Multilingual Mastery

Online language learning coaching & education

Gamification

Busuu review: the best combo of academic & social

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Busuu is one of the most popular, recognized, and biggest language apps out there (so much so that they bought out Verbling, and are now owned by Chegg, a huge education company), and in this Busuu review, it will be made clear why it’s so well-liked. Get to know all of Busuu’s features and how to best use them for your own language learning so you can reach your language goals faster.

If after this Busuu review you find that it’s not the best solution for your language learning, I’ll also share some alternatives based on Busuu’s flaws so you can make the best choice for your languaeg learning.

Busuu review: languages offered

Busuu is available to learners of the most common foreign languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • English
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

Busuu is appropriate for all levels of these languages, making it accessible for language learners coming from all over. This is important because some of Busuu’s features are only successful because of its huge audience.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at Busuu and see if it’s the language app for you.

Busuu review: quality of lessons

Thanks to Busuu’s partnership with Chegg (a college education company), you can rely on Busuu for a high-quality education based on the CEFR levels (or Fluency Score, as they put it). Right from the start, this sets our expectations: Busuu is focused on academic use of the language, i.e. passing exams and textbook knowledge.

While many of us language learners have been taught that this is the only and/or best approach to learning languages, but it quite simply is not (always). If your goal is not an academic one, and you instead want to focus on being conversational as a priority…well, we’ll talk about this lower down in this Busuu review.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at Busuu’s first lesson to see how they execute their academic approach.

If you’re not a total beginner in the language, you have the option to take Busuu’s assessment. As a general rule, I take these online language level assessments with a grain of salt; no matter the platform, they’re almost always some variation of inaccurate. I recommend you do the same.

From the start, it’s clear that I was right about Busuu’s approach to learning a language! Very academic, very focused on using the language “correctly” and working towards the eventual goal of taking and passing an assessment.

Busuu’s assessment basically judges my ability in Spanish based on grammar, and much less so on things like communication or understanding. As such, I was really frustrated to be put at the A2 level in Spanish. I understand why – my A2 grammar is top-notch, and my intermediate is fairly functional but not quite textbook – but A2 is much too conservative, and I know that the content will be too easy.

It doesn’t seem like this would be too big of a deal, but in the past (and in the present for many language learners) I’ve followed these assessments, learned what they’ve told me to learn, and then quickly gotten bored and given up because of it.

After completing the assessment, you’re sent off to a comprehension lesson based on where Busuu thinks your level is. And keep watching, because I was genuinely shocked at the end to see some gamification.

As I assumed, the A2 level was boring and repetitive for me. The vocabulary was snooze-worthy, and I was not even the least bit challenged. This isn’t as much of a problem for me because I know how to solve the problem, but it can prove to be an insurmountable obstacle for language learners who are used to being bored and use this as further proof that they don’t like/are not good at learning languages.

Fortunately, Busuu allows you to switch lessons and attempt checkpoints at any time! You have to achieve at least 80% in this checkpoint, and the questions are pretty well-rounded. They prioritize grammar, of course, but also include other ways to use the language.

Regardless, I do really like the lessons themselves (once I get to my appropriate level!). Everything is very smooth and user-friendly, and the video comprehension questions make the language just a touch more 3-dimensional, too. I can tell that they’re trying to make a traditionally boring skill just a bit more engaging.

And like any intentional journey to learn a language, Busuu lessons end with a certificate! Unfortunately, official institutions will not accept a McGraw-Hill (another textbook company!) certificate from Busuu as proof of foreign language fluency.

You can use it as a resume builder for unrelated career paths, or you can frame it for your own personal pride, but it’s not the same as an official CEFR exam.

This certificate is also only available to paid users (which we’ll talk about more in a second).

Vocab review

Need to review? Busuu has a sleek way to have you review the vocabulary terms you come across in the lessons. The platform itself looks great, and I appreciate how you not only have to spell the words, but you also will be marked wrong if you don’t use appropriate accents, but there’s room for growth.

For one, I wish I could tell Busuu that I already know these terms. If I continued on with more at-level vocabulary, it would be easier to kick these easier terms out and focus on what would actually be helpful for me. I don’t see that option anywhere, though.

I do also wish you could add your own vocab! Assuming you’re using more than just Busuu to learn a language, or that you’re not a total beginner, it would be helpful to include other terms that you find off-platform. Spanishdict is an excellent example of this improvement.

Honestly, the fact that you can’t give Busuu any input whatsoever is a major bummer. These words are super easy for me (I told you I wasn’t A2!), and if I follow this lead, I’ll just be studying these terms that I already know until my eyes bleed.

Busuu community

Besides the frankly awesome lesson pathway, Busuu really excels with their community! You can only get so far in your language learning without actively using the language and making any kind of connections; fortunately, Busuu’s got you covered.

Click over to the “Community” tab to participate.

Here you have the opportunity to make connections with other language learners who can benefit from your native skills (hello, potential language exchanges!), as well as to practice your own use of the language in whichever way you see fit.

If your priority is communication, focus on the different ways to practice speaking. Likewise with written skills.

Whichever method of communication you want to improve, your response will be automatically submitted to the community, where native speakers can help correct you and encourage you along the way, just like you can encourage those practicing and learning your native language.

Wait a beat, check your notifications, and you’ll get a handful of corrections from the native-speaking community.

If you like, you can also go through and add respondents as friends and form a mutually-beneficial relationship where you correct each other’s submissions.

Finally, you can see all your corrections, submissions, and potential language friends by visiting your profile.

Busuu’s community may not be their primary talking point, but do yourself a favor and keep it in mind when you consider using Busuu to learn a new language! Even if this isn’t the only version of an online community for language learners, I think it blows communities like HelloTalk out of the water completely.

The difference between Busuu Premium and free

The bulk of Busuu is available for free to all, which is amazing! It’s awesome to see such a high-quality resource accessible to language learners of all different economic backgrounds. If you opt for Busuu Premium, you can also access:

  • No ads
  • Additional “fun” courses (travel, pronunciation, etc.)
  • AI-powered vocab review
  • Faster community feedback
  • The aforementioned Busuu certificates

These features are all not required for basic learning of the language. If you find them beneficial to your language learning and believe they would help keep you motivated, you’ll be happy to know that Busuu Premium is also very reasonably priced!

You can also start out with a 14-day free trial before you commit.

Click here to see updated pricing.

Busuu review: worth the hype for you?

Busuu’s success isn’t a mystery – it combines the academic approach to learning a language with a more motivating platform (meaning modern technology, not boring textbooks) and a strong community of other language learners to help keep you and your language learning on track.

If this sounds like your kind of language app, you can click here to get started with a free trial of Busuu Premium.

However, if grammar is not high on your list of priorities, you may find Busuu boring. If, for example, you want a stronger focus on conversational skills, you might consider finding a tutor on Verbling (which is owned by Busuu, fun fact!)

Or, if you like the structured, step-by-step approach to mastering a language but don’t want to rely so heavily on grammar, LingoDeer may be another option for you to consider.

Busuu vs Duolingo: do you want fun or functional?

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Busuu and Duolingo are two of the most popular language apps there are, so how do you make the choice when it comes to how to learn a language? In this post, let’s compare Busuu vs Duolingo, so you can make the best choice for your own language learning.

We’ll address each app’s flaws, where they shine, and which one is more likely to get your language learning where you want it to go.

Busuu vs Duolingo: languages

The following languages are available on both Busuu and Duolingo:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese
  • French
  • German
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Turkish

Busuu also offers English, and Duolingo’s list of languages is massive, so I’ll leave it to my Duolingo review.

Busuu vs Duolingo: finding your level

Both Duolingo and Busuu are appropriate for total beginners, and both honestly have similar systems. It may be surprising to see how Busuu has evolved to be easier and more addictive, like Duolingo has trained language learners to become.

Here’s Duolingo’s checkpoint test to fast-forward in your Learning Path.

And here’s Busuu’s version.

As you can see, Busuu isn’t actually very different from Duolingo. It’s smooth, easy, and focuses almost entirely on passive skills (i.e. learning to understand the gist of the language, not necessarily reproducing it).

This makes it a fairly easy transition for language learners who enjoy Duolingo, but are tired of the heavy gamification. Busuu does have some gamification, but the way that it’s implemented makes the process of learning a language smoother and more engaging, not just an addiction.

That said, what makes Duolingo and Busuu different?

Using your target language

The base core of learning languages on each language app is pretty similar. However, learning new words, grammar, and other concepts isn’t so hard – it’s using them that gets language learners stuck.

It’s very easy to present you with new information, but not so much to lead you to actively use and produce that information. Let me show you what I mean.

This feature of Duolingo, Stories, is the main way that they attempt to get you to use the language. These Stories are intertwined within the Learning Path, so you have to complete them when presented in order to continue to higher levels.

And even though it’s technically closer (I guess?) to real use of the language, it’s still pretty passive. You’re still tapping buttons, an activity you can do in the background of watching a movie or doing the dishes.

Here’s Busuu’s strategy for comparison.

The Busuu community is full of language learners who speak your target language natively, and use this skill to help critique your submissions and motivate you.

While you are prompted to submit something (whether it be an audio recording or a writing prompt, your decision) consistently after lessons, you don’t have to. I mean, obviously it’s a good idea, but you’re not going to be chastised if you just want to move on.

Suffice it to say, Busuu is much better for helping you to produce the language using the information they teach you.

What you’ll pay to access each language app

This comparison couldn’t be more simple (in theory): Duolingo is free, and Busuu is not.

Being free is very important to the Duolingo brand. While you can invest in a Premium membership, Duolingo states that they will never hide access to their content behind a paywall. Their goal is to make education free for all.

It’s the ads/gamification that is different with a Premium subscription, and many users claim that the Duolingo app becomes less and less usable for free members as time goes on. I personally can’t speak on that particular theory, but you should keep it in mind.

Busuu, on the other hand, is largely a paid app, and offers subscriptions from monthly to annually. You can see updated prices here. You can generally expect to pay $10-15 a month.

Duolingo or Busuu?

This is honestly a short review, but only because there’s not much to say about the difference between Busuu and Duolingo. Duolingo is addictive and surface-level, while Busuu is engaging and well-rounded.

This is one of those cases where the price point accurately reflects the quality of the service – if you’re willing to invest in your language learning just a little bit, Busuu will teach you exponentially more.

On the other hand, if you’d rather keep things fun, low-commitment, and flexible (this part being a reference to the sheer number of languages available to learn on Duolingo) Duolingo is excellent at keeping education accessible and consistent (many Duolingo users complain of addiction to their daily streak, despite not learning as much as they’d like).

If you want to learn more about either of these ways to learn a language, you can read my Duolingo review here, and my Busuu review here.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: the most important comparison

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Comparing Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone is pretty close to comparing apples and oranges. They’re both great for starting new languages from scratch, but the way it’s done could not be more different. It all has to do with what exactly you want to get out of your first experiences with your new language.

Let’s compare Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone to see how best to start your language learning journey.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: available languages

Duolingo and Rosetta Stone both teach the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Dutch
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Vietnamese

Additionally, Duolingo teaches:

  • Czech
  • Esperanto
  • Finnish
  • Hawaiian
  • Hungarian
  • Indonesian
  • Navajo
  • Norwegian
  • Swahili
  • Ukrainian
  • Welsh

Rosetta Stone also supports:

  • Farsi
  • Latin
  • Tagalog

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: lessons

Both Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are built to teach languages from the beginning, but the way that they do that is very different. If you’ve gotten bored over time using Duolingo, I’ll show you how Rosetta Stone is much better at keeping you on your toes.

Duolingo

Duolingo’s bread and butter is short, easy-to-accomplish lessons. They’re around 5 minutes long, and are meant to be addictive; you get through one lesson, and it’s so easy that you keep playing for another 5 minutes…and another, and another.

The point is that Duolingo gets you addicted, fast.

Rosetta Stone

In recent years, Rosetta Stone has also caught up to this more modern, easy-to-accomplish approach, while still maintaining the challenge.

That is to say that Rosetta Stone is not brainless. It’ll get you thinking pretty hard for those 5 minutes by stretching your ability to come up with the language itself and limiting the multiple choice.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: your goals

How do you want to use the language you’re learning? What skills are important for you to build? What do you want to be able to do with it after finishing with your language app (if you do finish – both apps teach enough languages to last anyone a lifetime, honestly)?

Your answer to these questions will help you understand which language app will get you closer.

Duolingo

Duolingo is tricky because it’s so good at what it’s supposed to do (be addictive) that many users misunderstand how it’s meant to be used.

Really, Duolingo’s first job is to start a habit and keep the motivation going strong.

Teaching you basic grammar is secondary, honestly.

That said, I would recommend Duolingo if you’re interested in playing around with the languages a little bit and getting used to the patterns and the flow of the language. However, don’t expect Duolingo to get you farther than it’s meant to.

Start a habit, but also keep a healthy distance from the addiction of it.

Rosetta Stone

On the other hand, Rosetta Stone is much better at this part. It’s designed to get you using the language, starting from some basic vocab and ending with useful statements that are simple, but still teach your brain to function in the language.

Rosetta Stone is still for beginners, though, and cannot be expected to teach languages beyond a tourist level of the language. It’s much more adept at doing this than Duolingo, though.

Using your language skills

As you learn a language using either Rosetta Stone or Duolingo, the activities you’re led through have you build your new language skills in slightly more difficult ways. Here’s how each language learning resource does this.

Duolingo

While Duolingo does build up a little bit, it does focus more on the gist of the language. This is evident in comprehension questions like this.

While you do need to know the vocabulary here and the general idea behind some grammar points, this activity is about answering broad questions. While this isn’t inherently a problem, it can cause some language learners to be frustrated that they don’t understand as much as they would like to.

For example, while you may be able to understand the question just enough to answer it, you’ll be disappointed if you try to reproduce it for yourself. This is because Duolingo focuses almost entirely on passive skills, without supplementing the practice required to be able to express yourself in the language.

Rosetta Stone

The thing that makes Rosetta Stone difficult (in a good way) is that it leads you to use the language in a variety of different formats. While it starts out with matching simple phrases with pictures just like Duolingo, it follows up by having you express those phrases yourself.

What many language learners tend to forget is that in order to improve your ability to speak a new language, you need to practice speaking; while a beginner may not be ready to jump into a conversation, simply repeating phrases out loud starts to train your brain to get used to those conversations.

So in activities like those shown above, Rosetta Stone leads to more “useful” use of the language than Duolingo does. You’ll start producing the language much more quickly than the simple button-pressing of Duolingo.

Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone: price

Historically, Duolingo and Rosetta Stone have come and very dramatically different price points. Times are always changing, though, so here are the price points as of this review’s most recent revision.

Duolingo

Another feature that is major to the Duolingo brand is that it’s free. Duolingo’s thing is that they want education to be free and available to all, which is an awesome initiative. While there are paid options for Duolingo users, you won’t be blocked off from any of the lessons with a free account.

Of course, just like Rosetta Stone, Duolingo is a business, which means it needs to make money. Over the years, as its business model has shifted, many free users are worried that the changes make the app less and less usable over time.

Rosetta Stone

Gone are the days of spending hundreds of dollars for Rosetta Stone CDs – it’s the 21st century, and Rosetta Stone has been forced to modernize their pricing to compete with apps like Duolingo.

Just like many other language apps, Rosetta Stone has switched to monthly, annual, and lifetime memberships. Now Rosetta is cheaper…as long as you get through the material in a reasonable amount of time.

Nonetheless, even if you do keep your subscription to Rosetta Stone going, it’ll be a few years before you spend as much as you would have had to spend in prior decades.

Which is better for you?

While Duolingo and Rosetta Stone are both great choices for beginner language learners, they also offer wildly different experiences.

Duolingo can be a great way to get in the habit of learning a language, but be careful about getting addicted to earning XP and using those fun colors and sounds to overinflate your actual ability. Read more about Duolingo here.

While Rosetta Stone is less “fun” and a bit more difficult to accomplish, it’ll draw out your ability to use a new language much better. You’ll finish Rosetta Stone feeling much more confident in your abilities to learn a language. Click here to learn more about Rosetta Stone.

Mango Languages review: 70+ beginner languages

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Mango Languages is a crowd favorite for language learners because it’s engaging, offers real-world education, and can be accessed for free through institutions everywhere. In this Mango Languages review, learn everything you need to know about this resource for your own language goals: what it does well, what it doesn’t, and who should use it.

And if you fall under the category of language learners who won’t really benefit, this Mango Languages review ends with a couple of other recommendations, based on Mango Languages’ biggest flaws.

Mango Languages available

To start, Mango Languages offers plenty of languages, plus quite a few different dialects/accents within those languages, including:

  • Arabic (Egyptian)
  • Arabic (Iraqi)
  • Arabic (Levantine)
  • Arabic (MS)*
  • Aramaic (Chaldean)
  • Armenian
  • Azerbaijani
  • Bengali
  • Cantonese
  • Cherokee
  • Chinese (Mandarin)*
  • Creole (Haitian)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • Dzongkha
  • English
  • English (Shakespeare)
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish
  • French*
  • French (Canadian)
  • German*
  • Greek
  • Greek (Ancient)
  • Greek (Koine)
  • Hawaiian
  • Hebrew
  • Hebrew (Biblical)
  • Hindi
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Igbo
  • Indonesian
  • Irish*
  • Italian*
  • Japanese*
  • Javanese
  • Kazakh
  • Korean*
  • Latin
  • Malay
  • Malayalam
  • Norwegian
  • Pashto
  • Pirate
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazil)*
  • Persian (Dari)
  • Persian (Farsi)
  • Potawatomi
  • Punjabi (Pakistani)
  • Romanian
  • Russian*
  • Scottish Gaelic
  • Serbian
  • Shangainese
  • Slovak
  • Spanish (Castilian)*
  • Spanish (LAm)*
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Tamil
  • Telugu
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Tuvan
  • Ukrainian
  • Urdu
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese
  • Yiddish

The languages marked with an asterisk(*) also include a variety of different cultural courses, from etiquette to business to superstitions and beyond.

These courses mean that you can also use Mango Languages to learn professional phrases, or even just fun ones (Like St Patrick’s Day Irish, for example). If you’re looking for a clear-cut, specific path in your target language, this is a great, unique approach.

Fun vocabulary options are a great way to make sure you’re enjoying the language learning process! Even if you don’t *need* St Patrick’s Day vocabulary, it still qualifies as legitimate exposure to the language. These fun sections are not reliable across languages, though, so check what’s available before assuming you can use it to learn professional Uzbek, for example.

Mango Languages: an overview

Mango Language’s courses are laid out in a very simple, modern way – no advertising, no outside podcasts or blog posts, nothing – so you can focus on the language and nothing else. It’s been completely redone within the past couple of years, and these updates have made massive improvements to the platform’s usability.

These courses are broken up into units and chapters. Once you start whichever chapter you like (there are no requirements for going through any prior lessons or units, just pick and choose whichever lessons suit your fancy), you’ll see that each chapter is one conversation that you’ll be dissecting. You’ll get a collection of phrases/sentences for a real-life conversation, and break them down bit by bit.

Specifically, you’ll learn to have these conversations by learning the individual words, phrases, and then sentences, with some nice little cultural facts thrown in. You’ll then learn to piece together all of this information yourself, with the option for plenty of help along the way.

As you continue on through these lessons, you’ll learn and understand each individual word and phrase in a variety of different ways. And each of these ways will be repeated many times.

When I say Mango Languages takes sentences bit by bit, I mean bit by bit. The first thing you learn isn’t the entire phrase included in the first piece of dialogue, but just the first word. Mango Languages crawls. Excellent for beginners, but painful for everyone else.

Nope, can’t fast-forward the speed, either.

For each and every little bit, you’ll get:

  • the word you’re learning
  • its translation
  • an audio recording (you can repeat as many times as you like)
  • the option to record yourself saying it (to compare with their audio)
  • the pronunciation

Think you’ve got it? The next step is a chance for you to translate it independently.

These sections are giving you the tools that you need to use the language, it’s up to you to piece the tools together correctly using critical thinking. Using the examples, grammar notes, and cultural notes, you’re led to rise to the challenge of forming foreign language sentences.

Did you notice the color coding? As a visual learner, I do love this part. It makes it easier for me to create the link in my brain between the two phrases and helps me to pick apart what each individual word means, and how the words come together in a way that makes sense.

As you learn new languages, you learn that sometimes the most difficult part is that sentences aren’t built the same across different languages. Words are all out of order, some words don’t even exist in other languages, and some languages need 10 words to say something that another language says in one.

Then, each phrase is repeated consistently while you continue to learn more, which is very helpful in turning that short-term memory into long-term memory if you need to take it slow. Later on in this post, we’ll take a look at Daily Review, which helps even more with building long-term memory.

Note: I completely forgot to turn off the narrator’s voice up until now in this Mango Languages review! From here on out, you’ll hear limited English and mostly Spanish. This is easily configured in the settings, in the upper right-hand corner.

Once you have the meaning down, Mango Languages has you actually practice the words and sounds.

So, if you’re an ultimate beginner in the language and have never studied any language before, Mango Languages definitely has a few decent options to offer!

And a lot of simple repetitions. This is, again, excellent for beginners. A lot of the time, there’s no easy way to learn something except seeing or hearing it as many times as it takes for your brain to catch on. Consistency is key, especially when it seems like a word is never going to stick!

Daily Review

Recently, Mango Languages has also included more tools to help baby language learners form a habit. With the mobile app, you can add and customize study reminders by day of the week and the time of day you want to receive your reminder. Very handy for even the busiest or most distractible language learners.

And even if you’re not using the mobile app, desktop users can access the review section at any time. Instead of going through the initial lessons over and over again, you can basically review the flashcards automatically created based on your past lessons.

Click the button, and you get those same options for self-study:

  • switch between “literal” and “understood” translation
  • listen to the audio
  • record yourself saying it

PLUS, unique to this section is the self-reporting buttons on the bottom and the option to take a card out of the deck in cases where you know that card like the back of your hand, so you don’t waste your time.

Self-reporting flashcards are my absolute favorite! They make it easier to get an accurate understanding of what you’re learning, instead of a resource assuming that you know any given term better or worse than you actually do.

I also love the power language learners have over what they need to review. Some language learning resources are much stricter about this, so it’s good to see this level of customization. There’s nothing more irritating than being forced to review terms that you already know.

Plus, it’s such an attractive interface! The only other resource that does this as well is Rocket Languages.

Mango Languages review: pricing and access

While Mango Languages is a paid resource, there’s a good chance you can find your way to free access through local institutions. They partner with public libraries, corporations, schools, and other public entities all over to provide free, unlimited access to all 70+ of their language learning courses at any time.

If you can’t find access through an institution, however, you can always opt for a paid subscription yourself. Fortunately, paid subscriptions are still very reasonably priced at less than $10/ month. Click here for updated pricing.

Who Mango Languages is for

For one, this Mango Languages review makes it clear that beginner language learners would benefit the most. As you grow in your language learning, the speed and repetition become unbearable, but it’s a very generous start for those who process slowly or are simply brand new to the language. This is also true concerning the content itself – it’s just for beginners.

It’s also pretty surface-level, meaning you’re not going to be able to find clear, tangible grammatical explanations to study. I mean, there are some tossed into individual chapters, of course, but it doesn’t suit grammar- and rule-focused learners. You’ll get a general feel of the grammar that you need to understand one particular phrase, and that’s it.

At the end of the day, if you want a simple, modern design with hand-holding through a collection of pretty simple phrases, as well as some cultural education (depending on the language) in a frankly huge variety of languages, I recommend you give Mango Languages a shot.

But for many language learners, Mango Languages will be much too slow. If this is the case, I might suggest uTalk for support in the less commonly learned languages or Glossika for a more advanced approach.

Clozemaster review: customizable, engaging, and simple

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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

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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:

  1. native audio
  2. contextual sentence
  3. how long it’s been since you last saw it
  4. 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!