tech

"Hello. Bonjour. Hola!" How To Learn A Foreign Language With The Help Of Technology

Technology has changed the way people learn and access education, particularly languages. In our this week's Tech Tuesday feature, we're going to see how you can learn a foreign language by simply using online tools!

Cover image via Asia Photopress/Alamy

1. Duolingo

Image via Duolingo

Duolingo is one of the most popular language apps out there, with more than 38 million users. And they’re getting results. According to an independent study conducted by the City University of New York and the University of South Carolina, an average of 34 hours of Duolingo is equivalent to a full university semester of language education.

It's free and works across the web, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. There are no ads, because the service uses some of your language skills to crowd-source translation services to businesses.

2. Busuu

Busuu is a social network for learning languages. Based on a freemium business model, this free language portal provides learning units for twelve languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese.

The company is named after the Busuu language of Cameroon which is spoken by only 8 people.While interactive flashcards are the foundation of Busuu, you get spoken translations to help with your pronunciation too.

3. Byki

Image via malavida.com

Byki uses a series of flash cards and is designed to expand your vocabulary and track your progress to ensure that you're actually converting your new language to memory. Each language offers three vocabulary lists at no cost, but if you’d like to learn more, you can upgrade the app for USD7.99.

4. Readlang

Image via kinja-img.com

ReadLang is one of the best language learning tools. It is especially good for helping you get past the beginner levels of a language and into the intermediate and advanced stages. It's a webapp and Chrome extension that helps you learn by translating web sites and creating flashcards and word lists for you.

You can customise a dictionary and synchronize YouTube videos to transcriptions. The app keeps track of the phrases you've translated and creates flashcards (with spaced repetition algorithm) for you to practice with.

After you've used the above listed apps/sites to learn the language of your choice, here's a list of essential apps for you to download in case you decided to travel to a foreign country...

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