Multilingual Mastery

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Glossika review: for all your repetition needs

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Glossika is a highly engaging way to learn 60+ different languages. It does this with AI-supplemented sentences, high-quality audio, and a variety of different types of exercises. In this Glossika review, let’s take a walkthrough of the platform and discuss who can benefit most and who won’t.

And if Glossika doesn’t look like your kind of language app, keep scrolling to see some Glossika alternatives.

Glossika review: available languages

As mentioned, Glossika offers courses in 60+ languages:

  • Arabic (Egypt)
  • Arabic (Morocco)
  • Arabic (Standard)
  • Armenian (Eastern)
  • Azerbaijani
  • Belarusian
  • Bengali (India)
  • Bulgarian
  • Cantonese (HK)
  • Catalan
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Beijing)
  • Chinese (Mandarin)(Taiwan)
  • Croatian (Štokavian)
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English (British)
  • Estonian
  • Filipino (Tagalog)
  • Finnish (SW dialect)
  • French
  • Gaelic
  • Georgian
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hebrew
  • Hindi
  • Hokkien
  • Hungarian
  • Icelandic
  • Indonesian
  • Irish
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Kazakh
  • Korean
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Latvian
  • Lithuanian
  • Manx
  • Mongolian
  • Norwegian (Nynorsk)
  • Persian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazilian)
  • Portuguese (European)
  • Russian
  • Serbian (Ekavian)
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish (Mexican)
  • Spanish (Castilian)
  • Swahili
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian
  • Uzbek
  • Vietnamese (Northern)
  • Vietnamese (Southern)
  • Welsh
  • Wenzhounese

And because Glossika cares about language preservation, a few of them are available for free; you don’t get all the benefits of a paid membership, but you do get unlimited spaced repetition practice to do your part to keep these languages alive.

We’ll talk about that more at the end.

Glossika review: the placement test

To start with Glossika, you can first opt to take a placement test. It’s a very simple test: listen to a few audio recordings of sentences, and select the sentence that you hear. If it ever gets too hard, you can always let Glossika know that you need to start from that level.

Unfortunately, like most placement tests, it’s pretty useless.

While the audio recordings themselves are very clear and high quality (the same goes for the usability of Glossika as a whole), I’d rather they just toss the whole thing.

The sentences are so different that all you need to do is recognize one single word at the beginning to answer correctly. This is regardless of whether you understood the statement itself or could even create it – you can see towards the end of the above video that I could answer correctly based on literally the first word.

And that’s beside the fact that it’s only testing listening (despite claiming to exercise all the language skills) and didn’t even attempt to test me beyond B2. Where the placement test is concerned, I’d rather they just ask me directly.

Glossika review: learning new phrases

Glossika teaches users a new language by introducing new sentences that are useful in day-to-day life. You’ll learn to understand the language implicitly, as opposed to learning new vocabulary words and grammatical terms piece by piece.

You’ll learn 5 phrases like this at a time, through reading, writing, listening, and speaking, as well as using spaced repetition.

Glossika lessons follow this format:

  1. The new phrase is presented written in both your source and target language
  2. You hear a recording of the phrase in both languages, so you can follow along
  3. You type out the phrase in the foreign language
  4. You reread the phrase just in the foreign language
  5. You record yourself saying the phrase in the foreign language

As you can see, you got these phrases drilled into your brain really well. It doesn’t seem to be wildly sensitive to mistakes (I didn’t use any capital letters or accents, for example) which can be a significant drawback if you don’t get used to spelling appropriately, especially with Spanish.

Glossika is very customizable, which is a plus; for example, you can opt out of speaking practice if it’s not convenient for you at the moment, or you can turn the English translation on or off. The only problem is that these customizations aren’t obvious.

Another example: this next video was actually my first attempt at a lesson with Glossika.

I didn’t realize that it had automatically been set to “listening mode” until I started clicking around. There’s no tutorial showing you these options, nor any attempt to even let you know they’re there, so you’ll have to do some experimenting for yourself.

Maybe there’s an option to require correct accents somewhere? If there is, it’s not obvious.

Another helpful setting that Glossika didn’t tell me: if any of the phrases are too easy for you, just click the smiley face, and they’ll be taken out of the cycle.

Nonetheless, if used appropriately, this approach can provide language learners with a very well-rounded language education.

As a whole, I do love Glossika’s approach! In general, it’s engaging, modern, and really attractive.

Glossika’s “reps”

If you hang around Glossika’s Facebook group enough, you’ll see tons of talk about “reps”. The basic idea is that Glossika teaches through repetition, and your mastery of any given phrase or sentence can be defined by how many reps you’ve completed.

With Glossika’s approach, if you repeat their sentences enough times, you’ll master the language! How many times? According to this page here:

  25,000 Reps → Speak sentences comfortably
  50,000 Reps → Start engaging in casual conversations at natural speeds
  75,000 Reps → Start honing skills with more specialized topics
100,000 Reps → Mastery level where you can say just about anything

This is Glossika’s version of spaced repetition (also known as SRS). This concept is not unique to Glossika; it’s when a computer program predicts how easy or difficult any given term or phrase is for you. If it’s easy, and you get it correct, it puts that term to the side until it thinks you’re just about to forget it. Then it shows you that phrase again, therefore getting that phrase from your short-term to long-term memory.

Does this make sense? Sure. Using this strategy, could you theoretically boil down a language to a specific number [of repetitions]? Makes sense.

The problem is (and this is my personal opinion), repeating the same phrases tens of thousands of times is insanely boring.

You’ll practice each phrase 5 times at a minimum, more often if you’re struggling with it. This strategy is great for the more logical and scientific of minds, less so for those needing more entertainment.

Don’t get me wrong, repetition is very important for every language learner. But for my own personal needs, this level of repetition drives me crazy.

Using your stats

Glossika is very scientifically-lead, so their stats are a bit more interesting than most. For one, I love this feature of the “Memory” tab.

Note: I don’t know if the audio problems are because of my device, or a Glossika error.

As I was doing my spoken reps, I honestly didn’t realize that my audio was actually being recorded, so I was disappointed at first. However, going back into this section I can listen to myself repeating the phrase, and compare it to Glossika’s native audio.

This is a helpful strategy called “shadowing”, where you learn to mirror your pronunciation of a foreign language based on an audio clip. Honestly, it’s pretty tough to come by, which is strange considering it’s a simple way for any given language learning app to help you practice speaking a foreign language.

Another interesting feature: you can choose the topics of Glossika’s sentences.

I appreciate being able to tell Glossika that I have absolutely no interest in talking about the military or science. It’s not quite enough to make the approach less boring (again, as a personal opinion and not at all an objective one), but every little option that users can mess with is a bonus.

Glossika’s pricing

Glossika offers free trials to all new users, and then offers 2 pricing tiers: $30/month for unlimited reps in unlimited languages, and about half that per month to only change your language once every 30 days.

This new lower tier is brand new as of this Glossika review, and I’m very happy to see the compromise to make language learning more accessible!

And finally, in an effort to promote minority languages, the following languages are 100% free to all users:

  • Catalan
  • Gaelic
  • Hakka (Sixian)
  • Hakka (Hailu)
  • Kurdish (Sorani)
  • Manx
  • Welsh
  • Taiwanese
  • Wenzhounese

If going through this Glossika review convinces you to give it a try (more on that below), I highly recommend you at least spring for your free trial. No credit card is required!

Glossika review: who it’s for

Glossika is beautiful, smooth, and high quality, but it’s not for everyone. For one, Glossika does not start from 0, with basic vocabulary and grammar. Instead, you’ll start with beginner phrases. It’s more of the “figure it out as you go” approach, as opposed to the “1+1=2” one.

If you’re a big fan of repetition, Glossika is great for a wide variety of language learners, especially how well they tackle all the language skills. The advanced customization is a huge plus, too, as long as you’re tech-savvy enough to figure it out for yourself.

But if you want usability with a less…sterile approach, you’re not alone. If that’s the case, I might recommend Busuu, which connects the language more by way of living, breathing community, as well as more explicit language lessons.

Hooked on Glossika and want to give it a try? Click here to start your free trial!

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!

LingQ review: probably not worth your time

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

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

LingQ review: languages

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

  • Arabic
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Esperanto
  • Finnish
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Latin
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Turkish
  • Ukrainian

LingQ review: your dashboard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LingQ review: basic lesson

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

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

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

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

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

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

LingQ review: words and lesson history

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

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

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

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

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

Importing content to LingQ

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

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

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

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

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

LingQ review: price

You can access any content at any time for free!

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

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

You can find updated prices for LingQ Premium here.

LingQ review: the bottom line

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

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

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

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

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

BaseLang Review: pricey, but worth it

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

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

BaseLang review: comparing plans

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

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

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

BaseLang Real World

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

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

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

BaseLang Grammarless

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

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

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

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

BaseLang teachers

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

Here are your options for finding yourself a BaseLang teacher.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BaseLang review: scheduling a session

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

Then you get to schedule a lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

BaseLang review: Lessons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BaseLang price

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

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

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

You can see BaseLang’s updated prices here.

BaseLang alternatives

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

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

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

Lingoda also offers a couple of other less intense options.

BaseLang review: should you try it?

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

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

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

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

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

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