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Are free tools efficient and usefull? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lise26 Newbie France Joined 4979 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: French* Studies: Portuguese | Message 1 of 9 10 April 2011 at 2:23am | IP Logged | ||
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What do you think about tools provided by websites where you can exchange languages? I
mean about the efficiency and the quality of the free lessons, podcasts, dictionaries, classes, vocabulary cards, textual and vocal chats etc. I would like to get critical opinions about those materials and your opinion about the more useful part of this system, is it to talk to native speakers, to have the possibility to get texts corrected by natives. I would be glad to get opinions of teachers or didacticians. I’m just a student and a language lover who need to get a better understanding of the subject. Thanks by advance. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 9 10 April 2011 at 2:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Lise,
This depends pretty heavily on which free tools you're talking about, as a wide range of quality exists. For example, I find Anki to be a very high quality vocabulary program, Lang8 to be incredibly useful for getting texts corrected (useful for catching mistakes) and anything allowing you to chat with natives is invaluable. On the other hand, some very pricy programs like Rosetta Stone are not (for many people) worth the money. If you find a free tool, I'd ask about it here for that specific tool. Because in general, the quality varies A LOT. -Keilan 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lise26 Newbie France Joined 4979 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: French* Studies: Portuguese | Message 3 of 9 10 April 2011 at 4:27am | IP Logged | ||
I meant tools provided on websites like livemocha, polyglotte club, palabela, babbel.. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 5071 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 4 of 9 10 April 2011 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I've been using busuu.com for a couple of weeks now and I've been enjoying it. It has introduced me to some
new vocabulary in a relatively painless manner. Yes, working hard on straight up word lists might be more efficient, but there are times when you just want to sit back and learn in a more relaxed way. I should say that I've tried Rosetta Stone but got rid of it. While busuu is similar, the lessons seem to go by faster, and collecting those berries is oddly addictive. The site has exercises for writing which will be corrected by those who speak your target language, but or course quality of corrections will vary. Some people are quite good, and you're got to befriend those who are. Search out people who speak your target language and are learning your own native language, and then add them as friend. Correct their work and they should return the favor. Your writings are stored as well, so it would be helpful to look back at them after some time has past to better understand the mistakes that you made. The chat is also good at that site. I'd recommend it. You lose some of the audio clips once the free premium membership runs out (after 7 days), but the most valuable materials are free. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lambinator Diglot Newbie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4979 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, Thai Studies: Indonesian, Tetum | Message 5 of 9 10 April 2011 at 11:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Busuu certainly is fun. I had not known of it before reading this thread. I registered just now and have already learnt some Portuguese, and earned a few batches of berries. Yes, they certainly are addictive.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5496 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 6 of 9 10 April 2011 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've never used a site like busuu or lang8, although the former looks interesting, so
I'll have to check it out later. I have found that free online courses produced by universities or government agencies are usually of high quality. Two good examples I can think of are www.parla.cat and www.icelandiconline.is. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 9 11 April 2011 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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My current language learning practices are heavily dependent on free sources on the internet - though not those mentioned above. I get a lot of relevant content from the many versions of Wikipedia and from the homepages of a number of scientific magazines, I get the rest by making Google searches, I listen to free internet TV and radio found through portals like wwiTV and I use Google translate to produce bilingual texts ... in short free sources on the internet are my main gateway to learning new languages.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 8 of 9 11 April 2011 at 2:17am | IP Logged | ||
Same here. I use as many free sites as possible for my learning. It's not as convenient as using a course/book/program but can be very effective. You have to know how to pool together many diferent sources and how to search for what you need. I'm learning Portuguese right now and I have two online dictionaries, Brazilian novels in public domain, bilingual radionovelas (with text and audio), blogs with audio and text, audio books with text from librivox, regular skype exchange for conversation (the best resource), forums for writing, grammar exercises, podcasts with transcripts, multimedia exercises and multimedia books, youtube videos. There's a text to speech website that is quite good, at least for a few main languages. There's a lot of stuff out there if you're a person who doesn't have to have a structured program. You can indeed do it. Drawbacks are: it can mean that you are tied to the computer and some people cannot tolerate that, you need to be somewhat tech savvy in order to download mp3s when there is no obvious link and create your own bilingual book from two different sources. It also helps to be able to search in your target language for grammar exercises. For many/most people that is just too much effort What's out there, available and free, is absolutely amazing! You have to do some digging. It does take time and effort. You need to be comfortable with independent learning and know how to structure your learning in order to fully take advantage of free resources. It is not as "convenient" as using Assimil, TY, or In 3 Months. Free resources are what I mostly use in learning Portuguese and will be my main source when I next learn French. When I do, I''ll do it for free and on-line. The quality is good and the price is right. Edited by iguanamon on 11 April 2011 at 2:36am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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