triglotgoal Newbie United States Joined 4276 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 10 30 December 2013 at 4:25am | IP Logged |
Hi, I haven't been on in ahwile but this is a awesome forum, I probably never would have gotten to a decent level in Spanish had it not been for this forum, or even known that I could learn a language at all. So thanks!
Anyway, I was always resistant to a smart phone, I like a nice basic phone, but needed to get a iphone for work, I really know nothing about apps.
I ve been working a lot, but want to ramp up my language study again.Seems cool I could study on the train to work. What, preferably free , apps would you recomend for language learning? Any good ones for increasing vocabulary? Or good for anything else language related. I want to re kindle and improve my Spanish as well as make headway in russian in case that helps, but feel free to post apps for other languages too, in case others are interested. Thanks!
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 2 of 10 30 December 2013 at 4:41am | IP Logged |
I went a bit crazy with apps after I first got my iPhone. An essential is something that lets you listen to podcasts. I like Stitcher for it's discovery capabilities, but RSS Radio even more for its functionality. A dictionary (or several) is good. WordReference has an app and you can add other dictionaries and phrase books specialized for your languages. There's also Soundcloud but I've never used it. Memrise is good for acquiring vocabulary. If you use Anki you can use it for iPhone as well, but he charges a pretty penny for the iPhone version (basically, he lets everyone else have it for free but has iPhone users subsidize them). There's this course called Earworms that looked interesting. They let you download a free sample pack that includes the intro lessons for a bunch of languages to try it out. There ought to be apps for major news and media in your languages that you should try. Be sure to set up YouTube and Twitter with some useful subscriptions that you can access on the fly. If you like learning with music, a good music app would be helpful. I like Spotify.
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5044 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin
| Message 3 of 10 30 December 2013 at 6:07am | IP Logged |
For Chinese I like Skritter and Pleco. Anki is a good app for lots of things, but as sctroyenne says it is expensive on iPhone. Collin's WordUp is also great and includes SRS capabilities for Spanish at least (not sure about their other languages.) Other than that, depending on your level, I would recommend apps for Native content. For Spanish I like BBC Mundo, El Gatoparado and some podcasts. Good luck, the iPhone is a great language tool!
1 person has voted this message useful
|
ElComadreja Senior Member Philippines bibletranslatio Joined 7026 days ago 683 posts - 757 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Ancient Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Cebuano, French, Tagalog
| Message 4 of 10 30 December 2013 at 6:44pm | IP Logged |
I notice they have some DLI apps out there now for free... but the recordings are
unnaturally slow.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Mohave Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Mohave1 Joined 3795 days ago 291 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 5 of 10 31 December 2013 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
One of my favs is TuneInRadio (free). It allows you to stream radio from around the world. Learnbots (paid)
is good for verb conjugations, although for French it is missing a few key verbs. Someone on this forum
made the recommendation for Freebooks. It has 23,000+ public domain language books -- including many in
different foreign languages. I also use DropBox extensively.
Specifically for French, I also use La Press+, France Press, and 7jours,
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5744 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French
| Message 6 of 10 31 December 2013 at 7:48am | IP Logged |
Duolingo is fun on an iPad, not sure how well it may present on the smaller iPhone
screen. duolingo
Anki for iPad is awesome, if for no other reason than it tends to increase the frequency
that one accesses Anki compared to a desktop or laptop. As sctroyenne notes, there is
a comparative high cost (comparative to other apps), but given all the free labour the
Anki designer has put in for the learner community, I am happy to see a few coins going
his or her way.
Edited by Spanky on 31 December 2013 at 7:51am
1 person has voted this message useful
|
tajosto Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4445 days ago 54 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Czech
| Message 7 of 10 01 January 2014 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
Speater is great for intensively listening to audio. It allows you to slow things down, repeat loops, add
bookmarks. And, it does all that with video and subtitles, as well.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish
| Message 8 of 10 01 January 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
Oh! There are also some productivity apps which may help with establishing your study routine. Though I'm guilty of downloading them yet never using them. Some good ones look like ATracker for tracking how you spend your time, 30/30 for time blocking, Pomodoro for a simple task timer, and Way of Life and Chains (which works like the Seinfeld Calendar) for tracking your habits. And there are dozens of task management apps.
1 person has voted this message useful
|