studysthetics: Over the last few years I’ve dipped in and out of learning lots of different l

studysthetics:

Over the last few years I’ve dipped in and out of learning lots of different languages, using mostly apps and a few books to teach myself intermediate Polish and GCSE French and know the beginnings of others like Japanese, Italian and Swedish. So, I made this post to recommend some helpful apps and websites. (I’ll put half of it under a cut so I don’t take up everyone’s blogs).

 HelloTalk 
This is an app that is like a language exchange chat, kinda similar to kik or whatsapp, where you can put in the language you’re learning and the level of knowledge you have and find natives and other people who speak it and are also looking to learn your native language. It also includes features like a translator and grammar correction on your messages and there is also the option of voice to text messages. It’s really good for improving your confidence in your target languages and means you get to use and practice a lot more with natives, which is useful for learning the more casual and colloquial terms used in everyday life that you don’t get from textbooks. What better way to improve your language skills than by talking to natives?

Memrise
Memrise is probably one of the best websites I’ve come across for learning new words and is designed to help you learn and remember them through repetition. I have used it as a starting point for pretty much every language I learn as there’s beginner courses for pretty much EVERY language (I’ve done things like Hawaiian on there which is very hard to find elsewhere online). However, whilst the majority of course are good quality some may be not as good because they’re all user made, and many do not teach grammar so it’s harder to use only memrise for learning.

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