My favorite language learning tools so far

As lock­down goes on, I con­tin­ue in my per­son­al mis­sion to learn Ger­man and Japan­ese. Last week I had the very reward­ing feel­ing of being able to under­stand most of the Easy Ger­man videos from A1 to B1. There are still some words miss­ing, but damn it feels good to know what’s going on. If you’re learn­ing a lan­guage and haven’t heard of Easy Lan­guages, you’re miss­ing out—they’re awesome!

Any­way, that’s only one of the many resources avail­able. Actu­al­ly, there are so many of them that sim­ply choos­ing one is a daunt­ing task in on itself. Before mov­ing on, be aware I’m in no way spon­sored by any of these apps or creators—these are just my per­son­al preferences.

So, here are my picks!

Busuu

Like Duolin­go but more struc­tured towards pro­fi­cien­cy lev­els and more gram­mar inten­sive. They don’t use their own pro­gres­sion scale, but the actu­al lev­els for the lan­guage you’re study­ing, i.e. N5 to N1 for Japan­ese, A1 to C2 for Ger­man, etc. Addi­tion­al­ly, the app have a reviews sys­tem pow­ered by spaced-rep­e­ti­tion, a com­mu­ni­ty fea­ture so native speak­ers cor­rect your exer­cis­es, and a lot more.

Easy Languages

Immer­sion is how you get past advanced-begin­ner. Easy Lan­guages is a YouTube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to inter­view­ing peo­ple in a tar­get lan­guage, sup­ple­ment­ed with sub­ti­tles in that same lan­guage and Eng­lish. They also have gram­mar lessons for begin­ners, inter­me­di­ate, and even advanced learn­ers. Even Luca Lam­par­iel­lo him­self, a famous poly­glot blog­ger, uses their videos as an exam­ple of how to learn lan­guages from YouTube. For me, this chan­nel is an absolute godsend.

Pimsleur

Pro­nun­ci­a­tion is key to stand out from oth­er flu­ent speak­ers. In lan­guages like Span­ish and Chi­nese, pro­nun­ci­a­tion and inflec­tion can deter­mine whether you’re say­ing one thing or anoth­er. Pim­sleur, is an audio course which, while dat­ed af, will leave your pro­nun­ci­a­tion like a sharp­ened sword. I pre­fer this one over Michel Thomas since it’s more focused on pro­nun­ci­a­tion. Also, none of these resources will make you flu­ent by them­selves, so set­ting expec­ta­tions is important.

Tofugu and WaniKani

As they say, Japan­ese is easy to speak, but a night­mare to write. I can cer­ti­fy that it is true, and I put the blame on Kan­ji a hun­dred per­cent. But fear not, WaniKani, a spaced-rep­e­ti­tion app that seeks to teach you thou­sands of Kan­ji and vocab­u­lary words in the span of a year, comes to the res­cue. Also, there’s Tofugu, a web­site from the same cre­ators with count­less arti­cles on gram­mar, cul­ture, and learn­ing short­cuts. They even have a com­plete “Teach Your­self Japan­ese” plan.

Language Learning with Netflix (LLN)

Last but not least we have a Chrome exten­sion that “aug­ments” your Net­flix watch­ing expe­ri­ence. LLN takes Net­flix’s sub­ti­tles and makes them click­able so you can see the def­i­n­i­tions. It also pro­vides nav­i­ga­tion short­cuts, for exam­ple, press­ing the down arrow key will repeat the sec­tion of the video, left and right go back and forth through the sub­ti­tles, and a lot more. 

And that’s it from my fave lan­guage learn­ing tools and resources. Do you have any favorites? What are your thoughts on Duolingo? 😄

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