“Everyone is capable of becoming fluent in a second or third or ninth language! All you need is the desire to learn and the right system” – Steve Kaufmann, LingQ co-founder
The world we live in today is mostly multicultural and constantly changing. How to keep up with the changes? Multilingualism is the answer. Making friends from different countries, exploring different cultures, more colorful journeys, or making better business connections are some of the clear benefits.
According to the research, there are significant benefits of learning new languages early. Bilingual children have been shown to outperform monolingual children on tasks measuring executive functioning skills – “The effects of bilingualism on toddlers’ executive functioning”. What is more, this research shows positive impact of bilingualism when it comes to earnings.
There are many online language platforms you can use. Some of them are paid or partially paid and some are completely FREE. I’ve selected those which give you learning materials completely for free.
And the first choice is…
DUOLINGO
Web: https://www.duolingo.com
This is definitely a must have when we talk about learning languages online.
With Duolingo you can practice all the skills: speaking, reading, listening and writing. The most popular course English for Spanish speakers has 60M+ learners. As you can read on app info: “It’s effective. 34 hours of Duolingo are equivalent to a semester of university-level education. “
What I liked in Duolingo? – new words are introduced with images without the text translation so you learn from making visual associations – word – image. You can also compete against your friends.
Currently, you can learn English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Polish (yes, yes!) and Turkish.
MEMRISE.COM
A very popular web platform with a mobile version. You can learn languages (and not only languages) using memory-enhancing techniques. There is a huge community of learners and teachers who create courses and learn together. Memrise was originally created for Chinese language learning, where memorable images to facilitate learning and remembering are very important.
For example, you can see below how to learn the word ‘woman’ in Chinese. This method uses memes – simple graphics based on associations.
The basic idea: you have words with images – the learning process begins – so you are planting words in your memory like a flower in the soil. After a while, the system algorithms show these words again for repetition –in a spaced repetition system, so now you WATER (repeat) the words you have already learned. What is interesting, recently they have also started implementing videos in their English lessons and still more is in the pipeline.
Also, you can compete with your friends (mempals) – there is a leaderboard of daily, monthly and all time stats. Also you can learn in groups.
Memrise covers over 200 different languages including those popular ones like Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese but even those that few people know, for example, Ossetian or Kyrgiz.
One thing you need to bear in mind though is that most of the content on site is user generated so the quality of courses can be very high but also they are courses with spelling mistakes, bad translations, etc.
Where can you find it?
Web: www.memrise.com
There are also apps for Android and iPhone.
Lingulia
Lingualia offers two languages: English and Spanish. There is an animated character Lingu, whose role is to motivate you and treat you like a student in class. The platform’s algorithms personalise your learning experience, but firstly you choose your language level and time you want to spend on learning weekly.
There is a 200 000 + community of learners – you can help them in correcting texts in your native language and vice versa. The platform also offers a mobile app.
Internet Polyglot
Internet Polyglot offers basic words and phrases of dozen languages, such as Arabic, Spanish, Swahili, Farsi or Japanese.
There seems to be some technical problems with the service, but still you can benefit from it. You don’t have to register – actually somehow it works better without registering. You can play many flashcard games: picture game, guessing game, typing game, matching game.
Lang 8
The idea behind this platform is quite simple. You find study partners and learn from each other after sending a friend request. You write a text in the language you are learning – so you need to already know some basics of that language. Other members correct your work. You in return correct their entries. And you collect L points with it. More points you have, the more likely people will give give you feedback on your posts. This way the platform encourages active participation and cooperation between its users.
Summing up, this platform is best for improving writing skills in the language you want to master.
Polyglot Club
This is more of a meetup site than a website with language lessons. You can create an event in your city and have conversations with people around you. And maybe make new friends too.
You can write articles, get help with polishing them and help others. There are also videos and a chat room for members.
HelloChinese
A great app for learning Chinese. Nearly 1.2 billion people (around 16% of the world’s population) speak some form of Chinese as their first language so I could not forget about this one either.
An app is of course for FREE. It is game based to keep your motivation on high levels. It covers many aspects of language such as reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary and grammar. You can practice your pronunciation with speech recognition. What’s also important, you can learn Chinese characters in an easy way through decomposing them and learning the proper stroke order.
I also recommend to have a look at the website below which hosts courses from FSI.
Foreign Services Institute
You can find there audio recordings and PDF’s. This is some kind of a resources website, without much visual appeal, community etc but still very useful. All materials are here in the public domain. The content may be old but if you like drills and a lot of repetition in your learning, this might be the place for you.
Conclusion
And this is it! All listed language platforms are for FREE! It’s amazing that learning languages doesn’t have to involve spending money. The benefits of learning languages are waiting for you, just give it a try.
Happy learning!