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Why so little love for Babbel.com? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| fleurdeneige Diglot Pro Member France Joined 5048 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 15 27 January 2013 at 12:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sono felicissima! They have just added a level 6 to the Beginner Italian course. I'm
going to learn the imperfetto! (purtroppo, they have a new woman doing the audio and her voice is a little harsh, hopefully I will be able to get used to it...) Make sure you check regularly under the New section in the Course listings. There was nothing on my homepage about this new course - I only found it because I make it a habit to see what's new. Also, one other positive thing about Babbel is that they seem to care about their users - I've sent two emails to them with questions and both were answered promptly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4707 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes  Speaks: Czech* | Message 10 of 15 27 January 2013 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not different from Anki, except that you can't customize the cards. Anki is free Babbel is not.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4707 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 11 of 15 27 January 2013 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||
True. I tried advanced German and the only difficult part was figuring out how the sorting task works. I don't speak any German. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fleurdeneige Diglot Pro Member France Joined 5048 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 15 01 February 2013 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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LaughingChimp wrote:
"It's not different from Anki, except that you can't customize the cards. Anki is free Babbel is not." and I reply: hmmm, I'm not sure that I understand your point of view. Before replying I re- downloaded Anki in order to re-check it out (I tried it years ago and based on your comment, I figured that they must have made a ton of upgrades...) What I found was an interesting free tool that is quite different from Babbel - except for the very vague fact that they both use SRS. And here we have a serious dichotomy between create your own SRS and created for you SRS. Anki requires that you create your own SRS rhythm (and sorry, but I work, and have kids, and "ain't got time for that" as they say) whereas Babbel has kindly installed an SRS system for me (so much better for those of us whose executive functions are already overtaxed and who need to spend our time learning and not making more decisions...). Obviously, if you have the time Anki is fab, but if you work and have other commitments, Babbel might be a good alternative. In addition, Babbel takes me through the beginning grammar steps in a nice logical way(with helpful grammar notes, in English) while at the same time making it possible for me to either create my own vocab lists (à la Memrise) or use some of the "peripheral"/other courses - courses for travel, refresher courses, grammar courses, etc. And, and, most importantly, on Babbel, this is all checked and validated by someone who has good language skills - I know that what I learn there is correct and that is important to me and totally justifies whatever small fee I may pay. My time is limited and I do not want to spend it weeding through someone else's incorrect deck. Also, would love some insight on this obsession with getting free stuff... 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5017 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 15 02 February 2013 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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This obsession with free stuff has simple roots. That free stuff is often much better than the paid stuff, so why should I pay? When I pay for something, I pay for the highest quality things that I really want.
So, no need to pay for Babbel, just an example. Instead, I buy a good quality course (book + audio) or two, use free anki (it's not true that you have to make your own content, you can choose a deck by someone else), have my writing checked at italki.com for free, get a good exercisebook to learn grammar in a way that is more efficient for me than dragging words. etc. Babbel does have some advantages. You can use it on an ipad wherever you go, that is surely a plus. There is some content and it may cover the basics, at least of the large languages, which are better developped on Babbel. And it may suit to those people who need things to be "painless" at all costs. But I am not one of them. I want things that work for me and I am likely to pay reasonable price for them if I can't get them for free. And I am one of those people who get suspicious when something has "too nice" graphics. It often comes at a price. For example Memrise 1.0 is much worse than Beta while looking "nicer". 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cwcowellshah Newbie United States Joined 4387 days ago 34 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 14 of 15 02 February 2013 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
Whoah--I've been using Babbel for 3 months and didn't realize until you said this that you can add your own vocab words to their SRS system. I'm going to use that feature a lot, after struggling with the logistical hassles of paper flashcards. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4917 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 15 of 15 08 April 2013 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | ||
The Babbel app for android is free (I have no idea about iPad), and it is pretty good. The app differs from the online version in that it is entirely based around vocabulary learning, but it also practices this using sentences. Here are some pros and cons of the android app: The pros: *It uses multiple methods of testing the vocabulary: type the answer, multiple choice, sound, picture recognition, fill in the blank, etc. (Incidentally, it reminds me a lot of BYKI.) *It uses SRS, which they call the "Intelligent Review Manager". *The first thing that happens when you get a new word is it shows a picture & the English word, and speaks the TL word. Your task is to speak the word exactly as you hear it. (Unfortunately, it is too strict, and so this is also one of the cons). *There are a load of categories from "First words and sentences" to "Holidays", "culture", "Lifestyle", "Environment", etc. Each category has from 6 to 16 lessons of about 10 words each. Some lesson appear in more than one category. You download the sublessons as you want them. *They claim to cover 3000 words, all with pictures, sound and example sentences. (Some languages have less, e.g. Indonesian has 2000 words). *Works well offline. *There is no hardsell to join Babbel.com (there is a single link on the homepage). *They have 11 languages, including some lesser supported languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Indonesian, English). I have only tried the French version. The cons: *Fixed vocabulary. You have their words and that's it. *The speech recognition is quite picky. And if the speaker makes an extra noise at the end (not uncommon), you have to make that noise. However, it is quite simple to turn off the microphone function if you want. Then you just listen to the word at that stage without having to repeat it. *It doesn't teach grammar. Although there are example sentences for the fill in the blank cards, you just click on the dictionary form of the word. However, the app is a vocabulary trainer, not a grammar trainer. *EDIT: there is an option to choose user language, so I'm deleting the con about it being all English. *EDIT: New con: when reviewing vocabulary, you only get the type the word mode. So there you go. I think that it is quite a good vocabulary trainer, and it is completely free. If you want a good SRS trainer, and don't have time to set up Anki for yourself, this is a simpler option. As to the online (pay) version, I have only seen a little of it. It seems to do similar things to Duolingo (which is free), but possibly a bit better (e.g. more lessons, more testing styles, human voice instead of computer generated). I know one person at work who bought a year's worth of Spanish lessons on Babbel, and she was happy with them. EDIT: I forgot to mention that you do have to set up a babbel.com account to use the app. I remember it being fairly painless, without much hardsell. One more con I just remembered: It is slightly difficult to use a single app with multiple users. You have to log out, and log on as the different user. So that isn't very child friendly. Which also reminds me, I set up my 8 year old daughter with the app on her kindle fire, and my 11 year old son on his phone. They both enjoyed it. Edited by Jeffers on 09 April 2013 at 7:09pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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