|
 |
Language101.com | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| bhengh Newbie United States benandleanna.com/ Joined 6514 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 8 25 June 2012 at 6:50pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Does anyone have any experience with language101.com? I haven't seen much of anything mentioned about it here on the forum. Just wondering if anyone here has any positive or negative experiences or opinions about it. I'm interested in studying Spanish to begin with.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfeinst Newbie United States Joined 4592 days ago 21 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 2 of 8 26 June 2012 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
|
I use language101 daily. I paid for the full membership so I can study all of their languages as can my household. The people running the site have been very helpful when I have had difficulties which is always a plus.
I've been studying Spanish for about 2 1/2 months. I find the site helps me with my pronunciation a lot more than other techniques I've tried. Basically it is just like the demo. They show a phrase in English, a literal translation of what the Spanish would be and then place holders for the words in Spanish. You then rate yourself after speaking. You have the option of having the phrase repeated normal speed or slower (which helps in learning the pronunciation). You will not get grammar lessons. It is memorization using spaced repetition. I have found that I tend to rely on the literal translation because the entire phrase is not always displayed together so some partial phrases do not make sense if looking at the regular English. For example you might see "I want a beach..." and later on you would get "towel". But literally you would say "I want a towel" "of beach" - or something like that. So you see the first phrase and have to say "Quiero una tolla" which is not "I want a beach...". So if you ignore the literal, some phrases (because they are not complete sentences can be confusing). I have run into a couple of issues where the spoken phrase does not match the displayed phrase (this happened in the French - which I am reviewing as well). And a couple of times, no spoken at all. I know they are working on a new version so some of these bugs hopefully will go away. I did request the ability to optionally see the target text and then I have to say the English. Hopefully that will be implemented. Also, they use Flash, so no iPad or iPhone support (though they say they are working on that as well). Overall, I am very pleased with the site. I have learned a lot. I would not use it as my only resource because you should learn some grammar. But it is the main part of my learning and I think I have progressed because of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4709 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 3 of 8 26 June 2012 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
|
sfeinst, any chance you want to give one of your 4 licenses to use the program to me? ;)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sfeinst Newbie United States Joined 4592 days ago 21 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 4 of 8 26 June 2012 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, just can't bring myself to do it. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4709 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 8 27 June 2012 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
|
Haha. Understandable. But it was worth a try :)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| _akire Newbie United States Joined 5115 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Spanish | Message 6 of 8 01 July 2012 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I tested it out after seeing it mentioned in this thread. I tried the Irish free trial, which might have been a mistake because I have less familiarity with it.
I liked that they teach the same phrase in different dialects. I really disliked that timer bar at the bottom of the screen. I felt so pressured by it that I didn't even complete the free trial. I've tried a lot of language programs and websites, but never really disliked one as strongly as language101.com. It was strange, because I don't think going over the timer really penalized me in any way, but I was unable to ignore it. If I'd chosen a different language to try out, maybe it would have gone more smoothly for me, but if I already know what they're teaching me, there's no point in paying for it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Longinus Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4875 days ago 26 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Polish, Macedonian | Message 7 of 8 02 July 2012 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have used it in the past, but am not using it currently because of some annoying bugs, which hopefully are fixed by now. I will start using it again this fall as I switch back into working on Russian more consistently. It's a nice supplementary activity, memorizing audio phrases using an SR algorithm, but couldn't be used by itself as a way to learn a language. As such, it's a bit pricy, and I probably wouldn't sign up for it if I had it to do over again.
I also find the timer extremely annoying, because the moving numbers and bar are very distracting when you're trying to think. If you wanted a timer, the way to go is a simple audio tone at the end of the time interval. However, you can resize the text in the browser window so the timer is off the bottom of the screen, and this is what I do when I'm using it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 8 06 July 2012 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I really enjoyed it for Japanese. I also just finished writing a French series for them, which hasn't been published yet. Sprachprofi has done extensive work for them in various languages as well.
1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
