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Clozemaster review: customizable, engaging, and simple

February 4, 2022 by Jamie Leave a Comment

Clozemaster is a retro-themed website & app with a huge collection of sentences for intermediate+ language students to practice their vocabulary and grammar. These sentences are grouped into tons of categories, with the option for users to create their own categories, so the sky is the limit with this Clozemaster review.

In this Clozemaster review, you’ll learn where Clozemaster shines, its flaws, and whether Clozemaster is best for your language learning needs. And, if it’s not, keep reading for the Clozemaster alternative for you.

Clozemaster review: languages

While Clozemaster is not for beginners, it is for learners of a ton of languages:

Afrikaans
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Basque
Belarusian
Breton
Bulgarian
Cantonese
Catalan
Chinese (Mandarin)
Chinese (Mandarin)(Traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French

Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Guaraní
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Kazakh
Korean
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Occitan

Persian (Farsi)
Piedmontese
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Slovak
Slovenian
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
Welsh
Yiddish

Because Clozemaster sources their sentences from an external website (more on that later), it is clearly accessible to a huge variety of foreign languages.

It is worth noting, however, that the options and opportunities are not equal across all languages. After deciding if Clozemater is a language learning app that you’re interested in using, you’ll then need to take a look at your target language and see the variety of content you’ll have to work with.

But what is Clozemaster?

The name “Clozemaster” wasn’t created out of thin air; if you’re not familiar with “clozes”, they’re a type of activity that’s very common in language learning, basically a fill-in-the-blank deal. Specifically, a “cloze” is defined by them as:

Of, relating to, or being a test of reading comprehension that involves having the person being tested supply words that have been systematically deleted from a text.

Thus, Clozemaster is the master of clozes.

It’s worth mentioning that Clozemaster isn’t the only resource that offers clozes, but clozes are all that Clozemaster offers. And I do have to say, Clozemaster is absolutely the master when it comes to learning a language online with clozes.

Clozemaster review: a walk-through

After creating an account on Clozemaster and selecting a few different options, you’re spat out onto the dashboard. It’s a retro-themed view (with retro sounds, too) that adds a touch more fun to the process, since you feel like it’s more of a game than anything else.

At first glance, Clozemaster isn’t very user-friendly. You’re presented with a ton of different options without any obvious indication as to which option to take or what you’re supposed to do. It’s a little bit better than LingQ’s lack of usability, but it can still take a minute to get your bearings.

Across all languages, you get some form of “beginner” content, like:

Most Common Words
Fluency Fast Track
Cloze-Collections

The third one is your own collection of sentences.

You would think that these would be beginner-friendly, but they are definitely not! Clozemaster requires at least an intermediate understanding of the language, and it’ll be abundantly clear if your language skills are up to snuff the second you try using Clozemaster.

While those “beginner” collections are free for all, premium subscribers also get Grammar Challenges, which are collections of sentences that are meant to help you master traditionally difficult grammatical concepts. These are different in every language, as every language has different grammar concepts.

But again, the concept is simple: fill-in-the-blank sentences.

Depending on the language, you also get a few settings to decide how you want to play:

vocabulary
listening
speaking

Not all languages feature all skills, so make sure you take a look at your target language before you commit. For example, audio recordings are only available in a fraction of these languages. Expect them in more commonly learned languages, not-so-much in others.

You can also choose how many sentences you’re shown per round: 5-∞ (yes, the site really says that). Then, either multiple choice or text input. Choose text to really challenge yourself! You’ll also earn 2x the points.

If I’m already at an intermediate level in a language (or at any point, personally), I prefer to manually type in the answer. This helps cement words and conjugations into your brain, as you’re forcing yourself to spell correctly as opposed to going off a general idea of what the correct word looks like.

This is the difference between vaguely recognizing a word and truly learning it.

I also love that Clozemaster holds you accountable for appropriate accents (including offering the letters if you don’t have your keyboard set up for that yet), and encourages you to try, one letter at a time. That can make the difference between making an educated guess and just giving up.

Clozemaster also approaches languages less from an academic standpoint and more from a colloquial one. In the lesson above, you learn phrases that are actually used every day in Spanish, and not necessarily the ones you’ll learn in a textbook.

And then, at the end of all that, you’ll level up with a super fun GIF. Doesn’t quite match up with the retro theme, but I’m willing to let it slide 😉

Creating flashcards with Clozemaster

Clozemaster’s premade collections can do a lot of good (my favorite being the grammar stuff), but some language learners may have specific goals, or find these general and unpredictable collections boring.

No worries – using the Clozemaster system, you can create all the collections you want! You can either create them manually, or you can search through already-created cloze sentences and organize them as you like.

When using these options, it is totally possible to use Clozemaster for beginner content; however, it does take some extra work and is probably not great if you’re not a seasoned language learner.

Experienced language learner starting a new language? Sure. New language learner just trying to figure everything out? Not ideal.

Speaking of options, you also get the freedom to dictate how you’re learning the language every single time you press play. These settings take Clozemaster’s sentences and create entirely different exercises based just on the skills you want to practice.

(Again, not all languages will necessarily have all these options.)

How Clozemaster gets its sentences

Clozemaster has access to so many sentences because they’re sourced straight from Tatoeba.org, which is an open collection of sentences and translations. Anybody can hop onto the website, search for a word, and find sentences to give their words some context.

While it is an amazing use of an open-source website, it has limitations.

For one, it’s not unusual to get sentences like these.

No need to read too into it – they’re just sentences that someone in the world uploaded in Spanish/English, and maybe they’ll pop up as you study. At any time, you also have the option to remove these sentences from your collections.

Besides that, Clozemaster provides not only sentences with a single cloze, but you can also use it for a whole passage!

This is an option to vary up your studies and keep you on your toes, as well as throw some reading comprehension into the mix.

Okay, clearly it’s not perfect, but it is an option. Once you apply the right settings, this could be great for reading comprehension and finding new vocabulary, which you can easily add to any cloze collection at any time.

Clozemaster review: should you go pro?

Let’s talk about becoming a Clozemaster subscriber. Certain aspects of Clozemaster are always free, i.e. the “Fluency Fast Track” and all the reading practice.

Honestly, though, Clozemaster Pro opens up a ton of doors when it comes to both reading and listening practice.

Pro subscribers get access to all of these lessons, both as reading and listening, all as fill-in-the-blank, contextual questions. It’s a lot of simple yet very useful content and considering Clozemaster themselves don’t “create” anything per se, Clozemaster Pro is very reasonably priced: $8 a month, and even cheaper as an annual subscription.

Honestly, if Clozemaster is something that keeps your interests and matches your language goals, I’d spring for Pro. For $8/month, you’ll get a step more of a holistic language education. If you enjoy Clozemaster free, I’d recommend Clozemaster Pro for pretty much any kind of language learner and their goals.

Clozemaster review: who’s it for?

Clozemaster is an excellent resource for intermediate-advanced level learners looking to build their vocabulary and drill some of the more difficult grammar concepts they face. It’s also excellent for language learners looking for more context in general: just search for a term and Clozemaster will bring you all the sentences you need from Tatoeba for you to create a collection.

Easy as pie.

However, beginner language learners should definitely be looking elsewhere, maybe at something like Lingvist (a bit more pricey, but provides similar context) or maybe Anki (much less user-friendly, but great for clozes).

If you need more direct, clear-cut grammar lessons, go somewhere else (maybe Busuu or Babbel?), because Clozemaster assumes that you know the basic idea of these concepts, and you only need practice and repetition.

Or, if you’d rather apply clozes to texts you’re already reading, VocabBoost may be for you.

That said, repetition is important for any language learner, and Clozemaster is an excellent option!

Mondly Review: a fancy beginner’s app

January 20, 2022 by Jamie 3 Comments

Mondly is a super fun, super easy language app that has earned itself a plethora of awards for its tech including Augmented Reality and chatbots. Is Mondly the language app for you? In this Mondly review, you’ll learn where Mondly shines, its flaws, and what exactly you can expect from it.

Mondly Languages review

One of my favorite things about Mondly is its selection of languages; not only does it support a ton of them, but each language in this list can be learned through any of the other languages in this list. That’s no small feat!

You can use Mondly to learn/learn from:

Afrikaans
Arabic
Bengali
Bulgarian
Catalan
Chinese (Mandarin)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English (American)
English (British)
Filipino (Tagalog)
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Italian

Japanese
Korean
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Norwegian
Persian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazilian)
Portuguese (European)
Romanian
Russian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Vietnamese

I love this because Mondly has made language learning super accessible to not only those interested in laddering (learning a third language through a second language) but also native speakers of languages besides English!

Mondly’s website boasts “it’s faster to learn from your native language” and they’re absolutely right.

For this Mondly review, I decided to learn a bit of Afrikaans to see if the content is consistent across languages (unlike Duolingo, where there is a clear preference for more commonly-learned languages).

Mondly review: the good

Let’s get started with this Mondly review. This is how all the Mondly languages are set up: collections of lessons (generally 6 or 8 apiece) organized by category and presented in an artistic version of a map.

These lessons are very simple multiple-choice, so it’s a great option for quick, low-key practice. All of the content presented in the language you’re learning is accompanied by native audio, not a robot voice, so Mondly also does a very solid job of training your ear to recognize the words you’re learning.

Mondly hits all the senses

Another thing I love about Mondly is how it caters to all the senses and, therefore, all different types of learners. This game isn’t difficult, but it does change up the format of the questions (while always supplying audio), so it pokes at all the senses just right.

Now, if you’ve ever tried using Duolingo before, you know that a lot of the sentences you end up translating are sentences that don’t make any sense, and therefore you’ll never use them. If you’re not a fan of “implicit learning” like that, Mondly may be a good alternative for you, as you learn with everyday sentences.

Mondly’s Chatbot

While the above quizzes are pretty passive learning, Mondly also helps you to practice speaking the language in a couple of different, fun ways. Let’s start with the chatbot.

Mondly’s chatbot is available both on desktop and via the app and can be found inside a category (select the lessons labeled “Conversation”). There you’ll find a pre-written conversation for you to mimic and practice speaking the language with.

While many chatbots depend on speech recognition (which is iffy technology and can keep you stuck on a phrase even with perfect pronunciation) Mondly guides you through a conversation while letting you be the judge of your speaking!

These conversations are one of the last lessons in any given category, so you’ll learn the vocabulary before you’re led to use it in a conversation. As you can see, here’s how your first conversations go:

read and listen to the first phrase
record yourself repeating the phrase
compare your audio to the original, trying again if necessary
continue to the next phrase and repeat

You’ll respond to both sides of the conversations for double the practice.

I’m really glad Mondly’s going in this direction (in the past they’ve relied on speech recognition and other kinds of confusing features)! Chatbots aren’t unique to Mondly, but you know what is? Augmented Reality.

Mondly’s Augmented Reality

The big perk that helps the Mondly language app stand out from all the other apps is its Augmented Reality, or “AR”. The concept is really awesome: as long as you have an AR-capable device, Mondly can help you procure images of things that don’t exist through your phone’s camera! Because of this feature, Mondly advertises itself as the future of language learning. Only time will tell!

To access the AR, you’ll need to download another app that’s included with all Mondly Premium accounts (we’ll discuss free vs premium later). It looks like most if not all languages are available for AR experiences, but not all languages have all lessons/conversations.

P.S. Mondly also has a very new VR feature…looks really buggy for now, but I’m excited to see what comes of it!

AR lessons

The first feature of Mondly’s AR is lessons. It’s a cool option and I’m excited to see how it develops over time, but for now, it’s almost more like a party trick than anything else.

It’s a very engaging way to learn beginner vocab, but most of it isn’t actually in the target language. That’s a personal preference though, and may not be a big deal to you. AR is a new science, so be wary of your expectations; Mondly’s AR still relies on speech recognition, and the vocabulary words themselves are spoken by a robot voice (a different robot voice than the AR lady’s robot voice). I wish they could at least use the same audio clip that they use for the regular lessons!

You may notice at the end that the video just…stops. This is a great feature but it is prone to crash.

I’m also not sure if it was Mondly or my device that muted the audio, but it was mostly robotic English.

While I would rather stick to Mondly’s normal lessons over the AR, I think the AR conversations are awesome!

AR conversations

Just like the AR lessons are a fancier version of Mondly’s regular lessons, AR conversations are a fancier version of the chatbots. The conversations have the potential to go a lot more smoothly because instead of recording every phrase every step of the way, you’re relying on speech recognition to accurately understand your side of the conversation.

Speech recognition is faulty in general, but Mondly does offer the option to skip any particular part of the dialogue for those times when you’re saying it right but it’s just not taking it.

As you can tell, this feels much more like a real conversation, which is awesome practice for the real deal!

…if you could hear it. You’re just going to have to trust me!

Daily, weekly, & monthly practice

If you like using the daily streak feature of popular language apps to keep you consistent and accountable, you’ll love Mondly’s version of the daily streak!

Many language learners get burned out by this feature because they find themselves coming back to their app every day out of guilt over the potential of losing their streak and therefore their motivation. This feature changes that.

Instead of just a reminder to do something, or even a reminder to do a particular activity, Mondly triples down on this motivation tactic with not only a daily streak but lessons every week and month that are only accessible if you complete all the lessons of that week and month, respectively.

They’re bite-sized, and they might not be new content, but it’s a great way to poke at your new language consistently every day. Even if you’re not necessarily learning something new, it keeps the language fresh in your mind to prevent forgetting anything

If you’re worried about these little snippets not being enough, don’t. If there’s one thing I learned from the Fluent in 3 Months Challenge, it’s that the important thing is that you’re working on your language consistently. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot, but as long as you’re using it, your skill will keep growing.

Mondly review: the not-so-good

While I love the unique direction Mondly is taking language learning, it’s not for everyone. For example, Mondly is beginner content only, and really best for starting a language from scratch.

Mondly can also be kind of inconsistent between different languages, features, and categories. Not every category has chatbot conversations, not every language has the same categories, etc. You’ll have to check your target language in particular to see your options.

Finally, Mondly’s statistics. Clearly, it’s a beautiful feature that can make you feel good about the time you’ve spent on a language, how many words and phrases you’ve seen and your daily streak. These statistics pop up after every lesson.

This isn’t any worse than most apps’ statistics feature, but I’d love to see some sort of SRS or even how well you know different terms. For example, I love the Memrise feature that shows your knowledge of a term going from short-term memory to long-term (theoretically, obviously, but I still like it).

Mondly Premium: worth the splurge?

With Mondly free, you get access to:

daily lessons (for daily streak lovers)
fun quizzes
chatbot conversations

Mondly’s free features are a great way to get to know the app and see if it’s right for you without any commitment. If you do love it, Mondly Premium includes features like:

full access to all 41 language courses (1,320 language combinations!)
vocab organized into practical categories (including business categories)
over 50 real and stimulated native conversations
grammar lessons
access to all daily, weekly, and monthly quizzes created since 2015
access to Mondly AR and the Mondly Kids app

And the Mondly app is updated consistently over time, which makes lifetime access to all languages and updates a steal if it suits your language learning goals.

Or, if you’re enjoying the app but still commitment-phobic, you can always spring for a monthly membership and upgrade later.

Mondly review: who it’s for

From this Mondly review alone you can see the sheer amount of potential there is in this app, and I love seeing it develop over time!

I hate to use the word “polyglot”, but honestly, Mondly is a great investment for language learners who want a super fun, engaging way to access over 1,000 different language courses for native speakers of different languages.

It’s a great resource for getting beginner vocab as well as ease into conversations. The AR lessons need some work, but it’s still new tech and Mondly is at the front of the line with this stuff.

But if you’ve got your basic vocab covered and you’d rather stick to conversations with real human beings, Mondly isn’t going to be for you. Same for those who aren’t particularly into gamification or features like daily streaks.

Wanna give Mondly a shot? Use my link to get 20% off!

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.

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.