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Ipad and language learning | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 1 of 33 10 April 2013 at 8:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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So, I have been using my ipad for a few months. And one of the first areas of
exploration after I got it were possible uses for language learning. What I have found, tried, loved, hated so far: 1.The ipad keyboard Awesome! The easiest way to type foreign characters ever! I just hold my finger on the basic key and get to choose from several variants of it with diacritics. So with just the basic Czech localisation (of which I was a bit afraid, fortunately without reason), I can write in Czech, English, French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Swedish,Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Esperanto,Latin and others! And I can easily add other keyboards and switch (I use the Greek one, useful for chemistry and other sciences, and plan to try Russian someday. I haven't tried Japanese or Chinese, but I suppose they should be covered inteligently as well) 2.SRS-Anki is the best! The ideal way to study vocabulary in the shorter, empty spaces during the day. I have tried about ten flashcards apps. What I found were mostly very simple apps which were flashcards but not SRS, some allowed you to study in ipad but you could modify or add cards only in web browser, some allowed only small decks etc. So I bought the Anki app which syncronises with my computer very easily and is worth every cent. Yes, it costs nearly 24 euro but it is one of the things I use the most on my ipad. 3.Scritter-the thing I'll pay for as soon as I start learning Japanese or Chinese On my way through language app lists and recommendations, I found this. Basically, it is an srs for the Japanese and Chinese characters where you are to write them. To me, it sounds like the best way to learn them. The price is higher, so I will pay only after I commit to serious learning of one of the two languages. But in the price, there is the app which corrects you, has some srs inside and includes character and wordlists from most widely used courses. 4.Busuu One of the popular ways to learn languages on computer. The app seems to be quite intelligent but I don't use Busuu even at computer as the ratio price/value_for_my_needs isn't good enough. But I know some people like Busuu and the app seems to be quite well thought out. 5.Many "courses" of the "first 1000 words" kind Far too many. Their creators found this to be an easy way to get money. Basically srs, but far from the quality of anki, in my opinion, and even the full and payed versions do not give more than basic vocabulary. Until I see the app "First 30000 words in the target language", I am not going to use these even for free 6.Dictionaries! Awesome! Easy to carry around and to search in. There are many for many languages. I have very good experience with those by Mahmud Ahsan (I have several:German, French, Spanish, Italian) and by We Love Apps SL (Swedish, Norwegian, Polish). Both have free and paid versions, I think, but even the free ones are great. And there are as well monolingual dictionaries, like the one by Real Academia Espanola. And multilingual an whatever else. 7.Books! One of my favourites: Free Books app You can either import your ebooks, or you can find more through your ipad. There are bookshops (one annoying thing: app for buying books is often hard to tell from app with books included in the appstore at the first sight). And there are sources of free books. I wasn't impressed by the app of Project Gutenberg. It is a paid one and quite useless. I find it difficult to use, the searching function is far from perfect, especially when trying to search in other languages than English, the format of the books is not too easy to read and I had some troubles to find out whether a book is downloaded or not before I tried to read it offline (and failed). On the other hand, I really like the Free Books App. The creators seem to be more enthusiastic, the thing is better thought out and more comfortable for the user in my opinion. They do not have search by language function yet, but seem to be working on it (based on their feedback forum). And there are eve newer books which somehow got into the public domain or to which the freebooks got license. 8.Radio or TV! When connected to the internet, you can watch or listen to your target language with apps like "German TV" or "Pro TV". Well, you may not be lucky to catch movies at most of the available channels, but you can surely find news, music, regional channels etc. 9.Music Yes, of course you can drag there your music or you can buy it on itunes. The process of dragging things to the ipad (audio, pdfs etc) is a bit more complicated at the beginning, if you are used to windows like I am. But it is not that difficult to learn. 10. iTunes U Some univerities publish texts for their courses here and it is all available for free. Most of it is in English but you can find other languages as well. 11. Games in foreign languages My brother often accidentally switches his zoo builder game into Korean, Russian or something else. (Doesn't matter, he can't read even Czech yet.) Many games allow you to play in other languages. How much of the language is actually there, that varies. And the nice text games are mostly in English only. But there is no reason not to believe there will be some in other larger languages soon as well. 15 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5172 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 2 of 33 12 April 2013 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Thanks for a great post on the language tools available for iPad!
How can I find this dictionary? I use the online dictionary on the Real Academia Espanola website a lot, but I wasn't aware that I could download a copy onto my iPad. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 33 14 April 2013 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is available in the appstore for free.
I'm glad I could help and I'm looking forward to suggestions by anyone else. I'm always looking for new tools and resources :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 4 of 33 14 April 2013 at 8:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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You don't need an expensive ipad to do this, you can get an inexpensive android phone and buy all those apps @ Playstore. Many apps are not even optimized for tablets (for example Eurotalk apps).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 5 of 33 14 April 2013 at 8:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I use android, but the opportunities are similar. Like iPad, if you hold down on a
letter on the keyboard, all of the accent and diacritic options appear. A few further suggestions (all available on iPad):
I know the thread is for iPad, but I will mention one advantage of android: ankidroid is free, but you have to pay for the iPad app of anki. Edited by Jeffers on 14 April 2013 at 9:00pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 6 of 33 14 April 2013 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sure, Medulin, there are more options now. I chose ipad but I am sure there are learners
who prefer android tablets/android smartphones/iphones/other tablets or smartphones and hopefully, they will share their experience too. Especially as there are both similarities and differences between the apps available to each platform. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7206 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 33 14 April 2013 at 11:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, the iPad helps primarily through free books and being extremely portable. E.G., I use it in bed every day while my wife uses her to check the Facebook status of her friends. The only advantage of an iPad versus a laptop for me is portability. I'm fortunate in that my work wanted to spend some money at the end of the year and bought us one. If I was really comparing it to a computer device, I'd probably find shortcomings in the proprietary nature of the iPad
I don't currently use SRS software. The web is also helpful and available on the iPad. For me, one of the most useful peices of hardware technology is the thumb drive. With it, I can keep my current audio files arranged for learning in the car and at work. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 33 15 April 2013 at 11:42am | IP Logged | ||
Same with me. I use the ipad like a little book that I can read anywhere in the house. I often read several online articles in my TL before I even get out of bed. Unfamiliar words can be looked up in seconds (how did we cope before online dictionaries?). I also use the ipad for Skype conversations. So yes, I could do all of that on a laptop or desktop but the sheer portability of the ipad has basically given my language learning a kick up the behind. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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