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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.

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:

Slowly Review for learning a foreign language

January 12, 2022 by Jamie 1 Comment

Slowly is a free mobile app that isn’t primarily meant to be used to learn languages, nor is it one of the most common ways to practice writing in a foreign language. That doesn’t mean that this Slowly app review doesn’t belong here! I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t share this potential method of learning a language with you.

Back before the days of smartphones, instant messaging, and emails, we used snail mail. It would take days (or even weeks, depending on how far away your mail was going) for a letter to arrive, and tons of people miss this method of communication for a variety of reasons.

What does this have to do with learning languages? As it turns out, a lot! In this Slowly app review, I’ll touch on the reasons why it shouldn’t go ignored as a language learning resource, and, as always, what kind of language learners can benefit from it!

Slowly: app walkthrough

When you get your first look at Slowly, there’s no mention of language learning. Like I said, it’s not really meant as a language learning app. That’s not to say that it’s not a great way to get in practice, though!

Slowly is explained as a way to meet pen friends from your smartphone. And it’s free! Which real-life snail mail is not.

After downloading, you’ll plug in a TINY bit of information, but really not much. Fortunately, Slowly is pretty respectful of common sense internet rules, and just requests that you set up an avatar and nickname.

I got a little frustrated when it was telling me my nickname contained characters that were not allowed when really it was just too long, but whatever, I guess.

You can pick out a few subjects that you’d like to talk about (up to 30), pick out up to 5 subjects that you don’t want to talk about, and then pick languages! You also tell Slowly your proficiency in this language, which then shows up on your profile for other Slowly users to see.

Even just here you can see that this app has some potential for foreign language practice! Realistically, all any language learner needs is a person to talk to who speaks the language, and Slowly definitely offers us access to this!

Then Slowly will let you know a couple of important nuggets of info, and you’ll get started finding pen friends.

That first image is the thing that makes Slowly so great for language learners like me!

The awesome part of snail mail is that it takes a while. It’s not instant. A lot of people love the nostalgia of that, which is fair. Personally, I don’t appreciate it for that particular reason.

If you’re like me, you get overwhelmed by too many instant messages (using something like Tandem or HelloTalk), especially if they’re not in your native language and it takes you more effort to read and respond. That overwhelm is a major turnoff and becomes a serious obstacle to getting in more writing practice.

With Slowly, it takes an entire day to send/receive messages. I like how this gives me a chance to breathe. It’s significantly less stressful for me. I don’t have to feel rushed to understand any messages, nor to express myself in the language, which can be really difficult sometimes.

Anyways, Slowly offers you two ways to meet new pen friends: auto-match or manual. I don’t personally like auto-match, but here are the options you can choose from in your new auto-match pen friends.

If that’s not your thing, you can filter through potential pen friends and reach out to the ones that sound (read?) like someone you’d want to talk to. And, of course, everything is pretty anonymous – there’s no real picture, no real name, nada!

You can see which languages these potential pen friends can communicate in as well as which country they’re from, which I love.

The most important stats are when they were last online and their “sent:received” ratio. There’s no limit to how many people you send mail to or how often you send mail, it’ll just take a minute to get there (and get back to you when they respond).

For example, mail that I send to/receive from Spain takes 20 hours to get to its destination. Mail that’s going to/coming from different countries in South America takes just 8 hours.

Nonetheless, send a message to anyone you want! The only requirement set by the app is that your message is at least 100 characters, which makes sense. Imagine receiving an actual piece of mail and it just said “hey”. That’s something that only works in the atmosphere of instant messaging; otherwise, you’d just be wasting your actual money.

Pro tip: I didn’t receive any letters from people I didn’t initiate the conversation with until I wrote a bio. Once I did that, I started getting letters!

A couple of things to note about how all this works.

You’ll always know what letters are coming from who, and when they’ll get to you. Basically, you’ll be able to see everything except for the message itself.
Once you work up a history of talking back and forth with someone, you’ll always be able to see all of your messages together, which is fun!
Because of the nature of this app, conversations have to be…simpler. This isn’t a chat where you can easily reference every little statement – it’s more like you got a letter from someone responding to your letter, but since you don’t have the letter you sent, it can be hard to remember what you’re talking about.
If you’re “friends” with someone, you can share other types of media. It doesn’t really have much to do with the actual “pen pal” part of it all. Basically, if you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve actually built a relationship with a pen friend, it’s another way for you two to connect!
Many people like to collect stamps, just like with normal snail mail. You can collect stamps by having pen friends from a variety of different countries, or you can go ahead and buy them with real money (though it’s totally unnecessary, and goes to support the app).

And, really, that’s it! The Slowly app is a pretty simple concept for connecting with those who speak your foreign language natively, without a lot of the pressure of face-to-face conversations or instant messaging.

It’s not a language learning app, and that might matter

I’ve mentioned that Slowly isn’t built specifically for language learners – it’s more of an “accidental” option for language learners who would really benefit from it.

However, because it’s not particularly meant for language learning…it’s not perfect. For example, in comparing Slowly to HelloTalk, there is quite a bit of deficit.

I mean, HelloTalk supports text, audio, video chats, real-time corrections…there’s a lot of options. And Slowly just doesn’t have any of those features. It’s just like writing physical letters to a pen pal, except it’s digital.

The fact that Slowly is simple is one of the reasons why it’s so great but definitely has its pros and cons. Other features would make Slowly more desirable for language learners, but, at the same time, the lack of features is part of the charm. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword.

But there are three main reasons why Slowly could be more beneficial to you as a language learner (as it is for me):

Like I’ve said, the pressure is gone. HelloTalk stresses me out. Instant messaging is great for real quick conversations, but I get overwhelmed when it takes me a minute to figure out how to write a message in a foreign language, just to have to do it all over again a few minutes later.
Slowly allows you to operate in more than one language for free! HelloTalk makes you pay for more than one language (it’s only a few bucks a month, but it’s more than free!). With Slowly, talk to as many people as you like in as many languages as you like. No worries!
Total anonymity. If you’re feminine-presenting or have a feminine name, you know what it’s like to hop on a texting app and get bombarded with texts from men. That issue is solved with Slowly!

Slowly app review: who it’s for

With this Slowly app review, understand that it doesn’t have a lot of the tools that HelloTalk or other resources have, but I don’t think language learners should necessarily turn their cheeks to the practice or the friendships that are possible either.

For one, if you really value the nostalgia of snail mail, Slowly is a fun app to use no matter if you’re trying to work your foreign language skills or if you’re just interested in connecting with other English speakers.

For two, Slowly is a nice option to slow down (and I just realized that’s why it’s named Slowly!) your communication and take away the instant-ness of modern-day conversations.

Slowly is like the Speechling of speaking practice for the introverts of language learning; let’s take away the pressure of live conversations while still working on our foreign language skills!

Regardless of whether you feel comfortable using Slowly in the language you’re learning or not, Slowly is a really fun way to connect with strangers that you would’ve never connected with before, while also keeping your identity protected for internet safety reasons.

Tandem Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Tandem is one of the fairly popular names in the language learning world for connecting language learners with native speakers of that language. Right from your phone, you can strike up a conversation with somebody who speaks a foreign language, get in practice, and make a friend!

In this Tandem review, let’s dive into what goes into this experience: the pros, the cons, and if Tandem is right for you and your language learning journey.

Oh yeah – we’ll go into Tandem Pro too, and see if it’s something that you can benefit from, or if you’re good to go with the free app.

Tandem languages

Because of the way Tandem works (meaning Tandem itself doesn’t really create content, it’s all the content [messages] that users create), there isn’t really a limit to languages! As long as you can find somebody on the app that is willing to talk to you in that language, you’re set.

Which is why on the website, Tandem lists its languages as:

English
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian

Spanish
Japanese
Chinese
Korean
Other

In other words, open up the app and give it a shot, you never know!

Tandem app review: getting started

When you first download the Tandem app, you’ll get some pretty basic starting, qualifying questions. Unlike qualifying questions with other apps that want to know your level in the language you’re learning (’cause, spoiler alert, you should have the vocab/grammar down to participate in basic conversation), Tandem’s questions figure out who you are and where you’re looking to go.

Pretty basic stuff, right?

When choosing which languages you’re practicing, you can choose as many languages as you like at any level. And Tandem offers almost any language under the sun – basically, if there’s someone on the app who speaks your language, you’re set!

Once that’s done, you’ll get some more qualifying questions to help pair you up with a conversation partner that you’ll actually enjoy talking to.

Again, pretty basic, reasonable stuff.

I wouldn’t sweat these questions too much; I’m not sure they really show up anywhere major, and even if they do, nobody really pays attention to them. In my experience, you’ll get a GIANT influx of messages once you get going anyways! And, to be honest, I’m not sure anyone really ever sees your answers. Maybe it’s just an internal thing?

Oh yeah, and that last screenshot? I’m not sure if Tandem is trying to push Tandem Pro here or if there’s actually a “waiting line”, but my account was approved within like 20 minutes or so. Use your real name and a real photo of you (yup, that’s required!) and you shouldn’t have any problems.

Nonetheless, you do get this offer:

If you really love using Tandem you could find a lot of value in Tandem Pro. It’s very reasonably priced and gets you a lot more access to more practice as well as partners that you may have more chemistry with.

At the very least, I think the unlimited translation would absolutely be worth it. Find a friend or two that’ll help you build up your vocabulary and it’ll be an awesome learning tool!

After all that setup, it’s time to get in some practice!

Tandem review: finding a partner

The first place you’ll go is the Community tab. Here’s you’ll find a long list of potential conversation partners to help you practice the language you want to learn.

Everybody’s got a picture, their real name, and a “bio”, which seems to be their answer to the “what are your goals” question that we answered before. Sometimes it’ll be a complete sentence, and at the same time I’ve literally seen just “environmental” as a bio, so….grain of salt?

Here you see a couple of things. Most importantly, obviously, there are a few potential candidates for getting in some language practice.

Since I told Tandem that I’m a native English speaker and am learning Spanish, they’re recommending the opposite back: native Spanish speakers learning English.

Above that, you can see “featured learners” which…I’m not entirely sure what that means. Maybe really active texters?

And above that, you can search for members who are geographically near you. That’s only relevant if you’re a paid member and value in-person language exchanges.

BUT this option does provide great opportunities for language learners who are interested in local language learners but want to test the waters a bit and see if you actually enjoy talking to language learners nearby.

If you’re not finding anybody who you have any interest in talking to, hit the “settings” button in the upper-right hand corner to get this screen.

My favorite part of this is where you can select your gender and your age range. Especially considering you have to use your real name and your real photo, I get totally inundated by messages from dudes (like the guy who asked if my dad is an artist [cue massive eye roll]), so that’s incredibly helpful!

I found one person that I wanted to talk to and initiated a conversation with her. Then BAM!

So. Many. Texts. So. Many. Notifications.

I wonder if I was put into that list of “featured” texters?

I mean, it’s great for finding new conversation partners! The sky’s the limit!

It can also be incredibly overwhelming, which is why I’ve left most of these messages unread. Honestly, I just couldn’t keep up!

Oh yeah, peep that last one. What, you thought I was lying?! You think women don’t drown in messages from random men just because they’re women? Think again, mate!

Now, when you’re in a conversation, what options do you have available to you? Well….like all of them. Tandem is primarily a texting app, but you can easily enough also use it to video chat, send audio messages, images, GIFS…you name it, you got it!

Plus, one thing that’s really helpful if you want to be precise, is easy corrections within conversations.

It may be worth mentioning that Tandem doesn’t supply you with any special keyboards or anything, so you’ll need to make sure that your phone’s native keyboard supports the letters (accents and all!) that your target language uses.

Personally, I just use Google’s keyboard, and that gives me access to all the accents I need to text in Spanish, French…and pretty much every accent that I could possibly need for letters in the Latin alphabet.

Honestly, the few conversations I did have before I got overwhelmed (which I already knew was going to happen based on my HelloTalk review) were really enjoyable! It just…texting is really quick, you know? It’s meant to be instant, rapid-fire. Which is hard when you’re doing it in another language!

That includes not only reading and figuring out someone else’s messages in another language but also taking the time and energy to communicate in the language yourself. It’s really hard work.

Most of the conversations I had were mostly (if not all) in Spanish. Most of them also didn’t really volunteer corrections, but that’s an easy enough thing to just ask a person about.

Dani, on the right, was the first one to correct my texts, so I did the same back. It’s really nice, but it also requires a lot of mental energy, when you’re already using so much mental energy to translate these texts!

That mixed with all the messages I was getting from random Spanish speakers…it can be a lot for some people. And one thing we want to avoid with language learning is getting too overwhelmed/expecting too much from ourselves.

Tandem tutors

Lastly, we have one more section of the Tandem app: the “Tutors” section.

This is a kind of interesting model, to be honest. I mean obviously, anybody using this app would have at least some interest in a paid tutor, I guess I just wasn’t expecting it?

Nonetheless, Tandem handpicks tutors for you that they think are interesting to talk to. You pick a tutor, pick a time, and select how long you want your lesson to be: 20, 40, 60, or 90 minutes long (which is a really long lesson!)

This is just one example of one of the tutors you can try out. I mean, there are plenty of ways to learn to speak a language, but if you haven’t found one that you like just yet, maybe you’ll want to give this section of Tandem a go!

Who the Tandem app is for

After doing this Tandem app review, I love it! I think this is a great resource for language learners: the app is attractive and smooth, there are a ton of potential conversation partners (at least for Spanish, I can’t say for less popular languages), and it’s really easy to get thrown into some conversational practice.

But, like I said, I knew going in that it wouldn’t be for me. While the concept is great, Tandem is not for language learners who easily get overwhelmed by a lot of conversations/attention (i.e. introverts). If you have the social energy to keep it up, Tandem is great!

Tandem is primarily best for writing (or texting) practice, but the sky’s really the limit. Considering you can send audio clips or even have a video chat with anybody, that takes care of your speaking practice, as well. That’ll get you your reading and listening practice along with it!

It’s also worth reiterating that Tandem is not for absolute beginners – you should at least be able to carry on a basic conversation, or you’ll be totally lost. Otherwise, though, Tandem is a great way to get in all four of the major language learning skills!

Language Transfer Review

January 11, 2022 by Jamie 2 Comments

Language Transfer is one of those language learning resources that not many people have heard about due to lack of marketing. There’s no marketing for Language Transfer because it is 100% free (and not free with ads like Duolingo…it’s actually free).

Not only that, but it’s a totally unique approach to learning to speak a new language in that it approaches languages not from “hello” and “my name is” like the more common approach, but from what’s easiest from your native language (so long as that language is English).

In this Language Transfer review, let’s talk about this approach, and whether or not Language Transfer can help you accomplish your own language learning goals.

Language Transfer’s background

The first thing I mentioned is that Language Transfer is free, and that’s an important distinction. Not only because it’s on the list of ways to learn a language for free, but because it’s born out of one guy’s method. One guy!

There’s no “team” (although Mihalis is currently trying to wrangle up some volunteers to help out with this project) – it’s just one simple method of approaching learning a language.

At the moment, you can use Language Transfer to learn:

Arabic
English (from Spanish)
French
German
Greek

Italian
Spanish
Swahili

So what does a Language Transfer course look like? Well, like this.

Yup, it’s literally just a playlist on SoundCloud, easily accessed right on the website. Or, if you prefer, Language Transfer also has a YouTube channel with all the lessons right there, too!

You don’t need to submit an email address, create an account, nothin’. Just have internet access and you’re good to go! You can download the files to your computer, stream them on any kind of device, or download the mobile app. Language Transfer does not want you to have any obstacles in accessing their content.

Language Transfer Review: a small disclaimer

Generally, when someone starts learning a foreign language, I recommend starting with the most commonly-spoken words and going from there. While the purpose of this Language Transfer review isn’t to say that that’s wrong (because it’s definitely not), this is another way to go about it.

When I tested the Spanish course, there were a few rules of thumb that I really didn’t agree with at first. Things like:

you’ll be and feel like a Spanish speaker after the first hour
don’t try to memorize what you’re learning, that’s destructive
don’t write anything down

Those rules/statements really put me off at first. I think a critical piece of information they’re missing is that all that is true with this particular strategy. I mean, although the concept of fluency is really vague and not a great approach to learning a language, memorizing is definitely not destructive, at least not if you’re doing it effectively.

So what is this strategy? What makes it better or worse than other strategies, and could it be beneficial to you? Keep on reading!

The Language Transfer methodology

Like I said, most other language learning resources will start you off learning things like greetings and how to introduce yourself, which totally makes sense. What’s the first thing you learn in the Spanish course?

Normal.

Specifically, you learn that English words that end in ‘al’ are generally the same in Spanish, but with different intonation (well, he doesn’t use that word, but that’s what he means) and different sounds (like you’ll learn using The Mimic Method).

So, words like normal can easily be guessed! You don’t have to memorize vocabulary or use a book to figure that out, so long as you understand that rule.

And you know what? He’s right. If you’ve ever practiced speaking Spanish and wanted to use a word but weren’t sure if you knew the translation, chances are you guessed. And chances are you were either correct or almost correct.

And right there, that’s the entire basis of how Language Transfer teaches languages without textbooks or expensive courses. It teaches the rules of how languages are connected, so you can figure it out for yourself! Or, in other words, cognates.

Who should use Language Transfer

Like I said, Language Transfer is more accessible than most language learning resources, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right choice for everyone. It’s almost a natural way to base learning a foreign language on your native language, but it’s missing a lot of information that’s important for some people.

It’s not visual

There is nothing visual. Nothing. You don’t learn to spell words. You don’t learn which letters are accented or what those accents look like. Sure, you learn to conjugate “querer” into “yo quiero”, but you don’t necessarily learn that there’s a ‘u’ in there. With this method, that’s not important.

That means that if you want to work on your reading or writing skills, you’ll be SOL. It’ll be hard to connect the things that you learn here with the other skills that you want to improve.

In my opinion, this is, without a doubt, the biggest problem for some language learners.

There’s no feedback

While the method is really simple and to the point, there is no feedback. It’s like watching people in movies from the 80s learning a language from a Pimsleur CD and totally butchering words and sentences, and all the CD does is say “great job!” Thanks for the compliment and all, but there’s no way to know if what I’m saying is actually right!

I mean, you’re probably not going to make any real mistakes, but don’t think you can avoid having real conversations just by using Language Transfer. Language is all about communication, and communication requires at least 2 people!

Mihalis’ accent

Look, I like to learn foreign languages. Accents are not the kind of thing that turns me off from listening to somebody. So I don’t want you to think I’m being judgmental towards someone who doesn’t sound like me.

However, this course is 100% audio. There’s no transcript (again, no visuals). The entire method is all about realizing the patterns between the two languages. Like me, over 70% of the people who read this blog are Americans. And there were a couple of instances where it took me a second to figure out what Mihalis was saying.

For example, the first word that was taught: normal. I thought he was saying “norman”! That seemed really weird to me. Clearly, it’s not a huge deal, but it can prove to be an obstacle, and make this whole thing just a bit more confusing.

I do have to say, though, that if all you want to do is impulsively move to Spain and figure out the language as you go…this is freakin’ solid.

How to support Language Transfer

Language Transfer costs $0.00, has zero ads, and doesn’t even ask for your email address. All in the name of accessibility! But what if you want to support the mission? There are a couple of options for us, fortunately.

For one, you can always send them direct cash donations via PayPal if you so choose. Or, if you want something back for your donations, there are a couple of other relevant choices.

The non-shop

The first option is the “non-shop”, which has products in two categories: dissemination material and learning material.

The dissemination material – things like postcards and tote bags that you can use to help spread the word – only cost enough to cover production and shipping. Consider these products to be their free marketing.

Or, you have the learning materials.

These products are the same exact things that are also available for 100% free right on the website. It’s literally just a way to support the method.

The Patreon

Finally, you can support Language Transfer through their Patreon. With a dozen different membership options ranging from $1 a month to $100 a month, you get more chances to share marketing materials, share Language Transfer with organizations, or get Interlinear Books for free (that part’s really interesting to me).

If you don’t already know what Interlinear Books is, it’s an independent organization that translates books into a variety of languages. Basically, it creates bilingual books.

According to the Patreon, “Interlinearbooks.com have offered supporters of Language Transfer free translated stories to help them practice their new language. These are available on $3+ tiers.” Yay perks!

Language Transfer review: I genuinely love it!

I think Language Transfer can be an excellent way to learn a new language, and I’ll definitely be trying some of the other languages at some point in the future as a way to make those connections between languages that I’d be making anyway.

And I absolutely respect how accessible it is! Money can be a huge obstacle for language learners, thanks to that expensive marketing that I was talking about before.

But, for literally any other skill outside of speaking, Language Transfer can’t help you. Apply this information to your own language learning strategy as you will!

uTalk review: tons of vocab in tons of languages

January 11, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

uTalk is a vocab app that brings languages to us that can be hard to find elsewhere; so whether you’re learning something common like Spanish or not-so-common like Cebuano, uTalk pretty much as you covered.

With 140+ languages, there are plenty of options to choose from. But that’s not all you should be thinking about when it comes to your language learning strategy! In this uTalk review, let’s discuss the pros and cons of using this app to learn a language.

uTalk review: languages

One of the best reasons to use uTalk to learn a language is that there are so many languages available that you can’t find anywhere else. uTalk currently supports 140+ different languages to learn, with new languages being added all the time.

You can use uTalk to learn:

Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic (Egyptian)
Arabic (Gulf)
Arabic (Lebanese)
Arabic (Modern Standard)
Arabic (Moroccan)
Armenian (Eastern)
Assamese
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Cantonese
Catalan
Cebuano
Chibemba
Chichewa
Chinese (Hakka)
Chinese (Mandarin)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Dzongkha
English (American)
English (Australian)
English (British)
English (Canadian)
English (Cockney)
English (Indian)
English (Scottish)
Esperanto
Estonian
Fijian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
Flemish
French
French (Canadian)

Galician
Georgian
German (Swiss)
Greek
Greek (Ancient)
Greenlandic
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Ilocano
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kachchi
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Kinyarwanda
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kurdish (Sorani)
Kyrgyz
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Manx
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Neapolitan
Nepali
Norwegian
Oriya
Oromo
Papiamentu

Pashto
Persian (Dari)
Persian (Farsi)
Persian (Tajiki)
Pidgin (Nigerian)
Polish
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Punjabi (Indian)
Punjabi (Pakistani)
Romanian
Russian
Saami (Southern)
Samoan
Sardinian
Scots
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Shona
Sicilian
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish (Spanish)
Spanish (Argentinian)
Spanish (Latin American)
Swahili
Swedish
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Tibetan
Tigrinya
Tok Pisin

Suffice to say…it’s a lot (151, to be precise). So many different languages, including different accents! Now let’s talk about what uTalk does with them.

uTalk walkthrough

When you first open up the uTalk app, you’ll be shown this screen, featuring every single one of those 140+ languages, with your most recent language at the top.

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward! No fancy tutorials or overwhelm, really. This can be nice for those who don’t need the complicated AI features or techy chatbots; uTalk keeps it simple.

Select your language
Select your category
Go!

Each category of phrases is provided with the following exercises.

Phrase practice

Your first exercise introduces these phrases to you. There are quite a bit of them, honestly, so you may want to take a few tries to get through them.

https://vimeo.com/1045387465/7d524a7bbc?ts=0&share=copy

And if this is too difficult for you, go back to the prior “first words” lessons.

Study each of these phrases by listening to the audio, understanding the phrase (try to depend just on the image to figure it out! It may be difficult, but I promise it’ll be worth it), and repeating it until you get the pronunciation down.

This is the last time you’ll see the English translations – for the rest of these quizzes, you’ll be identifying each vocab word by either its picture or its audio.

And it’s self-correcting, as well, so you can decide if your understanding is “good enough”. Like I said, no AI or speech recognition to complicate things!

Easy game

If you’re not sure if you studied the first exercise well enough, the next exercise will immediately tell you. Easy game takes your knowledge of the phrases a step further and gives you some multiple choice selections of the audio clips and imagery.

https://vimeo.com/1045390342/14c6123301?ts=0&share=copy

In this way, uTalk is very similar to Rosetta Stone: teaching you the language by letting your brain “figure it out”. As I said, this is more difficult in the short term, but much more effective in the long-term. If you’ve ever struggled with getting stuck translating in your head when you’re trying to communicate, this approach will circumvent that entire step.

And don’t worry: even if you don’t understand every single word at this point, that is totally normal. This sort of game trains your brain to differentiate between different inflections, vocab words, etc., not necessarily to have “correct” grammar or vocabulary.

Speaking game

In this activity…well, you can see for yourself how I tricked myself by trying to trick uTalk! Basically, it’s time for you to prove if you’re pronouncing the phrases correctly enough to understand yourself compared to the native audio.

This can technically be helpful for pronunciation (though I recommend Speechling more for that), but I’d say this would be more helpful for retaining the vocabulary into your memory.

Easy game
Speaking game
Hard game
Memory game
Recall game

Hard Game

The Hard Game is where you start testing to see how effectively you’re learning, and whether or not you need to study more. This is active use of your memory.

You get a number of images and an audio track. Your job is to select the image that belongs to that audio track. No more text, no more translations. Now it’s up to you to know which words mean what.

Once you get to this point, you should have a decent idea of if you need more practice or not. By now you’ll be tested on whether or not you kind of have a hang on this or not.

Memory Game

Memory Game takes it a step further by cutting your time shorter. With the Hard Game, you get plenty of time to process and think, and then make your choice.

With Memory Game, you’re flashed with images for a couple of seconds, and they’re instantly covered back up. Then audio plays, and you have to select which image (remembering which image is where) goes with the audio clip you’re hearing.

This is where uTalk gets intense! You only get to see these images for like 3 seconds before they’re covered up. When you tap on one card, only that one card flips back over, so there’s no getting around it!

Recall Game

Last but not least we have Recall Game! In this final exercise, you’ll be tested on this vocab with every skill you’ve been practicing: you get the English word/phrase and the image, and your job is to record yourself saying the correct foreign phrase.

Just like with the Speaking Game, there’s no attempt at speech recognition – you’re trusted to know for yourself whether or not you’ve got it. Once you make your recording and the English is translated, you have the option to:

replay your own recorded audio
play uTalk’s native audio
report that you got it wrong
report that you got it right

I love that it’s totally up to you to say how well you did on your own speaking portion, and whether or not you got the phrase right. Self-reporting is where it’s at!

uTalk review: prices

uTalk’s payment model is super interesting! uTalk gives you the option to earn more time, earn more information. Or, to make things simpler, you can just pay to play.

Click here for uTalk’s updated pricing.

For one, uCoins gives you the option not only to work your way through (earning uCoins as you play uTalk’s games) but also to only pay for a little at a time.

If 60+ different topics spanning 140+ different languages is too much for you (’cause that is definitely a lot), just pay for the topics that are actually beneficial to you.

uTalk review: who it’s for

I do genuinely love uTalk, both because it’s an excellent way to learn a new language, but also because of their ethics, and their commitment to making endangered and less common languages more accessible.

As for actually using uTalk to learn a language, this uTalk review proves that it’s a great app for those who are looking for a quick route to effective use and understanding of the language in very specific situations, without the hullabaloo of fancy add-ons or confusing features.

uTalk is simple, direct, and effective.

If that’s your way to learn languages, similar alternatives to uTalk include Rosetta Stone and Speechling; both are just as simple and focus on speaking, but Rosetta Stone is more modern while Speechling isn’t as effective for teaching the language as it is promoting your pronunciation.

Alternatively, if you need heavier gamification to keep you interested and engaged long-term, I might recommend something like Polygloss or Speakly.

Suffice to say, uTalk is a great option for language learners looking for resources to support lesser-known languages that aren’t available elsewhere. Click here to get 20% off uTalk!