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Hone Your Foreign Language Skills with Babbel
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 12:30 AM on January 17, 2008
Want to hone a second language skill that's gotten a tad bit rusty since you last used it in, say, your first year of college? Babbel, a social language training site, provides both collaborative lesson planning and discussion with a reminder service to keep you on track in your language learning. The site's actual instruction tools aren't up to par with a paid instructional course—you mostly learn to expand your vocabulary and pronunciation through quizzes—but the reminder functions and implied social responsibility might be just what you need to move your language learning from the "One Day" list to the "Every Day" pile. Babbel requires Flash and a free sign-up to use.
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1Time
Posted 7:22 AM 16/1/08
I found [www.mangolanguages.com] to be another great option for learning foreign languages. Lots of variety, and some free courses as well. My kids are using it to practice their German speaking skills. - Tim
1Time
Leisureguy
Posted 7:41 AM 16/1/08
If your public library has an on-line catalog, you may find that it also offers (free) access to Rosetta Stone language courses, which are quite good.
Leisureguy
mr.Smith
Posted 7:39 AM 16/1/08
Also try www.livemocha.com
Keeps track of your improvements and the social aspect with peer reviewing works quite well.
mr.Smith
Borisga
Posted 7:31 AM 17/1/08
I am a fan of [www.myngle.com.] This is a global online marketplace for live onlne language instruction which just started.
Borisga
eduFire
Posted 10:31 AM 17/1/08
Mango, LiveMocha and Myngle are great. We've just launched a blog at [blog.edufire.com] with free videos, podcasts, etc. for people learning languages. The main eduFire service will launch soon but we're bringing in a select number of teachers and students right now for beta testing.
eduFire
ChambrasWeed
Posted 1:31 AM 18/1/08
Thanks for the advice. It is always good to keep practicing :=)
ChambrasWeed
Nxqd3051990
Posted 3:31 AM 18/1/08
I love Quizlet.com more than. Because I'm not native English, France, Spain, German ... I'm Vietnamese so babbel is not for me :)
Nxqd3051990
surfmadpig
Posted 7:23 AM 19/1/08
Since I have basic skills in Spanish, i thought i should give the spanish lesson a try. It was rather baffling - you get shown random pictures which are supposed to repesent a word, but it's more often that I don't recall what the picture is supposed to mean than what the word is in Spanish.
for example, in a set of cards you get the picture of a rainbow for "june" and a sunset for "july". why? beh. makes no sense.
surfmadpig