NOTE: Language TV Club is no longer operational as of August 2024

Have you heard of the Language TV Club? Do you think the idea of learning a language with TV shows seems cool and interesting, but you’re not sure if it is the right learning tool for you? Read this Language TV Club review to learn about the club, how to participate, what level is suggested, and the potential benefits you might gain from participating in the Language TV Club.

What is the Language TV Club?

The Language TV Club is not your average language club. It is a month-long club centered around watching TV shows to learn a language and sharing this experience with a small group.

The Language TV Club was founded after its creator, Lauren Williams, found herself watching C-dramas (Chinese dramas) to practice her listening skills in Mandarin. Like most people who watch good series, Lauren wanted to chat with friends about the plot twists in the show and predict what might happen next. She didn’t have any friends around her who were learning Chinese or watching sappy Chinese shows. She needed to find a group on her own!

That is where the idea for the Language TV Club came from, and now it offers groups in several languages, at least two languages per month. People from all over the world have joined to practice listening, speaking, and sometimes reading and writing as well.

How it works: 

• You pick your club (Spanish, German, French, etc), sign up for a time, and join the private online group. 
• Each day, you will receive a prompt or idea to help further your studies or knowledge of the culture. 
• Each week, you will watch specific episodes of a TV show that the rest of the group is watching too. You will have an Episode Guide with pertinent vocabulary and practice questions.
• Each weekend, you will meet with your group via Zoom to discuss what happened in the show. Your group will have a moderator who is a native or advanced speaker of the language.

Language TV Club review: which language level is best?

Beginner

Beginners have joined the club before, but the club is not really designed for beginners. So if you are a beginner and really want to join, just let your host know your level and focus on listening to the conversation and learning from your fellow members. It is also important to write down your responses to the practice questions before the meetings, so you can still participate. 

You may need to use your native language subtitles while watching the show. Watching the show twice through, once in each language, is a great way for beginners to profit from the club. 

Intermediate

Most Language TV Club members are at the intermediate level. This is a great level because you can already have a conversation, but may still be nervous to speak with native speakers or are missing important vocabulary.

Intermediate learners gain the most from this club because they get listening practice from watching the show and listening to their fellow members. Intermediate-level speakers also get a chance to practice writing with the Episode Guide and speaking in multiple sentences with a small group. Ever hear of the intermediate plateau? Yeah, this club will help you turn that back into a hill or mountain.

Many of our members are people who have taken language classes in the past but feel a bit rusty with their skills, or despite having finished classes, still feel nervous about getting out there and speaking (introverts unite!). This club allows them to practice the knowledge they already have in a safe space to improve comfort, confidence, and fluency while speaking.

Advanced

Advanced learners also benefit from the group, as they come across slang or specific vocabulary terms in the shows to add to their repertoire. Practicing speaking is always helpful, no matter your level.

Advanced learners may also try watching the show without subtitles and writing complex summaries about what happened, to get more out of the club. Even language teachers and interpreters have joined the club in order to better understand today’s colloquial terms or gain vocabulary in a specific area.

Please note: the Language TV Club is not a language lesson, but more of an opportunity for discussion between learners. This means that your club host will not be explaining every grammar concept or new vocabulary word in-depth. This is why it may not be the best resource for beginners.

It is recommended that beginner learners also have a structured lesson approach in addition to the Language TV Club if they do wish to participate.

How do I know if I’m ready for the Language TV Club?

Many people may have hesitations about joining because they feel they are not ready. Here are some general guidelines to find out if you are ready to join the Language TV Club.

You are most likely ready for the club if:

• You can speak in complete sentences, but still might get nervous about it
• You can understand a basic conversation or the gist of a more advanced discussion, but the dialogues of native speakers can still be difficult due to gaps in vocabulary or rate of speaking
• You can watch a tv show with original subtitles and not feel completely lost
• You already enjoy watching shows in your target language (but may not have anyone to share them with!)

As stated earlier, the tv club is a great place for learners who have done lessons and are ready to branch out into less structured activities. It is also a wonderful choice for learners who have had a higher level in the language in the past, but now feel a bit rusty after some time without it.

How do I know if the Language TV Club is NOT right for me?

The Language TV Club may not be right for you if:

• You cannot produce complete sentences AND/OR your vocabulary is less than 150-300 words (please see beginner’s section above)
• You judge others’ language levels (the Language TV Club is a judgment-free zone!)
• You do not enjoy watching TV

Generally, all language learners are welcome to join. However, the club is a safe, respectful space, so anyone who comes in with hateful or derogatory language will not be allowed to attend.

As far as language level is concerned, all are welcome, but beginners should notify their club host before the meetings start to let them know that they will likely be just listening for much of the time. They should know, as well, that they may not get the same experience as more advanced members, because beginner vocabulary is not frequently highlighted.

Additional note: If you don’t enjoy watching TV, it may be best for you to find another method of learning your language. Enjoying the process of learning is very important. It will help you retain so much more and be able to use that language much more effectively.

Potential Benefits of Participating in the Language TV Club

There are many benefits to participating in the Language TV Club, including but not limited to:

Members have described the experience as:

Language TV Club review FAQ:

Does the Language TV Club cost money?

Yes, it does cost money to join the club. These costs help pay for the online system that runs the groups, as well as compensate club hosts for their time and effort. Compared to other live events, such as going to a movie theater, or language lessons with experienced teachers, the cost to join the club is relatively low.

If money is tight for you, but you’d really like to participate, Polyglot Station offers free months of the club as prizes at different events throughout the year, and also provides special perks for club hosts, if you are interested and available to host a language one month.

Do I need any special subscriptions?

The Language TV Club does not provide subscriptions to Netflix, where most of the TV series of the club are chosen, so you will need to have access to Netflix on your own. Netflix is a great choice for language learners because of the availability of subtitles in various languages, and there is a browser extension called Language Reactor that can support your learning even more.

Language TV Club review: is my target language available?

The most common languages featured in the Language TV Club are Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Other languages that appear regularly but not as often include English, Polish and Portuguese. Additional languages that have appeared but are not frequent include Korean, Russian, and Mandarin.

The languages offered depend on the level of demand for each club and the availability of club hosts. Subscribe to the website to get notices about upcoming clubs.

Overall, the Language TV Club is a great resource for a learner who: is learning one of the world’s major languages, enjoys watching TV series (especially Netflix), wants or needs to practice speaking, and would like to connect with other learners. 100% of members who participated in the club and responded to the survey would recommend the club to their friends, and many come back for more.

What do you think about this Language TV Club review? Think the Language TV Club will be right for you? Go ahead and give it a shot! You’ll be surprised by how much you can learn by watching TV. We hope to see you there!

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Lauren is the Founder and CEO of Polyglot Station, LLC, an online space for people to explore and connect through languages. One of the main divisions of this company is the Language TV Club. Lauren is passionate about learning languages and supporting others to do the same. When she’s not watching Netflix dramas in other languages, you might find her out dancing salsa, sitting in the sun, or playing games with friends and family.

NOTE: Yask is no longer operational as of November 2024

Looking for an alternative to Yask? Read my Speechling review.

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Do you want to practice writing or speaking your target language, but are afraid of making mistakes and forming bad habits? Allow me to introduce you to this Yask review…because I love the problem Yask is solving for language learners everywhere!

This Yask review will take you through an app walkthrough, pros, cons, and set your expectations so you know if this is the language learning app for you.

Yask languages

Yask is a small but mighty team, and their app supports quite a few languages, including:

When you create your account, you’ll be be prompted to share your native language, the languages you’re learning (as many as you like), as well as your level in your target languages. Yask will assume that you can correct submissions in languages that you’re at an advanced level and above, but you can always change that in your settings.

Yask app walkthrough

Yask is all about the language learning community helping to correct each other’s writing and pronunciation practice, and it does that in a couple of ways. Pressing the + button in the middle will give you a ton of prompts, and even the opportunity to just say/write what you want (as long as you’ve earned 250 XP – we’ll get more into that later).

Just like Clozemaster, Yask sources their sentences from Tatoeba, so the opportunities are pretty much unlimited.

I had told Yask that I was at an advanced Spanish level, but this isn’t an advanced sentence. Usually I have a much bigger problem with this (definitely not the first time I’ve come across it), but I also know language learners: before we know any better, we tend to focus on passive learning, meaning being able to recognize and/or translate words/sentences back into our native language.

The Yask Bot responds super quickly for the purpose of instant gratification, and then native or advanced-level speakers will check you as well. Why would humans spend their time correcting mistakes that a bot already corrected?

Remember that you can only access some features/prompts when you hit a certain level of XP? That’s why.

While you’re in the app, may as well head on over to the Home tab and quickly correct others’ exercises and earn some XP!

As you respond to more and more submissions and earn more and more XP, you can do things like leave comments on submissions with more details, answer pronunciation exercises more precisely, and more. It’s an interesting system that creates a sense of community; I find that when I correct exercises, users tend to follow me so that we can correct each other’s stuff and build XP off each other. Plus, that notification that says “so-and-so followed you!” is another great little dopamine hit.

Okay, but how did Yask make language learning so much like social media, without inviting creeps to hit on feminine-presenting language learners??

I’ve seen a system like this on Lang-8 (which is no longer a thing – the company switched gears to create HiNative); Lang-8 was a community-driven site where you could post long-form texts and have them corrected by the community. In order to post more texts, you had to correct more submissions.

However, Yask is different in a couple of ways: it’s short-form, it’s digestible, it’s fun (Lang-8 was NOT fun), and it’s dynamic! Lang-8 was just a basic website with very little inspiration/motivation to keep you going. Not Yask!

And, of course, it wouldn’t be gamification without some sort of daily notification! Here’s what that looks like.

Speaking of that XP, I’ve mentioned the types of exercises you can unlock, but that barely scratches the surface! Yask knows how to make you feel motivated to use the app, and the XP rewards do that real well.

…and honestly, that’s not even all of them. There are rewards all the way up to 12,000 XP! In case the common, repeated rewards aren’t clear:

• Instant ticket refill: when you run out of tickets (i.e. do all the exercises you can), press a button to get more
• Daily tickets: tickets (exercises you can complete) you’ll automatically receive throughout the day
• Exercise priority: your submissions are shown before others’ with less priority/XP
• Weight of your votes: your votes are more important I’m assuming? I’m not totally sure

And if you ever need more information about these various rewards (there are so many, holy crap), you can always go to the Features tab and tap on the one you don’t understand.

Yask review: pricing

Yask is free for everyone, with limitations of course. While their website is just as beautiful as their app, it is not easy to find a clear-cut statement of what free users even get. It does state that it’s free forever, but it doesn’t state what exactly that means.

We’re just left to make educated guesses based on the perks of Yask Plus:

Is it worth it? Absolutely, 100%. You get a motivating, engaging, human-driven, high-quality language learning resource for $5 a month (and you get a month free if you go 3 months at a time). For the value, it’s actually underpriced!

Yask is still pretty new to the world, so I’d get with the program – you never know when the price is going to go up!

Yask review: who’s it for?

This Yask review is excellent for language learners looking for active language practice with a low barrier (i.e. it doesn’t take too much effort to play with) and a healthy dollop of gamification.

The instant gratification, colors, notifications, and usability of it all make it really fun to work with. Plus, the essentially unlimited pre-made prompts and free speak/write options are super flexible! It’s like Speechling, but more fun to use and you get corrected within minutes, not within 24 hours.

However, if getting corrected isn’t your thing, you’ll have a bad time. Knowing just enough of a language to be able to communicate is just fine, but it ain’t for Yask. Or if you’re just not at a point in your language learning where you can comfortably get your mistakes pointed out to you without a compliment sandwich.

But if you’ve already got the vocab and the grammar and you just need the guidance and the motivation to put it together, consider this Yask review your sign to try it out.

Click here to get 40% off Yask!