Portuguese

Drops Review: beautiful vocab for beginners

January 15, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

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

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

Drops languages

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

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

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

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

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

Drops review: the Drops approach to vocab

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

Some features of this strategy that you can see:

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

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

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

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

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

Drops review: what you’ll learn

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

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

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

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

Basics
Food
Travel
Relationships
Work
Home

Education
Hobbies
Outdoors
Wellness
Shops

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

Drops app review: review features

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

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

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

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

Drops Premium

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

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

Drops’ other language learning apps

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

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

American Sign Language
Chinese Hanzi
English alphabet
Hebrew

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

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

Drops review: who should try it

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

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

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

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

CaptionPop Review: Language Reactor alternative?

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Addicted to YouTube and want to use it better for your language learning? In this CaptionPop review, learn how you can use videos with foreign language subtitles translated into your native language to learn a language.

Because CaptionPop is an extension of YouTube itself, it supports any of the 83 languages supported by YouTube, making CaptionPop one of the most accessible ways to learn a language.

CaptionPop review: getting started

When you first go to CaptionPop, this is what you see.

As you can see, they claim to be “the best way to experience YouTube as a language learner”. The marketing is specific (unlike a ton of language learning resources out there), but whether or not it’s true? That depends on what you want for your language learning.

Scroll down and you see this, which, at least in my opinion, does differentiate CaptionPop from the competition (which I’ll get more into detail about later). These flashcards are my favorite CaptionPop feature!

You can check out these demo flashcards to see what you can expect, or you can jump right into creating your own from the videos you run into. This is an excellent way to find new foreign language vocab.

Let’s jump right in to searching for foreign language YouTube, videos, though.

First things first, you’ll be asked your native language (although you can also plug in any intermediate/advanced level language to practice that one, as well) and the language you’re learning. These languages can be changed at any time by clicking the “more” link on the top bar of your search results.

You might have to take a second to find it, just be aware. I definitely almost missed it myself!

As per usual, I went with Spanish, but that scroll box includes what looks like every language under the sun! It seems like you can use CaptionPop to learn any language that’s currently available on YouTube, which is a lot.

Remember: YouTube is full of normal, average people creating videos and uploading them. The content itself may or may not be the most interesting, but at least it’s there!

This apparently includes different accents, too, because I was able to differentiate between Spain Spanish, Latin American Spanish, and United States Spanish which…I don’t know what that means, honestly. “United States” Spanish is usually just Latin American Spanish. So maybe it’s referring to Spanish-speaking videos uploaded from the US?

You can use the search box like you would the YouTube search box, or you can search through the featured channels. I went ahead and clicked “Detección Metálica”, and I got this page full of just this YouTuber’s videos.

CaptionPop isn’t the prettiest…it’s very very simple, like straight-up basic HTML. I’m assuming it’s like an RSS feed of YouTube videos with translated captions? It doesn’t have all the special algorithms and features of regular YouTube, literally just the bilingual captions.

This means it also doesn’t include any kind of “recommended” channels for you to find. Bummer!

It’s a very simple platform. This is what you see when you choose a video.

You’re literally just getting the video, the captions, and a couple of options. I do like how you can choose to see (or not see) the different captions, or make it easy to uncover the translations. To un-blur them, just roll over them with your mouse. Easy-peasy! And very helpful for difficult phrases.

In the top right-hand corner, you can also see some easy hotkeys:

Space: play/pause
T: show translation
R: repeat
Up: previous line
Down: next line

This is another simple, handy tool, but I do wish you had the option to change/personalize them. I’d like it if I could hit all the hotkeys with one hand, but alas! That one really isn’t the biggest deal.

When one caption or video sticks out to you, you can also easily add them to your “favorites”, mostly to make it easy for you to go back to the stuff you know you like, or is a bit difficult for you.

Flashcards

My favorite part of CaptionPop is their flashcards. They’re not perfect, don’t get me wrong, but this part is what puts CaptionPop ahead of the competition (which I’ll explain in another section).

Going into the flashcard section of CaptionPop, you have a few options.

From here you have a few options, or “sections” of flashcards. They all do the same thing, but as you can see from the tip at the bottom, you can organize all your decks into whichever sections or categories you like.

Organize your flashcards by genre, YouTuber, difficulty, subject, language…whatever you like! The sky’s the limit. Make different flashcard decks into whichever categories will be the most helpful for you.

I downloaded the demo deck, which is a very simple one that just gives you an idea of what CaptionPop’s flashcards are all about.

First, you get the video clip to repeat the phrase back to you. You can replay it as many times as you need. Then, this is how CaptionPop reviews the phrases for you.

I really love this as a way to learn phrases from context via dictation, though I do have a couple of complaints.

One: if you don’t already have an international keyboard on your computer, CaptionPop doesn’t provide you with any accents or anything like that.

On the upside, though, CaptionPop does include “free characters”, which means characters that aren’t a requirement for finishing a flashcard. You can also use “!” to match “¡”, so there are some workarounds!

Nonetheless, if you don’t get something right (like accents or some-such), it’ll call you out on it (which I definitely appreciate!).

Two: not only can you not easily add these phrases to your flashcard app if you already have a flashcard strategy that you like, but CaptionPop doesn’t have any sort of mobile app.

So, if you find yourself depending heavily on CaptionPop’s flashcard tools, you’ll have to be at a computer regularly. There’s no easy way to transfer any of this to a mobile app of any kind or combine them with any flashcards you find with other language learning resources.

Otherwise, it’s a pretty excellent way of finding new phrases and learning to both listen and write them out correctly. Not bad!

The Chrome Extension

CaptionPop’s got one more trick up its sleeve, and you don’t even need to be using CaptionPop to use it! Google Chrome users can download the free Chrome extension whenever they’re browsing YouTube.

On every page of YouTube, you can find the subtitles that are available underneath every video, or if there are no subtitles at all.

This is SUPER handy for pushing yourself a little bit to maybe choose to watch videos with subtitles in the language you’re learning, or if you just like to eat chips while you watch YouTube (no judgment, I’m just as guilty of this!).

And, like I said, you don’t even have to be using CaptionPop itself (this screenshot was just of a normal YouTube search) – it’s just a handy little tool for us to use!

CaptionPop’s alternatives

Using YouTube’s captions to learn a language is really effective because it makes the whole process genuinely entertaining, and we all like it when learning a language is actually fun! Using fun methods is one of the best ways to keep yourself motivated to learn a language.

I do like CaptionPop, but there are some things that Language Reactor does better! For example, Language Reactor is a Chrome extension that keeps you on YouTube, as opposed to a whole entire other website.

Why is this better?

Comments. Recommended videos. Related YouTubers. Binge-ability.

These are all features that language learners can also use to find new vocab and work on their language skills! There’s no better way to get yourself onto the part of YouTube where international YouTubers exist and accidentally find your new favorite creators.

However, Language Reactor does NOT have any sort of native flashcards. You can collect vocabulary and export them into an excel sheet, but only with a paid subscription (something like $5/month). So it’s all about what’s important to you.

CaptionPop review: Premium

Recently, CaptionPop expanded to include Premium features – good for you, Jon! While CaptionPop is still a pretty lightweight option, CaptionPop Premium features include:

unlimited interactive flashcards (versus 5 per day with free accounts)
highlight text to translate

For only $10/month or $75/year, this is highly worth it if it’s something that you will be using consistently.

CaptionPop review: should you use it?

At the end of this CaptionPop review, I do think CaptionPop is a great resource for language learners looking for translated captions on YouTube videos, and an interesting way to find new YouTube creators that speak the language you’re learning.

I don’t like that it’s on an entirely other website, which means you don’t get the other elements of the YouTube platform that could be helpful for language learners (i.e. comments and suggested videos).

I do like the flashcard section, and how CaptionPop helps you learn sentences and phrases by typing them out. That’s a pretty solid way of getting them into your long-term memory.

My recommendation? If you’re looking for a way to watch foreign language YouTube videos and easily translate them, give CaptionPop a shot! It’s totally free, so you have nothing to lose!

Remember to keep Language Reactor in mind, as well. That one’s my preferred method, but I leave your language learning strategy up to you with this CaptionPop review.

Fluent Forever Review: learn by sound, not words

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

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

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

Fluent Forever review: at first glance

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

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

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

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

BUT.

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

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

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

Chinese (Mandarin)
Dutch
English
French
German
Hebrew
Italian

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

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

Fluent Forever app review for advanced learners

You’ll start out with two qualifying questions:

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

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

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

So from here, I was genuinely enjoying this app!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, to be fair, the app follows through:

I mean…they’re not wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fluent Forever app review for beginners

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fluent Forever’s personalized flashcards

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

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

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

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

In conclusion

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

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

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

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

LyricsTraining review: effective learning thru music

January 13, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

The LyricsTraining app and website…well they do exactly as the name suggests! It’s for language learners to train their listening comprehension in a foreign language using the lyrics from popular music. That part of this LyricsTraining review is obvious.

And yes, while you could just go to Spotify and look up lyrics, LyricsTraining has a couple more options meant specifically for listening comprehension that takes using music to learn a foreign language to the next level.

In this LyricsTraining review, let’s talk about what’s to love, and what it could do better, so you can decide if it’s the right resource for your language learning.

LyricsTraining review: languages

LyricsTraining hosts popular, high-quality music videos in a ton of different languages:

Catalan
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
German
Italian

Japanese (Romaji)
Korean (Romanized)
Polish
Portuguese
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish

That’s a pretty good mixture of foreign languages that are both very commonly learned (like Spanish and French) and not-so commonly learned (like Swedish and Finnish).

An account with LyricsTraining gives you access to music videos in all 14 languages (I love when they do that!) and even specifies which accent each song is in with a flag of the particular country the artists are from.

Very handy for language learners!

LyricsTraining review: using the app

Okay, let’s try this LyricsTraining review out. I chose Spanish not only because it’s my go-to, but also because it’s the only foreign language where my listening comprehension is advanced enough to try to listen to music.

When you first create your account, LyricsTraining sets your level at 0. This level isn’t at all associated with your actual level of listening comprehension, but how much music you’ve listened to and words you’ve “learned” (yes, I put that word in quotation marks for a reason, you’ll see).

So I clicked onto a video, pretty much at random.

See how this video is from Vevo? That’s always a good sign!

First I was given the option of multiple choice or karaoke; once I chose multiple choice, I was asked what difficulty level I wanted, each level of difficulty differentiated by how many words you have to fill in via multiple-choice; out of the 293 words in this song, I could choose to fill in 34, 66, 129, or all 293 words.

It’s kind of confusing to explain, but it’s a simple concept, don’t worry!

And there you go! This platform is really smooth, by the way, and I really love using it.

You play the music video you chose, and you get the lyrics all displayed, with however many words you chose redacted. It’s your job to listen to the lyrics and choose the right word. And with music, that’s sometimes easier said than done. Don’t worry – if you get it wrong, you can keep trying until you get it right.

Remember, music takes a lot of liberties with pronunciation, so a lot of these words sound completely different than they would in any normal conversation.

And because it’s music, it goes really fast. The lyrics do help, but with this app, you’re clearly not trying to understand the concept of what they’re saying, but individual words. I wish there was a way to slow it down and take the time to figure it out.

First complaint: give us the option to slow it down!

Nonetheless, this song was really good and I had fun listening to it and just tapping on the words. It’s a genuinely entertaining way of getting in some language practice! And if there’s one issue a lot of language learners face, it’s avoiding boredom.

And hey, if you need to hear the line a couple of times before you can try to answer (totally legit – even with my advanced comprehension, music is tough!)? No problem.

Swipe left to repeat it as many times as you need, or swipe right to skip it altogether. Let me reiterate: even if it is multiple choice, it can be tough to get the correct word the first time! Or the second time. Or third. (Don’t judge me.)

Or you can opt for straight-up karaoke, which is…exactly what you think it is.

If karaoke is your thing, this is a cool option that I haven’t seen elsewhere. It would be really cool to be able to put this on a TV or a computer or something (how awesome would foreign language karaoke parties be with your friends!?), but otherwise it’s pretty simple.

This way, you can focus more on pronunciation and moving your mouth in the right ways to form these words. Still lacking in giving language learners a chance to figure out what the song is even saying, though.

I don’t think LyricsTraining is as great as it could be (we’ll get there in a sec), but the part where you’re casually listening to foreign artists and training your ear to pick up on the words is honestly great listening practice!

Once you finish a song, you’ll get some very basic stats. I don’t personally find these particular stats the most helpful, but I know many language learners might. If anything, this could be great motivation. Green bars in stats = positive emotions!

That first stat, in particular, I don’t like. If you go into the “Vocabulary” section, you’ll find all the words that you’ve filled in the blank. Technically yeah, I’ve added 32 words to this list, but I didn’t choose the words, nor do I struggle with them.

This is not helpful at all for intermediate/advanced learners because, well, look at the words! That’s beginner vocab right there. I don’t need to review those words. LyricsTraining automatically pulled them for me for some reason.

It makes sense why these are the words that were filled in (something like the first 2,000 words of each language make up 80% of all conversations), but this vocab list isn’t helpful for me at all.

In fact, this part reminds me a lot of Beelinguapp: both apps pull out vocab that it thinks you need, based on pretty much nothing (considering this was the very first time I had tried this app), which is an unfortunately wasted opportunity to provide language learners with helpful vocab tools.

Not all of LyricsTraining’s stats are totally useless, though! They may be a little messy, but if you go into the “Activity” section, you get this.

Now that’s pretty helpful! Keep track of the songs you’ve listened to, how many times you listened to them, difficulty, success rate, etc.

LyricsTraining Premium

Again like Beelinguapp, LyricsTraining offers you a set amount of content for free, otherwise, it’s hidden behind a paywall.

Basically, you get to play music for free 3 times every 30 minutes. That’s a slightly strange way to measure free access, but at the same time, that’s a lot of free practice. We like free (high-quality) practice!

Or, if you’ve got $5/month to spare, you can get more out of your language learning.

You get full access to all the music your heart could desire, plus translations!

Now, the ability to translate sounds good, but what does that actually look like? Well, it looks like this.

In my opinion, this translation option is…meh.

On the bright side, you have the option to translate into a million and a half languages (not literally, folks) – no matter your native language (or even another upper-level foreign language), you can probably use it with this translator.

On the not-so-bright side, you can’t do anything with the words you translate. It doesn’t save it in a new flashcard set or give you the option to export it anywhere. If you want to save this word, you’ll have to do so manually, with your Quizlet, for example.

So, at that point, you’re better off using your own preferred method of translations, too. Which would render this tool totally useless.

LyricsTraining review: the verdict

At the end of this LyricsTraining, I find LyricsTraining to be a pretty decent resource. Exploring a language’s artists is a great way to not only practice the language but also get involved in a country’s culture, and this app makes it more accessible.

I do like both the fill-in-the-blank and the karaoke options – both are excellent strategies for building your listening comprehension and practicing saying the words (respectively). So if this is a language learning strategy that you enjoy and will help you build the skills you want to build, I’m a fan!

However, keep in mind that listening to music is rough. Even in your native language. Plus, LyricsTraining doesn’t offer a way to slow it down (which I don’t usually recommend with normal speech, but music is a different story).

The translation/vocab sections are left wanting, too. If you want to use music to find new vocab, you’ll be better off picking out that vocab manually and using another resource.

But if those factors don’t break it for you, give LyricsTraining a shot!

Speechling Review: conversation-less pronunciation

January 12, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

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

Speechling review: languages

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speechling for introverts

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

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

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

Speechling review: getting started

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

Here’s a basic lesson and some basic definitions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Skill Tree: what you’re learning

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

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

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

Speechling phrasebook: useful simple expressions for everyday life and travel

AKA: basic, tourist-level vocab

Asking for help
Basic expressions
Basic questions
Basic answers
Transportation

Health
Restaurant
Money
Weather
Clothing

Phone
Bad situations
Administration
Personal questions

Speechling foundations: build your vocabulary for the core curriculum

AKA: the very beginning foundations of the language

Numerals
Calendar
Nouns

Verbs
Adjectives+

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

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

Beginner 1
Beginner 2
Beginner 3

Intermediate 1
Intermediate 2
Intermediate 3

Advanced 1
Advanced 2
Advanced 3
Expert 1
Expert 2

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

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

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

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

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

Dictation

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

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

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

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

Listening Practice

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

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

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

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

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

Flashcards

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

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

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

Multiple choice quiz

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

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

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

Fill in the blank

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

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

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

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

Search

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

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

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

Premium Offline Content

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

Speechling’s already ahead of me here!

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

This content includes:

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

Speechling review: your pronunciation coach

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

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

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

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

Your recordings are also color-coded:

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

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

Speechling review: price

Speechling offers two categories of pricing: free and unlimited.

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

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

Unlimited plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Click here for Speechling’s updated pricing.

Speechling review: is it for you?

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 Review: A+…except for pricing

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: languages

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

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

LanguagePod101’s free content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: paid content

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then we get into the assessment itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LanguagePod101 review: should you try it?

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

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

And the paid membership?

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

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

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

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

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

Click the appropriate language below to get started: