If you want to learn a language but don’t want to pay for class, here are ten great websites for you to learn a new language. However, keep in mind that a key part in learning a language is immersion; so you will have to converse with others as part of your learning experience. With further ado, here are the ten best websites to learn a foreign language:
1) Livemocha
Featuring a catchy tagline, “creating a world without barriers,” this website is one of the largest with over 6 million members. It is an interactive website to learn a foreign language, offering free and paid services for millions of its members in 190 countries. There are live classes, flexible schedules for people on the go, and an interactive forum that others with similar interests may discuss and practice. They also offer all enthusiasts a sample class for their reference.
2) Busuu
Busuu provides an avenue for people with similar interests not only to pursue their quest to learn a second language, but also allow them to meet and develop camaraderie even in cyberspace. This website provides a language enthusiast with options such as downloading a mobile app, interactive session of their choice, and an access to the dreaded grammatical guides for newbies. If you want to track your progress, you can do so by taking an exam at the end of a specific course. This website truly makes learning easy and friendly.
3) Word2word
Word2word offers a free and low cost way to learning a foreign language. The website welcomes you with several choices as to how you want to proceed with your learning. It gives the learner a variety of options ranging from online dictionaries and translators, free online language courses, free videos, forum, real audio language stations, free language software, meet ups, and 50 various help functions in over 200 languages! If a person’s initial goal is to increase his vocabulary and improve his syntax, word2word is no doubt, a useful website.
4) Skritter
If Japanese or Chinese is the foreign language you would want to master, Skritter definitely is a good resource. As you might logically predict, it is not the easiest task to learn these characters in comparison to learning the English alphabet for non-English speakers. Skritter is that focused tool that aids the learner’s memory in retaining the characters as it is of primordial importance in learning this language. It prides itself with a 95% guarantee of retention for its learner. The downside though is that this website is not free of charge. They have a 2-week trial for those who want to test the waters before investing. This website advertises itself by being innovative, fun, and low cost – three salable points to a language enthusiast.
5) Mylanguage Exchange
http://mylanguageexchange.com/
With over 1 million members in 133 countries, this website offers 115 different languages for people who want to learn a foreign language. It basically hosts online language exchange practice. It provides text chat rooms, voice chat rooms, lesson plans, dictionaries, a bulletin board, and a club library, and even allows online recording of slang and other expressions. It is a user friendly and non-intimidating website that encourages making friends while a person also endeavors to learn a second language. It offers suggestions to the user depending on his or her learning level. It offers text chat for all beginners, an option for text or voice chat for intermediate learners, and a recommended voice chat for all advanced learners. To add an ingredient of fun to the learning process, the website includes Hangman, a game that allows the learner to practice using his newly-acquired words and phrases.
6) Internet Polyglot
http://www.internetpolyglot.com/
This website is totally free of charge. It offers a variety of choices for foreign language that a person could potentially learn. It is designed in such a way that a learner is assisted in memorizing words and what these words mean. It believes that learning is best facilitated when a learner’s retention is ensured. Another noteworthy feature of Internet Polyglot is that it would best function as a supplementary website more than as a primary. As mentioned, this website focuses more on aiding the memory, which presumes that a person already has a good grasp of the language basics.
7) Ethnologue
Ethnologue is compiled by a non-profit organization with consultative status to the United Nations- SIL. It aims for sustainable development for learners by employing various methods for learning such as research, related literatures, scripts, and the like. This is a more in-depth and exhaustive approach to learning a foreign language. This website focuses more on understanding the language a person is interested in, not so much on the command of the language.
8) My Happy Planet
This website is designed like Facebook or any other social networking site. It is free of charge, and it requires its member to create a profile that shall subsequently become publicly available. Once a person creates a profile, he can access home, friends, videos, lessons, and messages. It has an advanced search setting that enables a user to filter the people that he wants to correspond with. It allows the user to send friend requests to those they believe can have a mutually beneficial correspondence. The purpose of all these is to enable the user to easily find a native language partner. It will now be the learner’s choice whether he wants online or offline messaging.
9) Babbel
Babbel is supported by the European Regional Development Fund. Learning a foreign language with this website is broken down into simpler, easy-to-understand steps. It provides different levels of learning such as if a person is a beginner or an advanced beginner. The website employs a technique of associating new words with corresponding images and audio, making it very easy for its user to learn a foreign language. It also usually ends with allowing the users to match their newly-acquired words to what they mean to provide effective reinforcement. The beginners tab offers simple words matched with their meanings, while the advanced tab offers conversational phrases matched with their meanings.
10) Madinah Arabic
This 8-year old tool endeavors to teach Arabic for free to those who are interested. They are backed many experts in the field of languages to guide their students as they venture into learning this new albeit, difficult language. This website is well aware of the intrinsic complexity of the Arabic language, thereby using a variety of methods to help make learning it easier and bearable.
They just recently launched a paid service for those who are keen to learn Arabic with a private tutor, and has partnered with Skype to cater to those who want to be tutored depending on their interest, such as business Arabic, modern standard, tajweed, and many others. They have flashcards, interactive forum, printable e-books, and many other courses that a learner can download for free. This website is optimal for the visual learners as it has colorful and eye catching images.
Nice one. learning a foreign language is important when we need it
Livemocha is really great because you can interact with native speaker. Babbel is really goog as well if you want to start learning a language. I have been using http://www.watwis.com lately to learn spanish and french and it is pretty cool. I am just waiting for new content!