For a Long-Term Commitment: Duolingo
Why we like it: While all of these apps are free to download, Duolingo is the only one without a premium subscription model, which means you’re free to learn 23 languages at your own pace—even if that means spending several hours a day on your Italian. It’s also holistic in its teaching style: You learn vocabulary, grammar, and usage simultaneously, with illustrated flashcards and fill-in-the-blank exercises that really make you think. A new feature are chat bots, which stretch your skills. They might walk you through a conversation with a chef who’s deciding what to eat, or a model who wants help picking an outfit. Whether you need to refer to word cues at the bottom of the screen or not, they force you to use contextual clues to learn new words.
Elsewhere in the app, game-like elements are a valuable motivator. You lose points for wrong answers and gain them back by practicing your rustiest words. And sliding scales indicate whether you’ve fully mastered a lesson or are due for a refresh.
The caveat: If learning to speak is your priority, you’ll find the spelling exercises tedious. (They’re especially frustrating with romance languages that require lots of accent marks.) Pronunciation exercises are also too forgiving—you can be marked correct even if you completely botch your answers. And for travelers, vocabulary doesn’t skew towards the practical—you’re likely to learn how to conjugate “I read, you read, she reads” or “the cat is black” before learning to say “please” and “thank you.”
For a Quick Fix: Memrise
Why we like it: Beneath a kitschy narrative concept about unlocking the outer cosmos, Memrise shows a real concern for both fun and practicality. A highly customizable format lets you decide how many words you can absorb in a single lesson and positive reinforcement abounds; as you progress in your learning, you earn points for correct answers, graduate through a silly rank system, collect badges, and watch your skills grow from seedlings to flowers. Plus, the app favors everyday conversational skills over technical exercises—my very first lesson in French covered the phrase “bottoms up!” Also fun: Lessons in 18 languages include endearing video clips from native speakers so you can hear different voices and attune your ear to the way real people (not overly articulate teachers) speak on a day-to-day basis.
The caveat: The app offers little opportunity to practice your pronunciation, and it constantly nags you to upgrade to the “pro” version, which includes “speed review” games and extended lessons—at a cost of $60 per year.
The Closest Thing to a Classroom Education: Mondly
Why we like it: It’s not beautifully designed. And it’s not gamified. But what Mondly lacks in charm, it makes up for in comprehensiveness and rigor. Basic lessons walk you through the nuts and bolts of conversational language (“How are you?” and “My name is …”); they get progressively difficult and more involved, spending roughly two hours of instruction on each of 20 topics (animals, travel, shopping, for instance). As in school, you get as much out of Mondly as you’re willing to put into it: New words come with conjugation charts you can study, and daily lessons cover bonus materials and unlock weekly quizzes. It adds up to the most fulsome app-learning experience, if not the most riveting one.
The caveat: Like some other apps, Mondly keeps the majority of its lessons behind a paywall. (Plans start from $3.99 per month.) And its uninspired interface can sometimes feel like a chore. But with 32 languages to choose among—including such hard-to-find options as Persian and Afrikaans—it may be worth it.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.