Beginner

Drops Review: beautiful vocab for beginners

January 15, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Drops is a popular language app, known for its beautiful design and quick wins. It’s similar to Duolingo in that it’s fun, easy, and addictive, but with more of a focus on expanding your vocabulary than building your grammar. Recently, Drops has also been bought out by Kahoot! to create an insanely fun resource. This Drops review will tell you more.

Read on to see whether Drops is the right language app for you.

Drops languages

You can use the Drops to learn a ton of languages:

Ainu
Arabic
Bosnian
Cantonese
Chinese (Mandarin)
Croatian
Danish
Dutch
English (American)
English (British)
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish

Italian
Japanese
Korean
Maori
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Sanksrit (for yoga)
Serbian
Spanish (Castilian)
Spanish (Mexican)
Swahili
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Yoruba
Pride

Drops clearly supports a variety of languages (and a handful of accents), and they’re adding to that list all the time. When a language app supports so many languages, it’s generally safe to assume that the content won’t get too advanced; that said, Drops is best for beginners of the appropriate.

Not only that, but Drops also offers this content through source languages other than English, making it a great option for laddering languages (i.e. learning a third language through a second language). This is a more and more common feature, and can be found in other resources like Mondly, Duolingo, and Glossika.

Drops review: the Drops approach to vocab

When you first log in to Drops, you’ll be recommended to start from the very beginning of the language. This first lesson will give you some simple vocab, and get you used to the Drops style.

Some features of this strategy that you can see:

when you’re presented with a new word, you’re asked if you want to learn it (whether you already know it, or if it’s an important term for you)
you’ll see the image Drops assigns that term to
this term + its imagery will be repeated a few times to get that short term memory going

I love this because you’ll never be led to translate your vocabulary (except the first time you see it)! This not only prevents the bad habit of having to translate words before you communicate but also opens up this strategy to any native language.

As you build more and more vocab, you’re led to differentiate between vocab words through the exact imagery.

And, as you prove you’re learning the terms with more and more correct answers, Drops ups the ante by making its questions just a little more difficult.

And that’s it. Drops keeps it simple. Very, very simple.

Drops review: what you’ll learn

First, you’re introduced to new words with relevant icons, and you tell Drops whether or not you want to learn this word. This is a nice way to not waste your time learning words that either you already know, or they’re so easy that you don’t have to spend the time studying them (if they’re close enough to English, for example).

You’ll get the English translation when the word first appears, but after that, tap the icons to see what vocab word you’re supposed to be translating. I like how this makes an effort to help you avoid the habit of translation and jumps right into just thinking in the new language, the thing that Rosetta Stone really rocks at!

Plus, you get the added bonus of hearing the word/phrase being said every time you review them. Very helpful for getting new vocab cemented in your brain and exercising your listening skills.

From the start, you can see where Drops really shines: vocab. While you can use Drops to take in your very first words, it also offers vocab to cover a ton of subjects:

Basics
Food
Travel
Relationships
Work
Home

Education
Hobbies
Outdoors
Wellness
Shops

That adds up to 11 different subjects’ worth of vocab, all of which you can access in over 30 different languages. There are no “levels” or “checkpoints” to meet before you can learn any of this vocab, so choose your own path!

Drops app review: review features

Learning new words is only part of the battle – the other part is review. Fortunately, Drops offers a few different options to review this new vocab. First off: quiz mode.

In this section, Drops helps you by tying the vocab to its meaning. This is unique, and adds some more context to your terms. Drops understands that context and meaning are incredibly important to learning foreign language vocab, and they’re helping you do just that.

Just unlock the vocab to get through 5 quiz questions, and play away!

There’s also Review Dojo, which you can access after you learn 45 new terms, through this review just seems to be regular Drops focused on previously learned terms.

Drops Premium

Drops is a free language app, up to 5 minutes to practice a day. If you wanto study for more than 5 minutes a day, you can opt for Premium. Click here for updated pricing.

Besides unlimited study reps, a premium Drops subscription also gives you access to their other, lesser-known language apps, Scripts and Droplets

Drops’ other language learning apps

Allow this Drops review to introduce you to Scripts and Droplets. Both are similar language apps to Drops.

First, Scripts. With Scripts, you can learn to read and write the alphabets of other languages using Drops’ fun colors and sound effects. Scripts can help you with the following alphabets:

American Sign Language
Chinese Hanzi
English alphabet
Hebrew

Hindi Devanagari
Japanese Kana
Korean Hangul
Russian Cyrillic
Sanskrit (for yoga)

Droplets, on the other hand, is very aptly named – it’s Drops for kids. It’s pretty perfect, actually; what kid doesn’t want to learn a new language by “playing with their words”?

Drops review: who should try it

Drops is a super fun, uniquely beautiful language app that helps to keep language learning accessible by offering not only a whole bunch of languages for one price but also two whole other apps. If you’re looking for a highly entertaining way to add a bit of vocab to your language learning strategy, I’d give it a shot.

However, if you want something with a bit more oomph – like building up to sentences and/or throwing some grammar in the mix – I’d recommend an app like Lingvist or Mango Languages.

Or, if you need a fun way to learn vocab but want some more wiggle room when it comes to the categories or types of vocab, maybe try an app like LingQ or Chrome extension like Language Reactor.

Either way, Drops is an excellent start for beginners of its supported languages. It’s gorgeous, works well, and keeps it fun.

Fluent Forever Review: learn by sound, not words

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The Fluent Forever app prides itself on teaching you “to THINK in any language”. As a language coach, this is definitely something I teach my clients – avoid translations and conjugation tables (if your goals aren’t to translate or take conjugation exams) and learn to use the stuff.

In this Fluent Forever app review, let’s talk about how this app approaches the concept, what it could do better, and if it’s right for you in your language learning

Fluent Forever review: at first glance

Besides the approach, the other thing I really like about the Fluent Forever app is the app itself. It’s really well-made, pleasing to look at, super smooth, etc. The initial run-through of the app shows you everything you need to know.

Therefore, this review is going to take you through the same process the app goes through. What I mean by that, specifically, is I don’t usually talk about prices until the end of a review, right? Here, that’s the first thing I’ll mention. ‘Cause it just looks so nice!

You can choose to pay monthly or annually – monthly is just ten bucks a month, and annually is a fraction of that. This price point puts it right in the middle of other resources like it; it ain’t gonna break the bank.

On top of that, you also get a 14-day free trial, which is also incredibly reasonable!

BUT.

Do you see that first checkmark? “Access to all our languages for 14 days”? I can see what the idea is, but it seems kind of backward to me. Basically, once you give them your money, you’re also getting…less?

I really love when language learning resources give you access to all their languages with one monthly subscription, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen access to all languages EXCEPT if you’re paying for it. Weird.

Nonetheless, the Fluent Forever app does have a solid collection of foreign languages to choose from:

Chinese (Mandarin)
Dutch
English
French
German
Hebrew
Italian

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

Bonus points for two different Spanish accents! Let’s start out with Castilian Spanish (my go-to).

Fluent Forever app review for advanced learners

You’ll start out with two qualifying questions:

Of course, I started out with Advanced and Great to see how the Fluent Forever app is for intermediate and/or advanced learners. The first thing you do once you’ve qualified yourself is make your first flashcard.

At first glance, this is a super solid word to start with! “Pulgar” is not really a word you’ll find in textbooks a lot.

I recognized “pulgar” passively, but if you had asked me to translate “thumb” before this flashcard, I wouldn’t have been able to.

So from here, I was genuinely enjoying this app!

You’re offered a selection of popular images to trigger the word in your brain, or you can also opt to take your own picture with your phone.

Once you make your first flashcard, you learn how to use the app.

You tap the photo to check your answer, then swipe right if you’re right, left if you’re wrong. It seems they’re hopping onto the Tinder strategy, so I’m assuming it works.

At this point, I was 100% loving this app. The first word that was shown to me was definitely at my (vaguely advanced) level, and I can see how the app would be really fun to use.

So far, so good. Whenever an app mentions a Spaced Repetition Algorithm (I still maintain nobody does it quite like Anki!) I take it with a big ol’ grain of salt, but I was willing to look over that at this point.

Then you’ll get a short tutorial of the app’s basic “tasks”.

At this point, I’m still diggin’ this app. With a Daily Streak Task, that suggests some solid daily accountability. Those of you who love the soft daily accountability of streaks with apps like Duolingo and Mondly will approve!

And, to be fair, the app follows through:

I mean…they’re not wrong.

This is where the Fluent Forever app gets…iffy (but I was still pretty optimistic at this point).

At the top of this app, I got some stats, which I assume they assume from those first qualifying questions.

While these stats happen to likely be fairly accurate (“happen to”, “likely”, and “fairly” being the operative words here), they feel really precise considering those qualifying questions were pretty general.

And, as we’re about to see, the fact that I’m questioning these stats is not totally unfounded.

I went in to learn some new words, and here’s what happened.

First of all, if you already know that I’m at least an intermediate learner, why are you showing me these beginner words? If this app assumes I’m at B2, why is it showing me A1 words? What a turn-off.

I got a little bit of optimism back thinking that I could easily swipe these words away (I dunno, maybe swiping them shifts an algorithm or something?), but no.

Sure, you can swipe them, but then it’ll give you this option, and then it’ll take a second to reload. Which takes forever, especially considering that, again, it’s already assumed I’m at a B2 level.

Okay, okay, so maybe it’s just not good for intermediate/advanced language learners? Beginner apps are perfectly valid, and these qualifying questions could simply be misleading.

Fluent Forever app review for beginners

Clearly, this strategy isn’t the best for more language learners approaching Fluent Forever with a solid vocabulary already, so let’s switch to French. From here on out, I totally get the method now.

You’ll start out with the first image, given a word. This won’t be your normal, run-of-the-mill beginner word, though, ’cause that’s not the way Fluent Forever works. You’ll get some vocab, but the point here is the sounds.

You’ll create a pretty dynamic digital flashcard: the word, its translation, an audio clip, and an image of your choosing (I’m personally not going to spend time uploading my own photo and sometimes the images that pop up automatically are kind of hit or miss) to help you learn visually.

You’ll get a few of those, see it once or twice, then it’s shuffled into your deck. When you review your deck, you’ll be tested a few different ways. The first is the image on the right: reproducing the correct sound as it’s used in that particular word.

Other examples include how to spell the word, remembering the word when you see the image, and these (my favorite):

I love the Ear Training! Here, the Fluent Forever app pits a French word against a very similar-sounding English word so you can learn to differentiate between the two. And, just like the vocab cards, these concepts are also reviewed via flashcards.

In my opinion, this is an excellent strategy for not only mastering your pronunciation but also being able to understand the words that are spoken to you. Fluent Forever’s Ear Training gets an A+ from me!

Pairing this with The Mimic Method makes a chef’s kiss of an approach to foreign language pronunciation.

Fluent Forever’s personalized flashcards

Recently, Fluent Forever updated its system to include the ability for language learners to easily create their own flashcards, which I love. While curated flashcards are great, they can be very limiting, especially past the beginner levels.

With this new feature (located at the “Explore” icon on the bottom toolbar), you can search for any word or translation of the word to be added to your flashcards. You get the option to create custom flashcards with just the singular word (which I don’t personally recommend – context is king) as well as with context supplied by Fluent Forever themselves.

The number of sentences you have to choose from depends on the word itself – while there was only one sentence available for this word, I’ve seen some words with up to 5 options for sentences.

Plus, once you select the sentence you want, you also get a chance to add imagery to the flashcard, just like Fluent Forever’s other word-only cards. These make for some very engaging digital flashcards! You will have to manually input every single word (not a big deal for beginners, very big deal for sentence miners), but all in all, Fluent Forever is shaping up to be a great tool.

In conclusion

This Fluent Forever review shows us a language learning app that’s excellent for beginner language learners (intermediate/advanced can benefit too, but not so much in my opinion) who specifically want to approach their language learning starting from sounds, not necessarily beginner vocabulary.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I’m also a huge fan of learning to “think” in the language (as they put it), and I do have to say that Fluent Forever does this pretty well.

It’s always growing, too! Fluent Forever members get access to their private Facebook group where they can ask questions and sometimes get updates. Plus, they keep their future plans for development available to the public, so you never have to wonder if whatever feature you’re looking for is coming soon.

For a language app with such a colorful history (as the most crowd-funded app in history, as well as the best-selling book), I do have to say that Fluent Forever lives up to the hype for beginner language learners who want to build fluency with the language’s sounds, not necessarily different words.

Speechling Review: conversation-less pronunciation

January 12, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

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

Speechling review: languages

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speechling for introverts

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

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

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

Speechling review: getting started

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

Here’s a basic lesson and some basic definitions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Skill Tree: what you’re learning

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

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

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

Speechling phrasebook: useful simple expressions for everyday life and travel

AKA: basic, tourist-level vocab

Asking for help
Basic expressions
Basic questions
Basic answers
Transportation

Health
Restaurant
Money
Weather
Clothing

Phone
Bad situations
Administration
Personal questions

Speechling foundations: build your vocabulary for the core curriculum

AKA: the very beginning foundations of the language

Numerals
Calendar
Nouns

Verbs
Adjectives+

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

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

Beginner 1
Beginner 2
Beginner 3

Intermediate 1
Intermediate 2
Intermediate 3

Advanced 1
Advanced 2
Advanced 3
Expert 1
Expert 2

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

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

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

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

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

Dictation

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

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

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

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

Listening Practice

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

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

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

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

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

Flashcards

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

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

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

Multiple choice quiz

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

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

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

Fill in the blank

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

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

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

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

Search

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

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

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

Premium Offline Content

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

Speechling’s already ahead of me here!

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

This content includes:

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

Speechling review: your pronunciation coach

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

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

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

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

Your recordings are also color-coded:

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

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

Speechling review: price

Speechling offers two categories of pricing: free and unlimited.

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

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

Unlimited plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Click here for Speechling’s updated pricing.

Speechling review: is it for you?

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 Review: A+…except for pricing

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: languages

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

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

LanguagePod101’s free content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: paid content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we get into the assessment itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: should you try it?

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

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

And the paid membership?

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

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

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

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

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

Click the appropriate language below to get started:

Mimic Method Review: the BEST for pronunciation

January 12, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The Mimic Method, developed by Idahosa Ness, is a language learning resource that (at least I think) is way underrated in the online language learning world. It’s totally unlike any other resource, and fills such a huge need that I’m incredibly surprised I don’t see more people talking about it!

Struggling to correctly pronounce the words you’re learning? Can’t understand the words you’re hearing, even if they’re at your level? The Mimic Method’s got you covered.

In this Mimic Method review, let’s talk about what makes The Mimic Method so unique and so important for language learners, how to use it appropriately, and how best to build off of it.

What is The Mimic Method?

In a nutshell, The Mimic Method teaches language learners, from a phonetic point of view, how the sounds of different foreign languages are similar and/or different from the sounds of English.

How does this help us understand the language we’re learning? I’ll get to that in a sec. At this time, The Mimic Method supports:

Chinese (Mandarin)
English
French
German
Italian
Japanese

Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Russian
Spanish
“Facial Fluency”

With that last option, you can apply this method to any language you desire!

You’ll do this by learning how to hear, see, and feel the sounds of the language you’re learning. Let’s go through one of these masterclasses to see how this works.

Masterclass walkthrough

I’ve been studying Spanish for so long and most of the sounds are so similar, that the sounds were never too difficult. French, though? Well, not only do I have a lot less experience with it, but the sounds of French are so unique! So French is what I’ll use for this Mimic Method review.

Here’s the screen you get when you first go to the French masterclass.

It ain’t pretty (well, none of it is, to be totally honest), but it’s real simple and real, real effective.

The first lecture, the course introduction, is the same across all languages. Here Idahosa explains everything you need to know about his course so you can set your mindset and expectations from the get-go.

I want to point out that he specifically states that the course takes 2-4 weeks, depending on the individual. That isn’t to say there’s necessarily 2-4 weeks’ worth of content, ’cause there isn’t. You can get through everything in an afternoon.

The Mimic Method requires a lot of independent work – basically, it’ll teach you how to do the thing, but it’s up to you to do the thing for yourself.

Once you get past the initial lecture teaching you what to expect, the ideology behind it, and Idahosa’s background, let’s get to the sounds of French!

These webinars (which are just recordings of live webinars Idahosa has done in the past) are based on visualizations like this one. For vowels, he plots the points of the “elemental sounds” in a language, and compares them to the elemental sounds of English, so you can practice creating the same sounds that native speakers make.

First, he plots where the English sounds that we’re familiar with are, so we can get awareness of what our mouths are doing, how they’re creating different sounds. Then he shows us how these foreign sounds relate to the ones we know – all you gotta do is shift your mouth over a bit!

Some of them are easier, some are more difficult. He makes the sounds himself, physically shows you how the movements change with tongue position, lip roundedness, and nasality (which likely change depending on the language), and is honestly really, really clear.

These webinars are incredibly informative and straight to the point. There’s not a whole lot of fluff involved outside of that first lecture. Idahosa even makes it crystal clear that because you’re learning to make new sounds, you’re forming new muscles. Expect your mouth to get sore!

After the webinars, you get homework!

This homework is a PDF file that you can print if it helps you out, or you can just take a look on your computer. It’s full of questions and exercises that are really helpful not because they repeat the same content all over again, but because they utilize the information you just learned.

In the above image you see the concepts you’re supposed to understand for everything to make sense. When you scroll down, you get exercises to practice awareness of the movements you just learned in a fun way.

Like, you’re not just making French words, you’re making fun English words and paying attention to the movements of your mouth.

If you need some review, you can always either go back to the webinar or go under “assets” and scroll through the presentation itself. It’s all right there for ya!

Once you conquer awareness of the sounds, you practice drilling the sounds. Just like the homework, these drills are entirely self-paced.

Come back and practice these drills whenever it works for you so you can make authentic French sounds without even thinking about it.

These are separated into the categories taught in the initial webinar, so it’s pretty easy to walk yourself through them and not have to actually figure anything out.

These drills are uploaded on Soundcloud, and are very, very clear!

These word lists are…well…lists of words! They’re mostly simple French words that use the sound you’re supposed to be drilling.

My ONE complaint here is I wish that the list of words was written out here: not only am I a visual learner so making these sounds without seeing them feels like I’m shooting in the dark, but it’s freakin’ French! Sounds and letters don’t always correlate!

It is worth noting that you can find the words written out under the “Drills” section (which we’ll take a look at), but this is an inconvenience to me.

The rest of the lectures follow this formula, as well:

explaining these elemental sounds and how to make them by comparing them to your native sounds,
practicing and understanding the concepts of this approach and the sounds you’re learning,
drills, drills, drills!

Once you’ve gone through these lectures and understand all the sounds, you’ll spend most of your time in the Drills section.

As you can see, The Mimic Method takes you all the way down to the very basic phonetic sounds of the language.

Click on any of the sounds you want to practice, and you’ll get a very simple, but also very detailed, review of them. These pages drill on every aspect of the sounds that are discussed in the webinars, so they’re basically like the best notes you could ever make!

https://crashedculture.com/spanish-speaking-practice/

Looking for another way to drill these sounds? Worry not, friend, ’cause the Mimic Method has a few more tricks!

The first trick, the Checklist, lists out all the elemental sounds (still organized by the same categories), so you can check off which sounds you’re struggling with. This can help you narrow down what drills you actually need to be doing!

Next up is the 500 Frequency Words List, which gives you the 500 most commonly used words in the language, with

the elemental sounds that make up the words, separated by syllable
links to every word’s Forvo page, so you have yet another audio sample of correct pronunciation

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, we have the IPA Flash Deck. The IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet, is the core of all the sounds and the system that The Mimic Method is based on. And no, it’s not a beer (not in this context, at least).

This flash deck is actually a simple Anki deck with audio recordings supplied for each symbol, so you can learn what all of these symbols actually mean and make all this that much more intuitive!

Once you conquer all of that (see why he says 2-4 weeks? It’s a lot), we have one last lecture: From Sounds to Syllables. Here we find out how to take these elemental sounds that we know and love, build off of them, and create words and phrases.

Not only do we learn the concept of effectively building off these sounds, but we also learn how to actually do it. First, we practice with the resources supplied, then we can do it with literally any audio sample we want.

What’s next?

In this Mimic Method review, we get a lot of resources. I love how language learners get the opportunity to approach this from whichever method works for them. It’s pretty one-size-fits-all!

I do want to talk about the next steps of this, how to build off of them. In that final lecture, we learn all about how to use transcription to continue to train our ears to recognize these elemental sounds, and we get a recommendation on how to do that.

While I’m in no way saying that way doesn’t work, I also have more options!

For example, both Yabla (specifically, the Scribe tool) and LyricsTraining are also helpful resources that have you transcribe audio and build off of the skills you’re learning here.

The other side of the coin, actually pronouncing the words correctly, can be practiced using Speechling! Speechling is not so much conversation practice (though it can absolutely be used to promote fluency) as much as it is pronunciation practice.

Mimic Method review: who it’s for

If this Mimic Method review teaches you anything, I hope it’s that the Mimic Method is for…pretty much anybody! But specifically, the Mimic Method is perfect for language learners who want to improve their pronunciation (one of the most difficult skills).

It’s not pretty, and it requires a lot of motivation (so if you’re the kind of person who struggles to stick to things without strong guidance, I’d recommend one of the resources mentioned above), but that doesn’t detract from the quality of information.

Oh yeah – and it’s completely free! Click here to see The Mimic Method for yourself.

Language Transfer Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

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

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

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

Language Transfer’s background

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

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

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

Arabic
English (from Spanish)
French
German
Greek

Italian
Spanish
Swahili

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

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

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

Language Transfer Review: a small disclaimer

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

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

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

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

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

The Language Transfer methodology

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

Normal.

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

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

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

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

Who should use Language Transfer

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

It’s not visual

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

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

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

There’s no feedback

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

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

Mihalis’ accent

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

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

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

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

How to support Language Transfer

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

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

The non-shop

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

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

Or, you have the learning materials.

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

The Patreon

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

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

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

Language Transfer review: I genuinely love it!

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

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

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