The ONLY 4 Language Learning Apps That Work | Delete the rest!
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π² Your phone is probably chock-full of language learning apps…
But how many of them actually work?
Here's the deal:
βΆοΈ There are only 4 kinds of language learning apps that actually work, and in this video you'll learn what they are.
So if you're looking for the best language learning app, this is your bible.
π LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY
Stories are the best way I have found to learn ANY language (even the difficult ones). Forget the boring textbooks and time-wasting apps and learn a language the natural, effective way with one of my story-based courses.
ππΌ
βπΌ BLOG VERSION:
Prefer reading to watching? Get the full scoop here:
ππΌ
β± TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 – Only 4 language learning apps actually work
00:30 – Content apps
02:35 – Language exchange apps
04:25 – Flashcard apps for language learning
06:36 – Language script apps
(Includes some free language learning apps!)
After this video, you should learn about the App Villain:
π€― Get my best language tips by email:
My name is Olly Richards, and on this channel I show you how to learn a new language with stories.
To see some of my previous experiments, why not try…
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π Daily Study Routines and Schedules
Or…
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Friends of mine who have made other cool videos about language apps:
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I would like to add something: If you want to benefit from spaced repetition, you don’t necessarily need an app. Personally I prefer paper flashcards, and I use a little cardboard box called a “Leitner Box”, which in Germany is sold under the name “Lernbox”. It helps to revise vocabulary (or other bits of information) at growing intervals through little compartments that get bigger. It’s easier to use then to explain it, and I recommend it for all those who are fans of paper and pen.
Anki is basically the app equivalent of a Leitner Box, it just does all of the repetition part through a carefully built algorithm rather than an arbitrary number of days/weeks
I totally agree. I ‘am much more efficient if I create handwritten flashcards.
Maybe I’ll get one of those to understand how it works. I was talking to some Germans about Anki about 2 years ago, and they said “Oh yeah, like a Leitner box. We all learned that when we were kids.” And I was like “F*ck, you learned that as a kid! That would have been some damn useful information when I was a kid. This idea has been around 100+ years, why haven’t we been using it?
Anyway, I’m happy to have learned about it now. But it’s an interesting cultural contrast. Germans found more efficient ways to learn. And Americans (my perception as an 80’s kid) emphasizes brute force learning and sometimes mindless hard work.
@Matt Reichmann Iβm sure they know, but some people just enjoy the process of making the flash cards since writing the information down can help with retention
Same here….fan of paper and pen..for me itβs the best…
Remember to find out about the App Villain after watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMvVoJs-eI
Is reading the book of Genesis in your target language a good strategy for learning? It seems to me that the kind of vocabulary in Genesis is very diverse and suited for narrating one’s own stories
So, Olly! I watched a lot of your videos now, and went to buy the Spanish course for $97. I did a few upgrades and want to finalize the purchase. *HOWEVER* the button leads me straight to your Funnel system, which I do not have the slightest interest to try it out and it seems that there is no way to check out the Spanish material unless I try that Funnel system for 2 weeks.
I’ve scrolled up and down and was looking for a way to get out of that loop.
I have to say, although I really enjoyed and want to buy your system, the fact that I am apparently forced to accept that Funnel trial before I can buy the Spanish course, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth!
If I am doing something wrong, let me know, I hope that this is a glitch!
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Well, I do have a fifth type of apps to signal: voice input apps like Google Voice Assistant or Amazon Alexa. I use them to put my pronunciation on a test: if Google Voice Assistant can understand my German, most likely a *living* German native speaker will do, as well.
Anyway, this is one of the best and most useful videos regarding this topic that I have ever seen. Kudos!
The converse is not true though; a native speaker understanding will not necessarily mean that the app would understand, as they also track accent. Even native speakers of a language like English, which has a large variety of accents, could fail this test.
@Jevin Liu That’s the problem I was going to mention. Cheers!
I as a native German speaker will probably be able to understand you well way sooner than the app will
As an Uruguayan and Spanish native speaker, Google/Siri/Alexa do not play well with Rioplatense (I know Argentinean and Uruguayan accents are not the same but for the sake of simplicity) accent. I need to “tone it down” a lot for it to work π
My friend started learning Finnish more than 30 years ago but he wasn’t motivated enough to plough through a book and the language course on CDs my dad gave him wasn’t for true beginners. Since he downloaded Duo Lingo his Finnish has improved and now that he is nearing the end of the course, he can speak simple sentences. He has a basic understanding of grammar (the hardest thing of Finnish language) so he isn’t stuck on only those phrases taught in the course.
I started learning Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Khmer, Tagalog and a couple of languages close to English with apps. Although I find Vietnamese disheartening and always leave it till last because I always lose my lives, I still end up practicing it more often than Tagalog, Thai and Khmer (and Chinese) I would really benefit knowing. That’s because Duo Lingo doesn’t offer those apps: they don’t put so much pressure and although I do like the content, they are not as gamified.
One app I played a lot in the past is Keng Thai. It is an app for leaning the alphabet and associated words (that has the sound). The paid version also has some writing exercises. I believe the app was a designed for children but I got the impression that it was mostly used by immigrants and foreign workers.
Has anyone else used Pimselur? Although it doesn’t give you a lot of vocabulary I found it super beneficial to get me really speaking German and become familiar with the sentence structure. It took 6 months to complete all the levels but the space repetition system it uses seemed to work because so far what I learned with it has stuck. I would listen and repeat back as I drove my half hour commute to work everyday and it honestly just made me more confident and eager as a learner. Well worth the 20$ a month subscription.
I’m not great in the language that I used Pimsleur for (Russian) but man did I find it incredible for getting me speaking and understanding Russian words and especially the pronunciation. It really helped me break down the nuance of how words are pronounced. Obviously the downside is it’s very conversational and I had to learn the alphabet separately. For a long time there were words I could understand but not identify in written form.
Yup, its good, I’m currently learning Farsi
I found Pimsleur incredibly, unbelievably boring but whatever I learned from it stayed with me forever.
I agree!
It didnβt work for me because I am a visual learner.
This is going to sound incredibly old-fashioned, but I still do Pimsleur tapes every morning to keep sharp on the basic grammatical “guts” of a language. It’s been 11 or 12 years now, though I’ve since upgraded to CDs, then converted those to MP4s. I read and use apps to learn new vocab and less frequent grammar, but Pimsleur for me is like a basketball player practicing short jumpers or a pianist practicing scales. You’re never going to forget that material entirely, but you can get very sloppy or less fluent if you don’t drill in the basics regularly – at least, I can. It’s especially helpful as I learn more languages, because one language never goes completely “cold” while I’m learning another.
Pimsleur was actually the only program that ever actually worked for me!
Yup, pimsleur brigade here!
Pimsleur are not old-fashioned, they are the best resource to learn how to speak a language with a good, if not great accent, IMO.
The problem is, they refuse to add Bulgarian, I asked them.
Pimsleur was definitely a game changer for me. After years in school failing to learn another language I knew that the only way I was going to have a hope was from being forced to speak it from the offset, rather than just reading and memorizing.
I love Pimsleur. After only four weeks of studying Spanish 30 minutes a day, I could have real conversations with people, and I got compliments on my accent.
So, about 1.5 years ago I started playing a hidden objects game and, on a whim, decided to change the language to German. I was learning it. I figured what the heck, might as well. So far it’s functioned as both a content (cuz there’s a pretty in depth story) and a flash card app. So, think outside the box with these! Pick apps you’ll engage in.
What game is it?
Yes, what game?
Donβt you ever worry about missing important details when playing using your foreign language? I would change my RPG games to French but Iβm too worried that Iβll hurt a characterβs feelings by misunderstanding them or something π
I’d like to know what’s the name of that game <3
Thatβs a brilliant idea!
If wishes were . . . I started learning languages before personal computers certainly before YouTube and all these other apps. Happy to have them now. I do not believe writing vocabulary down is a waste though, doing so helps me greatly. I discovered in university that just by wring copious notes in all of my classes (I rarely went back through them, even for exam preparation), I did much better than when I did not write notes during lecture.
1.Content Apps-newspapers ,blogs, LingQ, kindle,podcast. 2.Language Exchange-HelloTalk,Tandem. 3.Flashcard Apps-anki,quizlet,Flashcard deluxe with spaced repetition. 4. Script learning apps- Skritter
Came looking for this. Thank you.
Same
thanks!
Thanks. He took a long time to get to the point.
Technically we can also add dictionaries right?
I would argue that especially for language learning beginners it is equally beneficial to have any app you actually find fun and motivating even if it may not be the most efficient per minute. If you cram and cram and cram efficiency before you’ve grown a passion for it you will just burn out so finding less efficient but more playful and fun can be crucial success wise. Guilty pleasures ftw. ^^
So true
Totally agree. It help tremendously to have something you LIKE doing.
I agree.
Any suggestions? I want to learn French and Iβve been dabbling in it for a while but I always, as you said, burn out eventually. Iβm ready to try again now that I have a better overall discipline and I think a fun app that makes learning into a game will help on those low motivation games. Any ideas are greatly appreciated π
@Dusk Dawn You can find French youtubers/tiktokers/streamers etc that you become motivated to understand one day and practice listening, you can find books, games, music etc in French too to up the motivation/fun and as for apps try whatever you get your hands on and see if it’s any sort of fun. I have some word puzzle game apps installed for my target language and it doesn’t actively teach me new words but it practices word recognition and reading especially if I try to beat a high score. Webtoons is another guilty pleasure option that might not be all that crammy but can give visual aid while getting into reading and a lot of webtoons are pretty dialogue based so some slice of life ones while being more boring can give really good vocab. Finding fun content is like being a scavenger, you try a little this and that and see what is fun spending time on. I like wasting some time on drops mornings and evenings personally because it’s pretty gameified but can get my mind into the language mindset in the morning or relax unwind in the evening. Try whatever you can find and see what happens!
1. Content apps (e.g. Le Monde, Medium, LingQ, Kindle, Podcast)
2. Language exchange apps (e.g. Tandem, HelloTalk)
3. Flashcard apps with spaced repetition (e.g. Flashcard Deluxe, Anki, Quizlet)
4. Language script apps (e.g. Skritter)
Ty!
Youre awesome
CLisaa beat you to it by two months. π
Definitely itβs an extreme statement. Iβve been studying Italian on Duolingo and itβs been proving itself quite helpful. Maybe being a native Portuguese speaker that has a considerably solid knowledge of Spanish and French have helped me, since all these languages share a lot in common, but still the app is far away from being useless.
Duolingo is a game, not a language learning app
@Sky And that’s exactly what I like about it. Learning languages has been much easier for me when gamified. I especially really appreciate how Duolingo started including stories (granted in certain langauges) which really helped learn some extra words and seeing how the languages are used in story form.
@Sky it works if used properly
@Sky itβs a language learning app. paired with other input based methods itβs extremely productive. Helped me a ton before going to Central America. Im almost half way through the Spanish tree.
@Just another guy y cΓ³mo de bien hablas realmente espaΓ±ol, ya por curiosidad.
From an avid anki user (studied chinese in china for a bit over a year), great vid!
I would also add:
1. Dictionary apps. Maybe this is a bit obvious, but I’m not sure if they technically fit in any of your categories.
2. Conjugation apps, though I guess you could try somehow to fit this into script learning apps. I find these helpful because its about repeatedly recalling patterns, as opposed to just vocabulary. In Spanish it would be a bit ridiculous to have 40+ flashcards for every verb, especially since so many verbs follow regular patterns. However consistently getting those patterns down requires a lot of repetition.
I would say Duolingo can be quite useful, depends on what language you’re studying and how you’re using it. It’s great if it’s paired with actual real lessons. Some of the least popular languages don’t have a voice generator, so you actually hear native speakers say the sentences. And for the most popular languages, the community can be of massive help. I’m studying japanese right now at university, and I would not recommand Duolingo only, but the comments under the exercices have helped me a lot.
As someone with crippling adhd, I think people are shitting way too much on Duolingo. Like, Anki is great, but it’s also boring and you need to manage your platform by yourself, which can be very overwhelming. Not everybody has the capacity to put that much concentration into learning a language.
Duolingo gives a lot of content for free and they have really cool languages, like French creole.
ive thought about this quite a few times, i reckon duolingo is only overhyped in how it sells itself as a full language learning platform ( in that respect it delivers disapointing results) but if you consider it in the category of gamified flashcards with extra features and… suddenly its pretty awesome and over-delivers π i.e. just have the right expectations and its not so bad. nobody would expect to completely learn a language from only looking at flash cards
Duo is good for vocab, or for just doing a quick lesson/refresher. But I have never met a single person who soley uses duo. I think the problem is that it doesn’t bring back old vocab. After a lesson, you never hear the word again unless it’s an important on like “the” or something.
Speaking with native speakers in a shared interest is very educational. Like a lot of online gamers speak spanish, so one time in Among Us I got placed in a spanish server and I got to learn quite a bit of that language. It was fun bc I got to learn the colour names, and simple phrases everyone often repeated (like “no mi” to defend your innocence). The atmosphere also felt different, I saw more emoticons and laughs from everyone than I would see in an english server, so that was interesting.
Hello! Do you want to exchange languages? I speak Spanish and I would like to learn English
@Daniel Alvarez Sure my man. What kind of Spanish do you speak? I speak Canadian myself π¨π¦
A newer app I’ve been intrigued by is NativShark (for Japanese) which I think would fit into the Flashcard category. It has spaced repetition built into it and you can even build and organize your own decks apart from the ones they create based on the ‘units’ (lessons) you go through. They try to teach relevant practical speech that builds upon itself and a lot of it even has actual male/female voice-work! Really seems to help streamline part of the learning process but I’ll have to fully try it for myself!
Duolingo is a great app for starting to learn a language. When I started using Duolingo I was failing Spanish, now I have a B in it. There is a point where Duolingo becomes less useful once you get the conjugations and the word order down, but still it is very useful!
When learning words and their conjugations, Quizlet is good for that. I found google translate to be useful for certain phrases and to test if what I wrote in Spanish translated correctly into English. Spanish AR lists and SpanishDict great for more compel conjugations and understanding the irregular verbs.
I have a PhD in second language acquisition, and telling people to only focus on certain techniques and ignore others is irresponsible. The best advice is to have people find what works for them and that they enjoy to the point of sticking with it. I personally find what makes me love each language and culture, and then I really want to pick up that language.
It’s also a good idea to be well-rounded in what tools you use, and keep in mind that everyone’s goals and motivators are different (wanting to read classic texts, live in a country, pick up a language for work, etc.)
Blah, blah, blah. The king does not approve. Jeez!
β@MAC VENA bruh?
What’s a PhD??
Idk why Babbel isnβt mentioned more. Iβm learning Norwegian and my husband started learning it on Duolingo and I started it on Babbel and within 2 months I was speaking the language around the house regularly (Iβm in no way fluent, but in the first 2 weeks I had already learned the basics of grammar and pronouns and things like that and had gone onto learning sentence structure and things of that sort) and he was still only on small phrases like just learning vocabulary words.
Babbel seems to be MUCH faster and more efficient that duolingo and no one ever mentions it, I find it odd. My husband ended up giving up his membership and just started using my app to learn lolπ
So anyway, I recommend Babbel for sure!
Is babbel really worth it? I got to A2 level in German just using duolingo and Netflix (German shows/movies).
My speaking is really good but my reading lacks behindπ
@Olaf Haroldsonn II yesss Babbel is amazing! Itβs MUCH better than duolingo in my opinion. It helps a lot with the reading. Within the first day they have you reading and writing full conversations! I was so much further ahead than my husband who was using duolingo. Itβs 100% worth it. I bought the year long subscription and I promise itβs worth every penny.
I can relate to how learning a language was like 25-30 years ago. The only foreign language media was a German TV program on PBS (local TV station) from a station based in Boston, and that was maybe 1 hour a week, and maybe 1 Spanish channel (Spanish Soap Operas where they spoke super fast!). When I took French (2 1/2 years) and Spanish (1/2 year), we just had cassette tapes in class (if we were lucky – my language classes in middle school didn’t have any media), nor did the teachers even speak in the language, save for giving commands in that language. When I took Japanese in college (1999/2000), the world of the Internet started opening things up, and I had tons of material to immerse myself in, but no apps, or YouTube yet. Now, the amount of material and choices out there feels overwhelming!
Granted, I’m still partial to good old fashioned hand-written flash cards, though (English word/example sentence(s) on one side, Target language and sentences on the other side – maybe a picture). I feel like the physical writing of the word, plus a sentence or two helps me to retain it better rather than just clicking an area on the screen.