

Same for those who want a thorough knowledge of grammar – you’ll get a basic idea/feel for grammar, but you’re mostly left to pick up patterns implicitly without drills or grandiose explanations.

Otherwise, if you have a bit of cash to invest in your language learning and want to engage almost all the senses no matter where you are in your journey, click here to give Rocket Languages a try.

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!

Lingoda Review: high risk, high reward

January 25, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Lingoda is an online language school that offers both private and small-group language classes to suit your schedule. It also has a couple of interesting perks (i.e. Lingoda Sprint) which we’ll also learn about in this Lingoda review.

Should you use Lingoda to learn to speak a language? Continue reading this Lingoda review to find out!

Getting started with Lingoda

Basically, Lingoda is a monthly membership (or pay upfront) that provides you a certain number of private/group conversations, depending on what route you choose, in a number of languages:

English
English for business
French

German
Spanish

The level you can reach using Lingoda depends on the language itself, but you can generally achieve upper intermediate, if not advanced.

When you opt for a membership, you do have to select a language and stick to it, but there are a few membership options for each language.

Once you choose your language, you can either tell Lingoda your level, or take a placement test.

I took the placement test, which involved a series of intermediate-beginner phrases in a multiple-choice format. I may be a bit rusty with my active knowledge of Spanish, but I thought I did pretty decently.

NOPE!

As usual, the native assessment was far from accurate – my Spanish is definitely beyond “soy Jamie” and “tengo un perro”. Using this platform at A1 would be a significant waste of my time.

Fortunately, you can easily change your level at any time, which I quickly did. Phew! Suffice to say, if you have a general idea of your current level, skip the assessment.

On that note, Lingoda does something pretty cool. Once you go through the structured classes and check all the boxes, you can receive a Lingoda certificate.

My first thought (as should be yours, too) is “okay, what does that actually mean?”. Fortunately, unlike the McGraw-Hill certificate from Busuu, this one actually seems pretty legit.

Now obviously if you’re looking for a resume-builder for an actual foreign language-related job, you’ll probably want to double-check with the employer just in case, but the CEFR is the guy that you want documentation from.

Now that’s awesome.

Booking a class

Once you’ve got your level and everything all figured out, it’s time to book your first class! You can book classes by:

Level
Group/private
Day of the week
Time frame

Weirdly, Lingoda does not allow you to search for classes with one teacher. Considering the competition depends a lot on the relationship you build with your teachers, it’s different to see Lingoda put more emphasis on taking certain classes and gaining certain skills.

You’ll also notice that the previews of these classes include the skill you’ll be focused on. Except for the “skill” skill…I’m not entirely sure what that’s supposed to mean.

I had never taken a group language class online before (and I was more interested in seeing the Lingoda process than getting high-quality, one-on-one attention), so I opted for a group class. The white bar on the bottom of these squares will tell you how many student spots are still available out of 5.

One last thing about that screenshot: I wanted to take a class the same day, and there weren’t that many! The impression I got from the teacher I ended up with did note that the class was full, so I’m assuming that they have enough classes to satisfy their students.

Taking a class

This is the class I took.

Before the class started, I had access to a few different things: the materials that the class would be reviewing, a FAQ about the meetings, etc. Lingoda told me the class would be over Zoom and gave me an option to test my device for Zoom, but didn’t give me anywhere to go, nor did it tell me how long the lesson would be.

With a group class, I assumed it would be an hour long, but I’d still like to know! I also wish it would confirm I was in the right time zone in some way – I’ve definitely set up online lessons like this and missed them because my account wasn’t in the right time zone.

Regardless, Lingoda told me to go to the My Classes page and wait.

Once 10:00 hit, a blue “Go to Class” button appeared. I clicked it, Zoom popped up, and I was ready to go.

The six of us (5 students and 1 teacher) went through the PowerPoint that I had had the option to download before it started. I did like having an idea of what we were going to talk about – that hasn’t always been the case with other platforms.

While we waited for everyone to log on, the teacher took us through some questions to answer and ask each other.

Then the teacher walked us through some of the slides. And by the way, apparently “skills” just means all of them!

For the next hour, the teacher took us through, making sure that we each got an equal opportunity to speak and ask questions. It was a very relaxed atmosphere, and I felt more than comfortable asking questions. A+!

Like I said, my spoken Spanish was rusty, so I had to deal with that uncomfortable feeling you get when you know you used to be SO GOOD and now you’ve lost fluency because you haven’t used it. So at first, it was kind of a painful class for me.

But because it was so low-key with a few other students to take their equal attention, I had time to get in the flow. And apparently, the teacher noticed. How do I know that?

Once your Lingoda lesson is over, you give a quick review (just stars, you don’t have to write anything) and you can access your Class Report!

Nice!

Lingoda review: prices

Lingoda wants you to really commit to your language learning – good for them! Outside of Lingoda Sprint, they offer two plans: monthly or “marathon”. Both options are the same across all language courses.

It can get complicated, but Lingoda has made it a bit easier to choose a subscription that works for you. You can find updated prices here.

No matter what kind of subscription you choose, you’re signing up for either group classes of 3-5 students or private 1:1 classes. All subscriptions include a 7-day free trial.

Lingoda group classes

Monthly subscription:

pay every 4 weeks
cancel/change anytime
4-40 classes/month
~$50-400 per month

“Marathon” subscription:

pay upfront
- 50 classes, 3 months
- 100 classes, 6 months
- 200 classes, 12 months
$60-450 cashback if you attend 90% of classes
~$500-2,500

Lingoda private classes

Monthly subscription:

pay every 4 weeks
cancel/change anytime
4-40 classes/month
~$150-800 per month

“Marathon” subscription:

pay upfront
- 50 classes, 3 months
- 100 classes, 6 months
- 200 classes, 12 months
$140-1100 cashback if you attend 90% of classes
~$1,300-5,000

Note: the exact cost of your subscription depends on the language you’re learning and the number of classes you commit to. Click here to see current prices.

Also note: the “Marathon” subscription notes their prices with the assumption that you attend 90% of your classes and get your cash back. In order to see the real price, you’ll have to go to checkout.

While the “Marathon” subscription isn’t wildly different from the Language Sprint, it is less intense with lower reward.

Lingoda review: Language Sprint

Last but not least, you have Lingoda’s “Language Sprint” and “Super Sprint”.

Language Sprint is their unique language marathon that runs every 3 months – the closest competition is BaseLang, but that’s only for Spanish. Commit to Lingoda Sprint and you commit to:

2 months of classes
15-30 classes per month (15 for the regular Sprint, 30 for Super Sprint)
guaranteed refund* (50% for Sprint, 100% for Super Sprint)

Suffice to say, Lingoda Sprint is high risk, high reward.

*Make sure you read all the rules carefully because many language learners lose their opportunity for a refund by accidentally scheduling classes before the official time frame.

Is it a trick to limit Lingoda’s refunds, or is it poor organization? That’s not for me to say.

Regardless, it’s an interesting motivational tactic for language learners to really commit to their goals for 2 months – make sure you think carefully about the next 2 months of your life before you jump on this!

Lingoda review: should you try it?

If you’re prepared to commit to growing your language skills with a tutor (either private or in a small group setting), this Lingoda review shows that it’s probably worth a shot. While the classes themselves are pretty flexible, you do have to commit some energy regularly. This isn’t a 5-minute Mondly session, it’s the real deal.

I definitely enjoyed my Lingoda lesson – low pressure, good conversation, and a solid level of attention, too. It’s easy to get language students in a group lesson, it’s not necessarily easy to make sure everyone can actively participate, nor to give every student enough personalized attention to have them walk away with something to practice.

Thanks to the post-class note, I had something to work with independently.

If you’re not into classes with a tutor, though, Lingoda’s not for you. Same for language learners who want to work independently, or those who get overwhelmed with significant commitments.

But if that doesn’t sound like you? Click here to give Lingoda a try!

BaseLang Review: pricey, but worth it

January 20, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

BaseLang is a Spanish-specific language learning service that connects Spanish learners to native Latin American Spanish speakers. BaseLang is special because it’s the first (though no longer only!) of its kind: unlimited lessons for one monthly price.

In this BaseLang review, you’ll learn everything you need to know about this resource: what you’ll learn, what you won’t learn, and if you should consider BaseLang for your Spanish language learning.

BaseLang review: comparing plans

BaseLang keeps it simple: unlimited 1:1 Spanish classes to get you to speak Spanish quickly. They offer 2 options (which we’ll talk about below) and offer you a free trial of $1. No fluff, not wild marketing schemes…BaseLang gets right to it.

From the get-go, you’re directed to choose how you’re planning to use BaseLang: either online, or in-person at their location in Medellin, Colombia. Unless you’re planning to relocate to Colombia, we’ll stick to online.

While we’re here, let’s talk about these differences, starting with BaseLang Real World.

BaseLang Real World

BaseLang’s Real World plan is simple: it’s basically a gym membership for learning Spanish. Pay one monthly fee, and get unlimited access to conversational practice with native speakers.

These classes are taught via Zoom, and are all private, 1:1, with native Spanish speakers.

Your lessons do follow a curriculum, but it’s largely up to you to decide your structure including when you learn, with whom you learn, etc. We’ll see what that looks like in a minute.

BaseLang Grammarless

If BaseLang Real World is your basic 24-hour gym membership where you show up whenever you have the time and take turns using the machines, BaseLang Grammarless is hiring a private trainer.

You choose your teacher and meet with them on a fixed schedule, and while a personal trainer can’t promise you washboard abs in 30 days, BaseLang guarantees zero-to-conversational fluency after 80 hours.

This translates to either four-hour days (conversational in a month) or two-hour days (conversational in 2 months). Very intensive.

And if that’s not enough practice for you, BaseLang Grammarless includes BaseLang Real World.

BaseLang teachers

If you go for BaseLang Real World, where you don’t choose your teacher at the beginning and instead basically use any teacher that’s available for flexibility, there’s somewhat of a process.

Here are your options for finding yourself a BaseLang teacher.

I do love the basic category options on the left in particular. Especially that gender option – one of my main qualms with italki is that you can’t search for teachers by gender. Apparently I’m not the only one!

Side note: in the above video, you’ll see the selected teacher doesn’t have any availability. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is because I was supposed to click the teacher in the left-hand column. That teacher was simply left over from the initial search.

BaseLang teachers have always had a little get-to-know-you video, but the newer (to me) bit is that bottom bar. That “Private Rating” part is SO helpful – last time I was active on BaseLang, you just got a list of BaseLang teachers to choose from, and you had to remember which ones you liked. Now you don’t have to remember!

I’m a huge fan of the option to favorite a teacher, too.

One of the problems I’ve run into is trying to get onto BaseLang scheduling the minute the next day opened up, only to find my favorite BaseLang teacher, and my favorite time of the day was already taken. That was WAY too much effort so I really like this fix for that.

You can now set up to 3 teachers as favorites. Favoriting a teacher allows you to schedule a lesson with them 2 days in advance.

Nonetheless, in past years BaseLang would just give you a list of the BaseLang teachers available in this time slot, and it would be up to you to go back into the section with their bios and descriptions and everything. Now they’re included right in this scheduling section, which is a serious improvement!

Once you’ve got your timing and teacher all figured out, there’s nothing left but to confirm your lesson!

Important note: BaseLang is known for its extra-high turnover rate, especially with its best tutors. Basically, if you love a particular teacher, they’re always going to be booked out until they just kind of disappear and you have to find a new favorite.

BaseLang review: scheduling a session

The first thing that happens when you go to schedule a BaseLang class is you’re asked to add the email address linked to your Zoom account – it also mentions that Zoom has a much better connection than Skype which is somewhat promising for me, as one of the worst problems I’ve had with BaseLang in the past is really bad connection.

Then you get to schedule a lesson.

In the past, you used to be able to schedule a BaseLang lesson by time or teacher, which I really liked. At some point, they seem to have removed the latter choice, so you can now only schedule a lesson by time on this screen; if you want to schedule by the teacher, you can do so in the “Teachers” tab.

One thing that BaseLang is proud of is the fact that you’re able to schedule a lesson at literally the last minute. You can also show when multiple consecutive classes with the same teacher are available. That’s HUGE! This option makes the BaseLang search so much more efficient than it used to be.

Just make sure that your time zone is correct in the settings tab, or else you’ll have to guess/hope that everything’s all set, and you’re not going to miss any sessions (which I definitely have).

The old adage of “beggers can’t be choosers” is usually pretty accurate in this scenario. While there are a surprising number of teachers available, you can’t be sure that you’ll necessarily hit it off with one of them, if they speak any English, or if you’ll enjoy your lesson.

Sometimes you just don’t jive with a particular tutor, it’s a normal part of finding a teacher in literally any scenario.

BaseLang review: Lessons

While BaseLang Real World is much more loosey-goosey than Grammarless, there is still a curriculum. This curriculum used to be confusing, but they seem to have simplified it a lot, which is great.

Under the “Lessons” tab, you’ll find Core Lessons and Electives.

Core Lessons are broken up into levels 0-9, from beginner to advanced, and are there to support your grammar education.

Each of these core lessons is broken into subjects based on grammar and/or vocab. Just click into any of these lessons that you might want to review and you’ll get some PowerPoint slides to click through.

From here you can see that BaseLang truly offers lessons from beginner to advanced – you can choose to follow this pathway as rigidly as you like, or not really at all, based totally on whether you prefer to focus on grammar or conversational skills.

These lessons aren’t particularly special compared to something you could find elsewhere, but it is nice to be able to reference the material you might’ve been working on in class that day.

Then we have Electives. Same layout and all, just some fun vocab to help you express yourself in your sessions if you’re looking for pure conversational practice.

These lessons are very interesting to me, but they’re clearly best used with BaseLang teachers. By themselves, these slides are lackluster at best. I’m guessing the intention behind them is to give BaseLang students some inspiration/conversation starters, in which case these will definitely keep the conversation flowing.

I know I said it before, but it’s worth saying again – I’m really glad that BaseLang made these lessons much more simple. There used to be an independent intro and all this frankly unnecessary information. This is much more helpful!

Interestingly, BaseLang has also supplemented these courses with their own Memrise flashcards. This makes it super easy to review the vocabulary independently, which is a great study practice.

BaseLang price

Whether you use BaseLang online or in person in Medellin, Colombia, BaseLang Grammarless is $1200. For an 80-hour program with guaranteed, that’s just $15 an hour.

Plus online learners get BaseLang Real World for unlimited classes thrown in for free. You quite literally can’t beat that.

BaseLang Real World online is the most affordable option. But if you need the in-person classes, that drives the price up. You do get the online classes thrown in, though.

You can see BaseLang’s updated prices here.

BaseLang alternatives

So, basically, BaseLang Grammarless takes the structure of Lingoda (and the intensity of Lingoda Sprint) and mixes it with the teacher-student relationship that you (at least should) get with Verbling or italki.

Let’s be clear about the difference between Lingoda Sprint and BaseLang Grammarless because they are both highly intensive Spanish-speaking courses.

Lingoda Sprint is a 2-month course (and only opens to new students every 3 months) that includes 15-30 classes per month (15 classes for Sprint, 30 classes for Super Sprint) and a guaranteed refund (50% for Sprint, 100% for Super Sprint) if you attend all of these classes. These classes happen at varying times with different teachers.

Lingoda also offers a couple of other less intense options.

BaseLang review: should you try it?

After this BaseLang review, I’m a fan. However, it’s not for everyone. They are very intentional about their preferred audience, which is great.

In particular, BaseLang is best for Spanish language learners (total beginners, if you’re going for BaseLang Grammarless; level doesn’t matter for BaseLang Real World) who are looking for highly flexible 1:1 lessons with a native-speaking Latin American tutor, whether in-person or online.

Is grammar important to you? Not for you. More interested in Castilian Spanish? No-go. Your time zones don’t match up (BaseLang functions on Eastern Time)? Look elsewhere. Don’t have the energy to work with a person (i.e. introverts and neurodiverse folks) for close to 100% of your language learning? Definitely not.

However, if you can spare at least $179 a month and are able to commit to a reasonably significant number of hours to learning conversational Latin American Spanish with a private tutor, BaseLang has quite a few options for you to play with.

After reading this BaseLang review, are you still not sure? Another super special feature of BaseLang is their negative risk guarantee: pay only $1 for your first week, and if you don’t like it, get $20 back.

On top of that negative risk, use my link and get $10 off your first month of online practice!