Learning to speak one or more foreign languages is something that most people dream about, but never really get around to doing. Thankfully, today there are a large number of smartphone apps that make it easier to follow that dream. Duolingo is certainly one of the best apps out there as far as learning from scratch is concerned. But once you’ve got the basics right, how do you go about honing those skills? I doubt your neighbor or Facebook friend is a Chinese or French bloke who has the time to act as your practice partner. That’s where Lingualy comes in. This app promises to make your foreign language learning experience meaningful and fun.
Classroom based learning methods are quite drab. Not everyone enjoys a textbook type study, at least not from a smartphone. Learning a language should happen in natural circumstances. Since one of the primary activities on a smartphone involves browsing, wouldn’t that be a great place to start learning? That’s what the team behind Lingualy believes.
While classroom based teaching methods are useful, the best learning comes from practical experience, regular practice and colloquial usage, and Lingualy hopes to act as a personal assistant who will help you gain that experience. So how does Lingualy work. Let’s take a look.
Lingualy Language Learning App Review
Lingualy studies words and click patterns to suggest words that you can understand. You can add words to the built-in dictionary everyday and be on your way to honing your language skills.
First off, you need to sign in to the app after you download it. Google, Facebook or a unique email ID should do. Then elect the language you want to learn and quickly run through the introductory wizard. (At present the app offers English, Russian, French, Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic but at least one of your languages must be set to English.)
To start learning the language, you have to type in words in a language that you are comfortable with. So lets say you want to learn French. You can input any word or words in English within the app and it will create personalized flash cards for you.
The flash cards contain the translation, synonyms and definitions and the audio pronunciation. Further more, clicking on the word takes you to an image card with several sentences formed using the word. If you like, you can share the flash card with your Facebook friends.
Apart from the Dictionary, there are other tabs that you can interact with.The Words tab will display all the words you added to your dictionary You can tap on a picture card to learn its pronunciation and read through sentences created with the word.
The Practice tab offers three workout sessions: Coffee break featuring 5 words, Regular Size with 15 words and Word Feast with 30 words. The activity will ask you if you know a specific word and will then give you a multiple choice question to answer in six seconds. This is definitely a great way to remember and recollect words you learned in previous sessions.
The Read tab collates topics from the internet which may include news stories from around the world and you can practice your language skills by reading from bits and pieces of information. You can also tap on words you are not familiar with to add them to the dictionary.
The last tab on the app is the Settings tab where you can switch to other languages and log out.
If you’re looking to learn a foreign language from scratch, Lingualy may not be the app you’ll want to use. But if you’re looking to practice and hone your language skills by reading articles and expanding on that learning, Lingualy is definitely a great app to check out. It certainly takes the dullness out of a standard course material and makes you look forward to reading something new, current and relevant that’s happening in your world today.
Lingualy is available as a Chrome extension, as an Android app and has just been launched on iOS as well.
Do give the apps a try and enjoy learning something new everyday the fun way.
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