Conscious Manifestations

ArabicPod.net is a quality podcast for learning the Arabic language. The audio podcast lessons are free! and two levels of membership are also available for a nominal price. These include transcriptions of the lessons and additional study materials.

Lessons are well-structured and tackle many difficult aspects of learning the Arabic language, such as difficult letters to pronounce and cultural idiomatic expressions. Meet the teachers here.

ArabicPod.net also has a number of videos available. Most of these are for paid subscribers but there are also some for free. You will also find a forum on the website. If you are a premium member, you have access to a place to share documents, images, links and more with other users.

The dialect taught on this podcast is "common colloquial" Arabic, common across all Arabic dialects, as well as Standard Arabic. Read more about this.

What is ArabicPod?

ArabicPod is a website dedicated to providing the most innovative and effective methods for learning Arabic. We use the latest technologies in web 2.0 to provide a rich learning experience delivering podcasts, videos, games and much more.

Where is it based?

ArabicPod is based in London. If you’re around town, then why don’t you contact us and arrange to meet the ArabicPod team or even join us as a guest in some of our lessons.

Is it free?

All of our audio podcasts can be freely listened to and downloaded. For most of the other content, there is a subscription fee which is setup to cover the costs of running the website.

Visit ArabicPod.net Podcast.

Subscribe to ArabicPod.net.
Subscribe to ArabicPod.net Podcast via iTunes.
View ArabicPod.net's Feed on Free Language.

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The Rocket Spanish product from Rocket Languages has proved to be a highly successful, fun! and fast method for beginners to learn the Spanish language. The Rocket Languages team has designed a multi-faceted course including extensive audio lessons, software and learning games, grammar lessons with audio clips and a member's forum for help on demand.

I have personally been using Rocket Languages Japanese now as a total beginner with next to no knowledge of the Japanese language and the results have been excellent. I have used a lot of different language-learning methods (as you can tell from this website!) and the Rocket method is both quick and interesting, and I always find myself looking forward to the next lesson.

Don't just take my word for it. Try it out and if you don't like the results, you can get all your cash back for 60 days after you place an order. No risk there!

Rocket Spanish is designed to be the easiest to follow system for learning how to speak Spanish available. It is an interactive course that makes you want to study. Also, it's practical. You'll discover exactly what to say in virtually all situations.

With Rocket Spanish, you are going to learn Spanish rapidly, effectively, and easily. You are going to be able to speak at a restaurant, at an airport, with new friends...

With the Rocket Languages Spanish Program you get:

A Rocket Languages Interactive Audio Course that prompts you to speak Spanish in a conversational and friendly way so that the words just stick in your mind! Learn a language the easy way!

Mega Software Learning Games that are specifically designed to increase your vocabulary and understanding of Spanish and allow you to have fun in the process!

Fully illustrated and easy-to-follow Grammar Lessons, for those of you who love to know how Spanish works. Most of these come with embedded audio clips in the lessons so that you can hear exactly how the words are pronounced!

If you have any questions, you can either email us or post a message on our Members Only Learners Forums, where our team of language experts and fellow enthusiasts will respond to your needs. With every Premium order you get unlimited and full access to our Forum - imagine having a teacher, virtually "on call" 24 hours a day!

And of course all Rocket Languages products are backed by a 60 Day 100% Money Back Guarantee. We're that confident, and it's that simple.

Rocket Languages will teach you how to speak Spanish naturally, so you can read, write, speak, and understand the language as though you have lived there all your life - these are truly cutting-edge multimedia courses!

Find out more about Rocket Spanish.

Busuu is a shiny new language exchange community and free multimedia (image + audio) foreign language lesson archive. The site currently supports English, French, German and Spanish and the founders of Busuu plan to add more languages as quickly as they are able.

The site is based on the Drupal framework, the same platform as Free Language, though they have taken it to quite another level altogether! Clean, crisp, fast-loading and full of fun colorful graphics that change as your language skills improve (called the Busuu Language Garden), Busuu promises to be a contender in the growing social language learning milieu.

The lessons are divided into three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. Each lesson has a photo/audio component along with writing practice, native speaker exchange and a review test. You can keep a track record of your studies as you complete them. All lessons are free and can be completed at anytime, letting you choose your study schedule and mark your own progress.

Finding friends is easy through the search function, so discovering practice/exchange partners is fast and simple. Busuu provides a video chat function through the site for easy access to language exchanges without needing to go outside the site or use other utilities.

Altogether a bright, cheery and user-friendly site, Busuu weilds a healthy lessons archive and growing user community. Have a look at the site tour today to find out how to begin improving your English, French, German and Spanish skills. Who knows, by the time you read this article, other languages may have been added...

busuu.com is a start-up, based in Madrid, which runs an innovative online community for learning languages.

We have personally suffered from the traditional way to learn a new language which we always found expensive, difficult and boring.

Therefore, we decided to create a new concept of language learning by offering you the following advantages:

• Learn from your fellow students: Learn directly from native speakers of the busuu.com community and forget about the horrible grammar sessions you had in school
• Learn what you really want: Be completely flexible in the content you want to learn, from preparing for a job interview to a discotheque pick-up line we can meet all your language needs
• Learn for free: During our beta phase, busuu.com can be used completely for free! Once we launch our next version, you will have the possibility to pay a small amount per month in order to become a premium member and get access to additional learning tools and premium content. But even as a basis-member, you will always enjoy loads of learning content completely for free!

About the founders

Adrian, Co-Founder

Adrian is from Liechtenstein, an impressively small country in the heart of the European Alps.

He is fluent in the lovely Schweitzerdeutsch, German, English, French and really fights hard to finally improve his Spanish.

Bernhard, Co-Founder

Bernhard was born in the beautiful city of Vienna in Austria, famous for Waltz and Sachertorte.

He speaks fluently the charming accent of Viennese German, English, Spanish and improves currently his (Brazilian) Portuguese.

About Busuu

Busuu is a language spoken in Cameroon - based on an ethnological study conducted in the 80ies, apparently only eight people are able to speak this language.

If you happen to know one of these people or know more about the Busuu culture, please let us know.

We have the dream to contribute to the diversity of languages all over the world – therefore we will continuously extend the languages offered at our website.

...and maybe one day, you might even find the possibility to learn Busuu throughout our website…;-)

Visit Busuu.com

TheChineseReader is an very useful website for people learning to read Mandarin Chinese. You can paste in any text in Mandarin and the website will use a large variety of tools (see Resources & Credits below) to transform the text into clickable annotations.

This is wonderful for anyone having difficulty with a Chinese text and wanting that extra bit of help. It could also give some idea to people who know no Mandarin (or read no Mandarin) and are attempting to understand a website written in Chinese characters.

Excellent tool - many thanks Adam!

About the Reader

This project came about in response to the continually increasing number of english-speakers learning chinese. After many years studying chinese myself, and seeing friends do likewise, there were a number of tedious functions I came to feel a computer was better suited to do. Some hair-pulling web-development later, the TheChineseReader™ (TCR) was born.

The feautures of this site are constantly under development, though the speed of that development may not be all too impressive. If you have suggestions for fixes, new features, or other general feedback & inquiries, please contact feedback@thechinesereader.com

TCR is not a commercial site per se, though we are supported by sponsored advertisements, which help cover the costs of hosting, development, and maintenance. Thanks for understanding.

About the Creator

My name is Adam. I am a recent graduate of UPenn, now living in San Francisco. I work for a Management Consultancy, which leaves not that much time to work on this site. =) But I'll try to keep it up to date and add features when time permits.

Resources & Credits

The reader would not function very well without the unsung contributions of all those behind the technologies and data-resources used in this site—particularly those in the open-source community. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge them:

Unihan Database: this database provides the foundation for all of the single character entries and cantonese functionality. It is being used here under the GNU license, and is available at the Unicode website.

CeDict Database: this database proides the data behind all multi-character lookups. An incredible amount of work has gone into this project, and I applaud the people who make it possible. It is being used here under the GNU license, and is available at the Cedict website.

Ruby On Rails: the entire site is coded in the Ruby On Rails (RoR) framework. RoR is a web-application development paradigm that is 100% open-source, and in this developers opinion, the best in class. Again, profuse thanks to those who enable this and so many other sites to be realized through their efforts.

MySQL: alongside the RoR, this site is powered by a MySQL database. MySQL is arguably the most powerful open-source relational-DB package in the world. And it has contributed more than its fair share to web-apps everywhere.

Wenlin Software: Wenlin (文林) is a piece of commerical software whose aid to chinese-learners is almost unquantifiable. I include it in the credits here because thier mouse-over dictionary lookup is the rightful inspiration for the reader's core functionality.

Visit TheChineseReader.com

Avatar Languages offers a unique English language-learning experience in Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world with plenty of people from all over the world wandering around in digital forms, known as avatars. Avatar Languages has a language school for English learners right there in Second Life. You can log on and go there to learn!

This is a unique language-learning model, made possible only very recently thanks to our speedy technology. The possibilities are broad, as you can teleport to anywhere you want! Sushi in Tokyo with an English teacher? No problem. A tour of London with an English tutor? No worries!

Avatar Languages brings these and other possiblities to users of Second Life, combined with private tutors and an innovative language learning environment. You can chat via Skype, collaborate with Google Docs, learn with online whiteboards and more - all as part of their method.

Currently English is the only language offered. Spanish, Aymara and Quechua will be taught soon as well, and it could very well grow from there. Check them out for a free intro lesson to see if it will work for you.

Learn English in Second Life

Let your Avatar take you to new worlds and advance your English. Learn English speaking with real teachers in a virtual school. An innovative new language school in Second Life - virtually the best English school in the world.

Professionalism

Qualified Teachers: we are all qualified, experienced, native English speakers. Meet the teachers...

Cutting Edge Methods: we will get you talking and using your English in real situations.

Free Trial Lesson

We offer a 15 minute lesson, absolutely free with no commitment. The free trial lesson includes access to our virtual campus in Second Life.

During the lesson we will assess your level of English and help you to determine your learning goals.

How it Works

You can be learning English with us within minutes - you probably already have everything you need!

* Internet
* Microphone & Speakers
* Computer
* Second Life Avatar (basic account)
* Skype, MSN or Yahoo

Virtual Fun

Meet other students in our student cafe and practice your English. You will get to know other students both in Second Life and real life.

Allow yourself to escape into a world where your imagination can go wild. You will learn by playing and having fun.

See how exciting it will be...

Visit Avatar Languages

Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.

From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.

You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain intellectual property rights in their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.

The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the inworld unit of trade, the Linden™ dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges.

Welcome to the Second Life world. We look forward to seeing you inworld.

Visit Second Life

The Linguist List, from Eastern Michigan University, has an amazing list of language links that just couldn't go unmentioned. Included are links regarding linguistics, endangered languages, natural languages, constructed languages (conlangs), writing systems, language meta-sites and language families.

This area of the LINGUIST list contains information on languages and language families, plus links to websites devoted to natural and constructed languages, to writing systems, and to language resources, e.g., dictionaries.

Visit LinguistList.org Language Links

It seems that the absolute best way to learn a language is to go to a country where it is spoken - live it and study it, simultaneously. This can be a challenging path to take, but the reward is instant progress, the fastest way from "I don't understand" to "As easy as falling off a log". Traveling, living and studying abroad is an exciting way to learn any language while broadening your cultural awareness.

All the theory, methods, etc., are excellent fodder for your intellectual mind and can lead to a deeper understanding of a language, it's writing system, grammar, pronunciation and the rest. But actually using it everyday as a necessity in a variety of practical social contexts (shopping, transportation, directions, restaurants...) - without interruption and noise from other languages you know - will quickly whip you into shape with the essentials! Supplement that with a number of hours per week spent studying the language with qualified educators, and you will acquire fluency more quickly than any other way.

This is an attempt to provide a small number of links that lead to multitudes of links regarding studying foreign languages abroad. The directories and the links they lead you to cover loads of languages, so this article is included in all the language sections on Free Language.

Open Directory (DMOZ) Language Schools Directory
Open Directory (DMOZ) Study Abroad Directory
botw.org Language Schools Directory
botw.org Study Abroad Directory
Google Language Schools Directory
Google Study Abroad Directory
Yahoo Specific Languages Directory
Yahoo Language Schools Directory
Yahoo Study Abroad Directory
Directories and Lists of Language Schools on csun.edu
Selected Study Abroad Websites on umich.edu
Key Study Abroad Websites on Transitions Abroad

Wikibooks is a great idea. Like Wikipedia, Wikibooks consists of content that is public domain, which means that anything you find there is reusable in any fashion you like. This means it is truly Free and Open for learning and teaching.

Currently the Polish Language Wikibook consists of a basic course for learning Polish covering pronunciation, nouns, genders, adjectives, question words and more.

As always with Wikimedia projects, you are free to improve on the information created by fellow humans!

The Polish language is a member of the Western Slavic group of the Indo-European family of languages. It is easiest to learn if one already knows some other related language.

The most closely related are other Western Slavic languages: Czech, Slovak, Kashubian and Sorbian. More distant are the Southern and Eastern Slavic languages like Russian, Ukrainian, and Serbo-Croatian. Even further, but still somewhat similar are the Baltic languages: Latvian and Lithuanian. Polish is spoken by a total of approximately 40 million people, making it the second most widely spoken Slavic language in the world, next to Russian, and whose influence is almost up to par with her bigger sister. Other Slavs, especially the Bulgars (who consider Polish the most popular third language there) understand Polish and can pick it up with not much effort.

Someone who doesn't speak any Slavic language, but speaks some other Indo-European language, may still find many similarities between Polish grammar and the grammar of that language as well as many similar words.

Learning Polish is very difficult for those who don't know any Indo-European language well, especially for those who speak only Chinese, Japanese, or Korean... but as long as you are committed to learning Polish it is possible. If you are familiar with any other Slavic language (i.e Russian), then you have an advantage as this group share very similiar grammatical structures as well as a common history among them from their rise as well-organised centralised kingdoms in the Middle Ages to the Communist era.
This Wikibook is designed for anyone who wants to learn the basics of the Polish language. It is suitable for beginners and those who've been learning the language for a few years. Polish is written with a particularly unique version of the Latin alphabet.

Visit the Polish Language Wikibook.

MeGlobe is a web-based instant messenger client with realtime translation into 14+ languages. This Jabber-powered tool lets folks chat interlingually. Users are encouraged to help improve the translation engine's algorithm by suggesting better translations when things fall short.

Languages currently available with MeGlobe.com IM/translation client are: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

In addition to Jabber, MeGlobe leverages other Free Software projects to build their foundation: Drupal (main site), MediaWiki (help wiki), phpBB (forum). Somehow they managed to get all these working together with one account in Drupal! Nice :)

MeWho?

MeGlobe™ was built to diminish language barriers from online communication. Our free web client lets you type in your own language, but sends a translated version, in real time, specific to the native tongue of whomever you are chatting with. With MeGlobe™ there is no such thing as 'lost in translation.'

Signing up is quick, easy and FREE. Just click on "Signup," give us some basic info and you're ready to start chatting with people all over the world. No downloads are required, you don't need to install anything and you can use MeGlobe™ from any computer with a browser and Internet connection.

We live in a highly connected global village. Isn't it time we take language out of the equation so we can talk to our neighbors?

Community Powered

We don't throw the word beta around because it's "cool." The fact is, machine translation just isn't ready for primetime. Human-2-human (H2H) interaction, ie chatting with a native buddy from Uzbekistan about last night's rerun of Baywatch just isn't feasible…yet.

Every time you send a message on MeGlobe's™ network you have the opportunity to make our translations better. When you notice that a translation on MeGlobe™ is a little off, let us know by "editing" the translation. Your buddy will immediately see the corrected translation and at the same time you are contributing to our knowledge base.

These contributions are used to teach MeGlobe™ to become a better translator. Every correction from the community brings us closer to our goal of erasing the borders of language.

Creating a universal translator has huge potential, but requires lots of work. By no means has it been perfected, but with your help we're getting better every day.

Put simply, MeGlobe is an instant messaging web application on steroids. While traditional IM tools like Gchat or AIM let you connect with friends, MeGlobe lets you chat online with people even if they don’t speak your language.

MeGlobe is powered by Jabber software, often referred to as "the Linux of instant messaging."

If you ever notice a translation is wrong, you can edit it by clicking the square in the chat box. Your correction will help our algorithm learn the correct translation, so you won’t have to make that edit again.

Visit MeGlobe.com

A Flavor of German is a series of free brief podcasts by Radio Lingua Network that teach useful German idiomatic expressions. Lessons already exist with idioms for such concepts as weather, time, colors and being tired, with more episodes coming fortnightly.

The free audio lessons are good, and if you would like transcripts of the lessons plus additional materials, you can purchase the whole series from Radio Lingua for about $15 USD.

We're delighted to introduce the latest series in the range of language learning materials from the Radio Lingua Network. A Flavour of German will help you to 'spice up your German' by teaching you idiomatic German phrases and helping to increase your range of expression. In the show the tables are turned on Coffee Break Spanish teacher Mark, who is aiming to improve his German, ably assisted by teacher Julia from One Minute German. Join Julia and Mark in fortnightly episodes and spice up your German with Radio Lingua.

Visit A Flavour of German Podcast

Subscribe to A Flavour of German Podcast.
Subscribe to A Flavour of German Podcast via iTunes.
View A Flavour of German Podcast Feed on Free Language.

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Quizlet.com is a great website for effectively learning vocabulary, for languages and anything else! For a quick video on how the whole thing works, check out the demo video. Cool fact: It was started by a 15-year-old high school student!

Basically, you can add and share vocabulary lists, make them public, private or share only with certain groups. Once you have them in the system (or you find an existing set you want to study), you can choose between several options for learning/familiarizing and self-assessment.

The site is slick, fast and has lots of active users. It's really a cool place to learn anything from the Greek Alphabet to TOEFL and SAT vocabulary and plenty more.

There are already gobs of lists available on the site - so many that individual attention is being brought to amazing collections available on the site, such as the HSK Test Vocabulary Preparation Pack and more.

So take a look at Quizlet when you get the chance. It's likely that content already exists for what you need to study! I have added this to all the language sections even though there are not vocabulary stacks yet for all of these. Reason being you can use the site to create any vocabulary lists you want - it's wide open!

The Quizlet Story

For lack of a professional writer working for Quizlet, here are some ramblings from me, Andrew Sutherland, creator of Quizlet, president of Brainflare, web developer, and high school student.

Quizlet is how I occupy my free time and even some of my non-free time. My mission for Quizlet is to make learning vocabulary not a chore. I know a lot of teachers assign vocabulary to students, but few students actually "absorb" words into their vocabularies after they take their test. Which kind of defeats the purpose, right? So Quizlet is my response - it aims to make learning fun, thus make learning effective. At the very least, it can help students do better on quizzes and tests even if they don't fully "absorb" their words.

I started Quizlet in October 2005, back when I was a mere 15-year-old (human years). I had just received a list of 111 French Animals to memorize from my magnanimous French teacher. I was puttering along with my dad with some call-and-response type quizzing. "Man, I love doing this" was NOT what I was thinking. So I put my thinking cap on, and the first line of code for Quizlet was written that night. Of course, that code was all deleted when I thought about what Quizlet would be. You really should plan first.

Quizlet is a shoestring operation. For its first 420 days, it was the work of only myself. I did all the designing, programming, debugging, and perfecting. The project had no product managers, no marketers, and no venture capitalists. It was just me and my testers. Recently I've realized some things are out of my field of expertise (I'm not a lawyer, for example). So there are a few other people involved these days.

Quizlet is free and will remain free to all users. The current plan is to offer targeted advertising on the non-studying pages. I'm hoping to make some deals with some educational and test-prep companies and perhaps some universities. If you're interested in advertising to my userbase of highly-motivated high-school and college students, shoot me a note (see above right).

Let's see, what haven't I covered? Ahh, the name Quizlet comes from Quizlette, the name of the "little" quizzes my French teacher gives. She could have charged royalties, but that just wouldn't be right…

And because you really want to know, I made Quizlet using only the finest ingredients:

PHP
MySQL
Apache
Mootools Thanks Valerio!
XHTML, CSS, Javascript, JSON, etc etc…

Visit Quizlet.com

German-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for German learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Spanish students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of individual terms and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the German words and view annotations. NB: You can copy and paste any German text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for annotation). Words that are not in the system with be displayed in grey.

Something I find useful is the site's Sentence of the Day email. This sends a different sentence every day complete with a translation of the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site.

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

Introduction to German-Flashcards.com

German-Flashcards.com started in July 2006. A lot of time has been invested to design an efficient system which enables you to learn new words in the shortest time possible. Make sure to read this introduction carefully so you understand how the system works. Once you know how this website works and you use it regularly it will become an important tool to learn German. Ideally make time each day for 2 or 3 sessions a day, each lasting about 10 - 15 minutes.
Once you have created your own account you can set up your own word list. There are basically two different modes on how to add new words to your word list. One is automatically and one is manually.

Automatically

If you choose "automatically" then the system will choose random words for you to practice. Within the Auto-Mode there are two different choices. The first is "completely random words" and the second is "frequent words first". Obviously if you are a beginner you should focus on those frequent words firsts, so if you chose the level "Complete Newbie", "Basic" or "Intermediate" the system will just do that. If you chose the level "Upper Intermediate" or "Advanced" completely random words will be added to your word list.

Manually

If you would like more control over which word you learn switch to the manually mode. In this mode you have to choose which word you will learn, not the system. There are a few ways to add words manually. The first is to use the search function in the navigation bar on the left-hand side. You can search for German or English words. On the result page every found word has an "Add Word" link next to it. Click it to add this word to your personal list. After you click it the link text will change to "Remove Word", so you can immediately remove the word from your list if you have added it by mistake.

The second way to add words manually is to click the link "Add new Words" in the navigation. This will show random words for you to add. They are sorted by frequency, the most common words will be at the top of this random list, while the rare words will be at the bottom of the list.

Finally you can add words manually by browsing through the "public word lists". These lists have been created by other users. These public lists normally have a common theme, like "animals", "computer terms", "fruits", etc. You can either pick some words of these public lists or copy the whole list.

You can also combine these methods, add words automatically but also occasionally add words manually.

Adding words automatically is the default setting. If you do not want to add words automatically you can change this in the settings.

The Loop

The main problem of learning new words is that over time word lists grow very big. This means that the learner feels overwhelmed and the time between word repetitions becomes too long. Thats where the Loop comes to the rescue. The Loop consists of a subset of only 20 words out of your word list. This means you can concentrate on a few words only, until you have memorized them properly. To keep a flashcard in the loop click on the link "Keep in the Loop".

If you have become familiar with a new word which is in the Loop click on "1 day", "7 days", "30 days" etc. Which means that the word will be shown only after the indicated time has passed. If you know a word very well click on "30 Days" or "3 Months" so the word will be shown only after a long time. After the indicated time has passed the word will be put into the Queue.

Once you remove a word from the Loop another one will be put in the Loop. The system will first check if there are any words in the "Queue". If the Queue is empty and you are in Auto-Mode the system will choose a new word for you and add it to your word list and into the Loop. If you are in "manually mode" the system will tell you that you need to add more more words in order to continue.

By default there are 20 words in the loop. You can change the number of words in the loop in the settings.

Word Lists

If the Loop system sounds too complicated to you, then you can also set up simple word lists. To do this click on "[Manage Lists]" in the navigation. Then click on "[Add List]" to create a new list. If you want to share this word list with other users tick the box "Public List". If you want to immediately add new words to this list tick "Also Activate". You can create as many lists as you want. In the navigation bar you can always see which list is active at the moment. Words will be added to the currently active list. To go back to the master list (which uses the loop), click on "[Manage Lists]" and the "[Leave List Mode]".

You can view this introduction anytime by clicking on "Help" in the navigation on the left hand side.

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us online by clicking on Support Chat, also please leave feedback about this tutorial (if something is not clear or if something is missing for instance).

Visit German-Flashcards.com

Online-Spanish-Course.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Spanish learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Spanish students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of individual terms and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the Spanish words and view annotations. NB: You can copy and paste any Spanish text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for annotation). Words that are not in the system with be displayed in grey, such as the word "Mike" below.

Something you might find useful is the site's Sentence of the Day email. This sends a different sentence every day complete with a translation of the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site.

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

P.S. If you're wondering about the "Me llamo Mike" thing, it's from The One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song.

Online-Spanish-Course.com started in April 2007. A lot of time has been invested to design an efficient system which enables you to learn new words in the shortest time possible. Make sure to read this introduction carefully so you understand how the system works. Once you know how this website works and you use it regularly it will become an important tool to learn Spanish. Ideally make time each day for 2 or 3 sessions a day, each lasting about 10 - 15 minutes.

Once you have created your own account you can set up your own word list. There are basically two different modes on how to add new words to your word list. One is automatically and one is manually.

Automatically

If you choose "automatically" then the system will choose random words for you to practice. Within the Auto-Mode there are two different choices. The first is "completely random words" and the second is "frequent words first". Obviously if you are a beginner you should focus on those frequent words firsts, so if you chose the level "Complete Newbie", "Basic" or "Intermediate" the system will just do that. If you chose the level "Upper Intermediate" or "Advanced" completely random words will be added to your word list.

Manually

If you would like more control over which word you learn switch to the manually mode. In this mode you have to choose which word you will learn, not the system. There are a few ways to add words manually. The first is to use the search function in the navigation bar on the left-hand side. You can search for Spanish or English words. On the result page every found word has an "Add Word" link next to it. Click it to add this word to your personal list. After you click it the link text will change to "Remove Word", so you can immediately remove the word from your list if you have added it by mistake.

The second way to add words manually is to click the link "Add new Words" in the navigation. This will show random words for you to add. They are sorted by frequency, the most common words will be at the top of this random list, while the rare words will be at the bottom of the list.

Finally you can add words manually by browsing through the "public word lists". These lists have been created by other users. These public lists normally have a common theme, like "animals", "computer terms", "fruits", etc. You can either pick some words of these public lists or copy the whole list.

You can also combine these methods, add words automatically but also occasionally add words manually.

Adding words automatically is the default setting. If you do not want to add words automatically you can change this in the settings.

The Loop

The main problem of learning new words is that over time word lists grow very big. This means that the learner feels overwhelmed and the time between word repetitions becomes too long. Thats where the Loop comes to the rescue. The Loop consists of a subset of only 20 words out of your word list. This means you can concentrate on a few words only, until you have memorized them properly. To keep a flashcard in the loop click on the link "Keep in the Loop".

If you have become familiar with a new word which is in the Loop click on "1 day", "7 days", "30 days" etc. Which means that the word will be shown only after the indicated time has passed. If you know a word very well click on "30 Days" or "3 Months" so the word will be shown only after a long time. After the indicated time has passed the word will be put into the Queue.

Once you remove a word from the Loop another one will be put in the Loop. The system will first check if there are any words in the "Queue". If the Queue is empty and you are in Auto-Mode the system will choose a new word for you and add it to your word list and into the Loop. If you are in "manually mode" the system will tell you that you need to add more more words in order to continue.

By default there are 20 words in the loop. You can change the number of words in the loop in the settings.

Word Lists

If the Loop system sounds too complicated to you, then you can also set up simple word lists. To do this click on "[Manage Lists]" in the navigation. Then click on "[Add List]" to create a new list. If you want to share this word list with other users tick the box "Public List". If you want to immediately add new words to this list tick "Also Activate". You can create as many lists as you want. In the navigation bar you can always see which list is active at the moment. Words will be added to the currently active list. To go back to the master list (which uses the loop), click on "[Manage Lists]" and the "[Leave List Mode]".

You can view this introduction anytime by clicking on "Help" in the navigation on the left hand side.

If you have questions don't hesitate to contact us online by clicking on Support Chat, also please leave feedback about this tutorial (if something is not clear or if something is missing for instance).

Visit Online-Spanish-Course.com

Chinese-Course.com is a fast-loading, useful site for Mandarin Chinese learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for Mandarin Chinese students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of individual charaters and terms (two or more Chinese characters that go together to create a concept or word) and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the charaters and view annotations. NB: You can copy and past any Chinese text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for annotation).

Something I have found incredibly useful is the Sentence of the Day email that you can subscribe to on the site. This sends a different sentence every day and shows the Traditional and Simplified versions, complete with a translation of the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site. Other than that, it is full-featured and incredibly quick and helpful for learning Chinese through memorizing words/sentences and their constituents.

Today's Sentence of the Day caught my attention, and reminded me to post about this cool tool for Chinese learners!

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

Study Chinese from Home

Welcome to the website of Chinese-Course.com. Here you can learn Traditional and Simplified Chinese online with our effective Flashcard System.

Improve your Chinese with only 10 minutes a day!

• Multiple Choice exercises and an innovative flashcard system will improve your Chinese in a relatively short time
• New words, idioms and phrases are added slow or fast to your personal vocabulary list, depending on how fast you learn
• You can listen to words and sentences with high quality sound files. Over 10.000 recorded words from Native speakers of Taiwan.
• Suitable for all levels - beginner, intermediate and advanced Mandarin Chinese learner
• Learn how to write with the integrated stroke order tool
• Words are explained in English, German and Spanish. Pronunciation is shown in Pinyin and Bopomofo (Zhuyin)
• Learn Chinese with funny jokes, famous quotes and romantic poems
• Learn traditional and simplified characters at the same time

Visit Chinese-Course.com

The China232.com Podcast is produced by two Canadian brothers, Andrew and Addison, living in Shanghai. The quality of the podcast audio and the lessons is great, and they provide transcripts with explanations of idiomatic expressions! Podcast topics range from fun stuff like dating and sports to business English. The brothers speak slowly and clearly so that students can understand even difficult material more easily.

I received this link from a teacher in China who says he uses these podcasts for his classes and the students love them! Once you've listened to a podcast, you can participate in discussion on the site through the forum. Keep up with the latest from China232.com by tuning into the blog.

Keep up the goods, brothers!

This is a website for learning English in a fun and relaxed way. We are two Canadian brothers that are currently living in Shanghai. We hope you enjoy the show.

Have a look at our ESL podcasts. These are downloadable mp3 files that you can listen to on your mp3 player or computer to practice your English. This Podcast is for learning about slang and everyday conversation English for intermediate to advanced level English learners.

Subscribe to China232.com Podcast
Subscribe to China232.com Podcast via iTunes.
View China232.com Podcast Feed on Free Language.

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Anki is a cool little app for learning vocabulary words and phrases. It uses spaced repetition to help increase learning speed and memorization by repeating more often the terms you don't know and gradually decreasing those that you do.

The app is free and is available for Debian GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and as source code here. The software can be used to learn any language - just create the flashcards and it takes care of the spaced repetition for you.

Also available here is an online version of the software that works right through your web browser and stores your vocabulary on the Anki server. Great for people learning in Internet cafés!

Anki is a program designed to help you remember facts (such as words and phrases in a foreign language) as easily, quickly and efficiently as possible. To do this, it tracks how well you remember each fact, and uses that information to optimally schedule review times. With a minimal amount of effort, you can greatly increase the amount of material you remember, making study more productive, and more fun.

Anki is based on a theory called spaced repetition. In simple terms, it means that each time you review some material, you should wait longer than last time before reviewing it again. This maximizes the time spent studying difficult material and minimizes the time spent reviewing things you already know. The concept is simple, but the vast majority of memory trainers and flashcard programs out there either avoid the concept all together, or implement inflexible and suboptimal methods that were originally designed for pen and paper.

While Anki can be used for studying anything, it also ships with special features designed to make studying Japanese and English easier: integrated dictionary lookups, missing kanji reports, and more. Sample decks are also provided for Russian.

Anki's scheduling algorithm is based on the proven SM2 SuperMemo algorithm. It improves upon the basic SM2 algorithm by adding features like priorities and a revision queue sorted in order of priority.

Visit Anki Free Spaced Repetition Flash Card Software

Yesterday I received an email from Jon at eduFire letting me know that Free Language had been chosen for their Top 20 Language Bloggers on the Web roundup. The blog entry alone is a great resource for those interested in languages in general as well as language learning.

eduFire is a new website for learning and teaching languages online via video chat. In addition to live language tutors, the website has videos, forums, flash cards and other resources. The design is light and bright, there are lots of smiling tutors waiting to teach eager students and it appears to be an overall smooth operation.

eduFire has generously offered Free Language readers a free hour video tutoring session for the first ten folks to email him at freetutoring [at] edufire [dot] com. Just mention that you saw this post on Free Language.

Cheers to eduFire all around for their roundup and offer for free lessons!

Omniglot is an excellent resource for learners of just about any major world language. Simon Ager has put together an exceptional amount of information about the systems used to express language in the written form, complete with images, explanations and audio samples.

This article in particular brings attention to Simon's resources regarding the Abjad (consonant alphabets) used for writing in Hebrew.

Hebrew is a member of the Canaanite group of Semitic languages. It was the language of the early Jews, but from 586 BC it started to be replaced by Aramaic as the everyday language of the Jews. Since then it has continued to be used as a liturgical language and to some extent as a spoken vernacular.

Visit Omniglot.com Hebrew Alphabet, Pronunciation and Language

ChinesePod has created a sweet resource for anyone learning Chinese and interested in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

On the site you'll find an interactive map of Beijing with all the venues, loads of free lessons regarding sports and the Olympics, a world map with participating countries that has audio of how to say those countries in Chinese, etc.

If you are interested in learning Mandarin Chinese, ChinesePod will get you up and running quickly. It's loads of fun, too, if you're into learning on the fly and connecting with other learners.

The 2008 Summer Games are almost upon us, and to commemorate this monumental sporting event we've launched ChinesePod Olympics, a mini-site filled with information you'll need to follow the Games and navigate Beijing. Whether you're going to see the Olympics yourself, or just really want to bone up on your field hockey vocabulary, this is the site for you.

On our fully interactive map, you can locate each of the Olympic venues and their respective events. English, Chinese, pinyin, and audio recordings are all there to assist in you getting around the Olympic Village.

Visit ChinesePod Olympics.

ItalianPod is the fourth podcast to be released by the Praxis Language team.

Be sure to check out the free resources available to visitors. You can sign up for an account today to start making real progress.

The success of ChinesePod, FrenchPod and SpanishPod, Praxis's podcast-driven, socially enhanced, user backed language-learning phenomenon is maturing elegantly.

Word on the street is that ArabicPod, GermanPod and JapanesePod will follow...

ItalianPod is a language training service designed around your needs, rather than the traditional constraints of language schools and publishers. Technology solves these problems and can make the learning of a new language easier.

We take the best pedagogical approaches of the classroom, layer in the community features of the social web and tailor a customized learning pathway for each student.

Use ItalianPod as a replacement to classroom-study or to make better use of classroom time.

At the core of our service are four main study activities:

There are many ways to listen to ItalianPod lessons, making learning Italian as flexible and convenient as possible. If you like to study at your computer, you can listen to the lesson via the built-in Flash player on the site. Click the ???Play??? button, slip on your headphones or turn up your speakers, and learn.

To learn on the go, download the MP3 ??? either from the download links on the site or via your personalized RSS feed ??? and listen to it on any MP3-compatible software or device (in iTunes, on your iPod, etc.). You can even burn the MP3 to a CD and listen to it in a regular CD player.

Once you???ve listened to each lesson, you need to review to ensure that the material is firmly cemented in your head. First, download the Lesson PDF, which contains the dialogue, a translation, and both key and supplementary vocabulary, and read along with the podcast. After that, come to ItalianPod.com and take advantage of the myriad of online review tools available. Pour over each line of the dialogue, looking up unfamiliar words and listening to line-by-line audio. Dig deeper into key vocabulary with expansion sentences, which put important words into varied context to get you a better idea of how they are used. Finally, complete the lesson exercises to ensure that you really know what you???ve learned.

Language is about communication, and once you???ve learned something new you need to practice using it in real communication. Guided and Executive users have individual teachers that provide critical insight into the language and opportunities to practice Italian with a native Italian speaker. In each practice session, you can expand and broaden your Italian in a friendly, stress-free way with a counselor that is familiar with you and your learning goals. Your counselor will help you identify and eliminate problem areas, and let you strengthen your Italian communication skills.

At the end of your learning cycle each day, you should come back and reinforce the material you???ve learned both from today???s lesson and previous lessons. Each period of reinforcement will create a stronger foundation upon which future learning will be built. Use the flashcards and concentration game to make sure that you remember the vocabulary you???ve learned from previous lessons. Review your vocabulary list, identify words you???re not sure about, and look them up in the ItalianPod dictionary. Skim through the Grammar Guide to identify structures with which you???re unfamiliar and find lessons that cover those points. Finally, take the Listening Test occasionally to see the improvement that your hard work has earned you.

Visit ItalianPod.com

Subscribe to ItalianPod Free Lessons Podcast.
View ItalianPod Podcast Feed on Free Language.

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