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italki review: the best place for private language lessons

March 21, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Italki is arguably the most popular language-learning resource online used by learners of all languages under the sun, so an italki review only seems reasonable! Like Verbling, italki provides its users the opportunity to practice speaking the language they’re learning with real live native speakers, regardless of geography.

From a social network for language learners in 2006 to the world’s most popular platform to find foreign language teachers, let’s dive into this italki review and see what the italki experience is like.

Finding your italki teacher

Italki boasts hosting native speakers of any and all languages you could be learning. Because there are so many italki teachers available to you, the site helps you narrow down your search, so you’re not sifting through all kinds of italki teachers that you don’t actually have any interest or need in setting up a conversation with.

That being said, your italki teacher search can and should be incredibly specific if you can make those decisions for yourself. This will really narrow down the number of choices you have to make.

So, for example, when I’m searching for an italki teacher to practice Spanish with, I’ll always choose Spain in this first category. Most of my experience communicating in Spanish is from living in Spain, so I have a hard time understanding accents from any other countries.

Though you do have a plethora of options to narrow down your search, my personal sticking point is that you can’t easily search by gender.

italki price

Hopefully, you’ll notice that one of those categories is “price”. Your italki price depends entirely upon the teacher that you choose. If, for example, you’re searching around for italki Spanish lessons, and you choose an italki tutor that’s from Spain (like I do), your italki cost is going to be just a bit pricier than if you’re learning from someone based in a Latin American country.

This is also the difference between an italki community tutor and professional teachers – because professional teachers are more experienced and likely have some sort of degrees or certification, you’ll pay a premium.

Fortunately, if you’re just testing the water, you do have 3 free trials to spend. Free trials are 30-minute lessons that must be used with different teachers. Not all teachers offer these trial lessons, but it makes it just a bit easier to try out using italki for the first time.

Choosing your italki teacher

After you’ve narrowed your search for an italki teacher, it’s time to do some deeper research. Each italki teacher offers a ton of information: an intro video, About Me, calendar, statistics, reviews, any packages they offer (like specific test prep, for example), and more.

Suffice it to say, all the information any reasonable language learner would need to make an educated decision.

And if you have any further questions, you can easily send your potential teacher an email, no pressure.

The italki lesson experience

Once you’ve gone through all these options and decided who you want to try out, you’ll go through a few steps. The italki platform does this all pretty well and very smoothly, in my opinion. Everything is very clear and to the point.

As you can see above, you’re already given a preview of your italki teacher’s availability on their page. And yes, this availability is presented in your time zone, so you don’t have to do any gymnastics to find a teacher that matches up with your schedule.

Once you’ve made an actual decision regarding who you want to learn from, you’ll get access to their calendar and be able to make a selection based on their open slots. If you’ve opted for a trial lesson, you’ll be able to select a 30-minute slot, and if you’re making a request within 24 hours, you won’t be able to cancel or reschedule your lesson after your teacher accepts it.

Then, once you choose a time, you’ll be able to choose your communication tool. Italki offers 3 options for you to host your lesson:

italki Classroom
Zoom
Skype

If you choose the italki Classroom (which I honestly recommend* – it runs well, and you don’t have to worry about tech issues/passwords), you’ll be granted access once your teacher accepts your lesson.

*it is worth noting that my experience using the italki Classroom is limited, and my teacher stated the platform isn’t as good as just using Skype or Zoom.

Then, like any lesson with a language teacher, you’ll be able to make full use of whichever platform you choose – talk to your teacher via the video chat, get corrections in the chatbox, or follow along if your teacher shares their screen to walk you through an activity.

italki language partner & other perks

Besides being able to pay to talk to native speakers of the language you’re learning, italki has also expanded to offer a few other perks. If you head to the Community tab on the upper right-hand side, you’ll see your options.

Articles are written by italki tutors, and you can specify which language you want to be reading in. Notebooks, on the other hand, are written by your fellow language learners, and you have the opportunity to both review others’ content and post your own practice and potentially have it reviewed by someone else.

You can see the option to listen to a recording, participate in a quiz, and answer a question, all of which can be great ways to engage in your target language.

italki review: group classes

Usually language learners seek out italki for private lessons, but some learners can try out italki’s group classes as well. It’s not nearly as popular on this platform, so you’ll have fewer options, but it’s still an opportunity you may want to take advantage of.

As of the date on the bottom of this post, group classes are only an option for learners of English, Spanish, and Japanese. To be honest, though, I’d be more inclined to use Lingoda for group English and Spanish lessons, as that’s Lingoda’s bread and butter.

But if you’re more interested in one-off group lessons, every bit of exposure to the language helps.

italki review: alternatives

If this italki review just proves that you’re looking for something else, there are also a few italki alternatives you might also consider. There aren’t many other major platforms like italki, especially considering the sheer number of languages available.

For websites like italki that also host a variety of languages, you might consider Verbling, which is very closely related – the biggest difference is that Verbling does not support as many languages. HelloTalk is a free option if finding a professional teacher isn’t important to you.

And if you’re looking for one language in particular, that may help narrow down your search. BaseLang, for example, is a potential option for Spanish language learners who are open to a more intensive commitment..

italki review: in conclusion

This italki review proves that the platform has a lot to offer any language learner. There’s a reason it’s the go-to for most of us in the language learning community. Conversations with natives in almost any language you could think of are easy to find with just an internet connection; it doesn’t get much simpler than that!

Ready to give italki a try? Click here to get $10 in free italki credits!

Verbling review: don’t sleep on this language teacher platform!

March 21, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

In the language learning community, there are two well-known and well-trusted ways to practice having conversations with native speakers: italki and Verbling. They have their similarities and differences (as noted in my Verbling vs italki review), but now let’s focus on this Verbling review.

In this Verbling review, I’ll take you step-by-step through going to the Verbling website for the first time, all the way through your first lesson, pros and cons, and alternatives to Verbling for all your language learning needs.

Verbling review: find a private language teacher

Starting from the “Find a Teacher” button right next to the italki logo, you’ll find yourself confronted with a huge list of people who teach your target language, as well as a few options to narrow down your search.

As you can see, Verbling keeps the search criteria pretty simple: language, location (important because you may be more confident with certain accents), any particular goals you have, and availability.

In the past, Verbling used to allow you to search by gender, which was a huge plus for me. They seem to have removed this option, though.

After applying your preferred search, click through to any of the Verbling teachers that stand out to you. And if none stand out to you, pick one at random! You can learn about any teacher you like, including listening to their voice/accent, and hopefully getting to know them a little bit before booking a lesson.

You’ll find tons of information on the Verbling teacher you chose, like their resume, how long they’ve been on Verbling, how many lessons their average students take with them, detailed reviews, any articles they’ve written, and more.

It can be a lot to take in, but you only need to take what’s most important to you. The idea is to give you an opportunity for an educated choice before you spend your time/money on your first lesson, even if you opt for a discounted trial lesson.

Once you make your choice, you’re just 2 clicks away from your first Verbling lesson. They don’t make it difficult, which is helpful. I definitely understand the pressure of hitting that “buy now” button, so I appreciate how easy it is to get started.

Once you complete your trial lesson (or even before), you can also opt for bulk lessons with that teacher at a slight discount. This is a plus not only for convenience but also for accountability – you’re more likely to consistently practice if you’ve already bought the lessons.

It’s worth noting that the discount you get with bulk lessons differs from teacher to teacher (and not all Verbling teachers offer lessons in bulk) so don’t make any assumptions based on this Verbling review. However, this is a feature unique to Verbling.

What Verbling classes are like

If you’ve never taken an online class with a private language tutor, you can expect your language teacher to start a conversation with you by asking some getting-to-know-you questions.

This will likely be primarily over video chat, with the added perk of using the chat box to help with spelling or vocabulary. If your Verbling teacher has an activity for you, they’ll probably share their screen, like any Zoom call you’ve been in.

However, Verbling language lessons do not occur over Zoom or even Skype – they use Verbling’s own proprietary software and that’s it. This does make things easy when it’s time for your lesson because all you have to do with click a button and be connected.

Then, once your lesson’s finished, Verbling will email you summarizing your lesson. This summary can help you keep a record of when/how often you’re practicing, with whom, the vocabulary you referenced, and your conversation. If you really like your teacher, you can also go ahead and book another lesson right from this summary.

The Verbling community

If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, you can also check out Verbling’s Community tab. You may be able to find an interesting article or a future Verbling teacher you may like, but it’s definitely not Verbling’s strongest suit.

Honestly, it seems more like a side project than a full-blown feature.

If your teacher referenced an article they wrote or a discussion thread they started, you can also click on the My Teachers tab and easily find any of the content they posted. Or, if you’re just browsing around the Trending tab, and you find an article that you’re interested in or have a question regarding, each article links to the teacher who posted it, so it’s easy to send them a message asking for clarification, or (better yet) book a lesson to chat about it in the language you’re learning.

This option is definitely helpful for coming up with material to talk about in your lessons, as your teacher will probably ask you what you want to talk about after you’ve had your initial “getting to know you” lesson.

It can be tough to come up with good material for yourself, especially when your new language teacher doesn’t know you well enough just yet to recommend study material that will be engaging to you. Think of this section as Verbling’s library.

Verbling review

While Verbling (now a part of Busuu/Chegg) isn’t as popular or well-rounded as italki, this Verbling review shows that it’s still a great option for language learners who want focused conversational practice with professional native speakers.

There are a few key differences, as noted in my italki vs Verbling comparison review, but the most significant thing to know is that the value and experience you get from either platform depends not on the platform itself, but on the teachers you work with.

My recommendation? If you are looking for conversational practice with professional, experienced native speakers, Verbling is an excellent place to start.

You can also look for non-professional native speakers (so basically a glorified Tandem or HelloTalk language exchange) on italki, but regardless of your choice, don’t be afraid to shop around for a private language teacher on Verbling!

Babbel vs Duolingo: only one will truly teach you languages

March 15, 2022 by Jamie 7 Comments

Babbel vs Duolingo are two of the most popular language-learning resources on the market. While they’re both great for language learning in general and have really nice platforms, each of them has a different approach. This review will help you decide which app to use to learn a language

We’ll compare behind-the-scenes looks into the apps themselves and see what you can expect from each way to learn a language.

Languages

Babbel and Duolingo both offer a wide variety of languages, which means some significant overlap. Both apps can be used to learn:

Danish
Dutch
French
German
Indonesian
Italian
Norwegian

Polish
Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

The only other language that Babbel supports that Duolingo does not is English. Otherwise, the list of Duolingo languages is honestly massive. Because all the other languages cannot be compared to Babbel, I’ll let you read more in my Duolingo review.

It’s also important to know that not all languages are equal, especially on Duolingo. While you can spend months learning Spanish on Duolingo, a newer language won’t have as much content. Babbel is much more likely to have some uniformity in their languages.

Babbel vs Duolingo: what you’ll learn

The first significant difference between Babbel and Duolingo is the approach each language app takes to teach you a new language. In simplest terms, Duolingo is much more of a game, while Babbel is closer to a high-tech textbook.

In this lesson, while it’s obviously more intermediate (as in, you’re completing sentences, not just matching words with pictures), it’s important to realize that this is all still passive. You’re consuming the language and expressing that you understand it, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

This is an important flaw because many language learners get this far into their Duolingo learning path, but end up frustrated because they can understand a lot more than they can communicate themselves.

A surefire way to know that you’re not developing your speaking skills is if you’re not spending a lot of time speaking. Duolingo gives you a little bit of opportunity with some speech recognition exercises, but it’s definitely not enough to truly build those skills.

To compare, here’s a Babbel lesson at a similar level.

The lessons aren’t wildly different, but they are different enough that as you continue through them, you’ll end up with very different skills. You’ll find yourself tired after a few minutes of Babbel, because you’re working your brain and having to figure out the language, not just press the right button.

With Duolingo, you can expect to nail down a solid routine (shout out to that anxiety you get when you’re about to lose your streak!) and be able to understand quite a bit.

With Babbel, your skill set will be more complex, and you’ll be able to do more with the language. It’ll be less fun and less motivating over the short term, but if you can stay reasonably consistent in the long term, you’ll be great.

Duolingo Stories vs Babbel Live

Babbel and Duolingo’s lessons are similar, but the way that each app helps language learners to “immerse” in the target language is vastly different.

With Duolingo, each language has a “Learning Path”, which is essentially a handful of lessons followed by Duolingo Stories. These Stories used to be a separate activity from the Duolingo tree, but now they’re stuck right into the Learning Path, and you’re required to complete them to continue to the next lessons.

Objectively, this is a more helpful strategy to make sure you’re getting more realistic practice.

As you can see, Duolingo Stories takes you through a real-life conversation, so you can see the language in action. It’s still just tapping buttons and figuring out just the general gist of the conversation, but it’s a step closer to functional use of the language, and a step is a step.

In recent years, Babbel has taken a much larger step towards connecting language learners to useful skills: Babbel Live. This feature (outside the Babbel app) makes it easier for language learners to work with professional teachers in group classes.

These are online classes with real-life language teachers who have the material to support your language learning right alongside the lessons you’re learning inside the app.

Unlike Duolingo’s Stories, Babbel Live classes are not required; in fact, they’re an extra subscription (more on that below).

Babbel vs Duolingo: price

When comparing Babbel vs Duolingo, the biggest difference is the price.

One of the major parts of Duolingo’s brand as a whole is that its app is free. There are ways to pay, but you will never be restricted from educational material if you don’t want to or are unable to pay.

While this is true, many language learners believe that Duolingo intentionally changes their app so that it’s next to impossible to use without a paid subscription. Whether this is true, I can’t say, but it is worth noting when comparing paying for Babbel with Duolingo’s paid subscription.

On the other hand, the Babbel app is a paid service, through and through. You can see updated prices here.

Babbel Live, the group coaching platform, is another paid service. Here’s Babbel Live’s prices. Fortunately, if you do invest in a Babbel Live subscription, they throw in full access to the app for free!

Duolingo is always free, Babbel is not (especially not Babbel Live).

Which one?

After comparing Babbel vs Duolingo’s lessons, goals, immersion activities, and price, it should be pretty clear which language app you should be using.

At the end of the day, Duolingo is free and fun, but it’s important to remember that it’s designed to make you feel like you’re making more progress than you really are. And unfortunately, most language learners don’t realize it until they’ve spent many hours in the app and then try to participate in a conversation.

You can learn more in my Duolingo review here.

Babbel is much more structured and is designed to help you build practical skills. Babbel’s primary goal is real-life, functional skills, in a way that’s logical but not boring. It’s not for everyone, but if you decide that Babbel is your best bet, the app (and Babbel Live) will get you far.

Read more about both in my Babbel review here.

Pimsleur review: barely keeping with the times

March 15, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Back in the days of pre-internet language learning, you had 2 ways to learn a language: attend a class, or buy one of those CD sets that had you go over words and phrases in the language over and over again until you got a hang of it. The CD method is basically this Pimsleur review – yeah, it’s old-school.

This Pimsleur review will talk about what exactly the Pimsleur method is, Pimsleur’s promises, and what to expect if you do choose to buy the course. Is Pimsleur right for you?

Pimsleur review: languages

Right off the bat, Pimsleur boasts a significant number of languages:

Albanian
Arabic (Eastern)
Arabic (Egyptian)
Arabic (Modern Standard)
Armenian (Western)
Armenian (Eastern)
Chinese (Cantonese)
Chinese (Mandarin)
Creole (Haitian)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Ojibwe
Pashto
Persian (Dari)
Persian (Farsi)
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Spanish (Latin American)
Spanish (Castilian)
Swahili
Swedish
Swiss German
Thai
Turkish
Twi
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

Pimsleur is an audio-based resource, which means the specific accent of any given language can be very important. So, if a certain “version” of a language is important to you, then Pimsleur may be an excellent match for your needs.

The Pimsleur Method

The Pimsleur Method is based on the research of the late Dr. Paul Pimsleur, whose interest and research were based on memory.

The Pimsleur Method itself is a very strict one: 30 minutes of practice every single day (no more, no less), of pure listening and speaking work. Do not attempt to read or write while you listen.

With this approach, Pimsleur promises you’ll be able to converse at an intermediate level in just 30 days. 30 days of 30 minutes of practice today means Pimsleur promises intermediate-level fluency after just 900 minutes (15 hours) of listening and speaking.

Pimsleur review: lessons

The first 30-minute lesson of every language on Pimsleur is absolutely free. You can work through any language you like, as many times as you like, but it’s only that first lesson. This can give you an idea if the approach is something that you’d like to use, without any financial risk.

For some, this first minute-long snippet is all you need to know about Pimsleur. You’re listening to an audio clip of a man slowly explaining (in English) a basic exchange of basic phrases.

If you find that boring, go to my language app search instead to find something better for you. If the slow pace and the excessive English narration don’t bother you, continue reading this Pimsleur review.

As mentioned early, Pimsleur was designed to be listened to and repeated (a common language learning strategy called “shadowing”) while you’re doing something else, like driving or doing the dishes.

When going through these lessons, you’ll start out with pretty basic, usable phrases: “Excuse me, do you speak English?” and “No, I don’t”, for example. Great for tourist-level learning, and getting a pretty solid background of the language.

Pimsleur will take these phrases apart and really drill you in on each individual aspect of the words and phrases, which is good for absolute beginners. It’s definitely all about training your ear to figure out what you’re listening to and saying. Excellent for listening practice as well as pronunciation – understanding the exact sounds that the language uses, not just the word itself.

Pimsleur’s reading approach

While Pimsleur is primarily focused on practicing speaking conversational phrases, it’s also recommended that you continue on their reading practice (but only after the initial lesson is done).

Here you’ll break down the pronunciation of important words and patterns bit by bit, by preparing you for common pronunciation mistakes as well as comparing the sounds of your target language with the sounds of English.

This is truly a slow, methodical approach to pronunciation via shadowing.

It’s not really reading as much as it is pronunciation, which is confusing. In fact, nothing about Pimsleur’s method could be considered effective reading practice.

Pimsleur review: other activities

The two samples above are really the meat of the Pimsleur app. There are other features (discussed below), however, it should be noted that that is THE Pimsleur Method. The rest of the features mentioned in this Pimsleur review are more of Pimsleur’s attempts to keep up with the times than anything else.

As in, not completely necessary.

For example, here are the practice games Pimsleur uses to help you truly drill the lesson’s vocabulary into your brain.

I do like that they’re trying to make the content just a little more engaging for the 21st century, but remember that Pimsleur is very clear that all these fun and games are after you listen to the initial lesson, not instead of.

While it feels like Pimsleur missed the mark a bit with those games, I do enjoy Pimsleur’s voice coach (it’s a chatbot….anytime you hear a language app talking about chatbots, it’s this).

In the future, I’d really like to see Pimsleur expand this section. Personally, I find this much more engaging than listening to a 30-minute recording that’s mostly in English anyway.

Pimsleur review: price

In the past, Pimsleur was very financially inaccessible – you would plan to spend a few hundred dollars for just a basic language education. Fortunately, time and tech have changed, and Pimsleur has negotiated their prices accordingly.

As aforementioned, you can access the first lesson of any language for free at any time.

If you decide to continue with the Pimsleur Method, you can opt to pay monthly, either for just the language you’re learning or for all languages Pimsleur offers. You can see updated pricing here.

Fortunately, gone are the days of spending $1,000 and waiting for your new CD set to come in the mail (and hoping for the best that you’ll actually use it) – now you can get started instantly!

Pimsleur review: who it’s for

We’ve reached the end of this Pimsleur review, so should you try it?

As I said, if the slow pace, the relaxing cadence, or the heavy English narration are distractions for you, then Pimsleur may not be the best way for you to learn a language. In that case, I would suggest Language Transfer or the LanguagePod101 series.

Or, even simpler, find videos for beginners on YouTube! That free content combined with the Language Reactor Chrome extension…the sky’s the limit.

However, if you enjoyed listening to the videos in this Pimsleur review and are happy to repeat words and phrases until you can have simple conversations, Pimsleur may just be the language app for you. Get your 1-week free trial here!

Glossika review: for all your repetition needs

February 6, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

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:

The new phrase is presented written in both your source and target language
You hear a recording of the phrase in both languages, so you can follow along
You type out the phrase in the foreign language
You reread the phrase just in the foreign language
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

February 5, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

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.