Are you learning a foreign language? It is not easy. English is not my first language, and I can tell you based on my own experience, that the hardest part is not vocabulary or grammar when you are studying in the classroom, the hardest part is when you think you’ve learned enough and try to communicate with the native speakers, and find out that you can hardly understand anything they are saying and can hardly make yourself understood by others. Why does this happen? Because what you learned from text books are very different from what native speakers use in their everyday communication. That is why for any language learner, it is the best to have some language immersion experience, experience to listen and speak to native speakers. Many achieve this by visiting or living in the country where the language is spoken. However this is not feasible for everyone. This is when FluentU can be helpful.
FluentU is a language learning website that you can access language learning videos by native speakers. Now they just launched their app for Apple devices.
What is good about FluentU? A very nice thing FluentU does is to categorize the videos they source from the web or other resources into groups like fruit names, body parts, and other situational settings. Additionally, they level them based on difficulty levels. So when you go in, you can first pick a language you want to study, then select the level, and then pick the types of vocabulary or conversation you want to learn. You will see a list of videos that fit your selection criteria, and all videos are from native speakers.
Besides all above, I think the best part is that every single word in the video is coded so that you not only see the transcript of the video, you can also click on any word on the transcript, and there will be a dictionary come up with pronunciations that you can listen to, meanings, example sentences. I wish I had something like this when I was leaning a foreign language.
FluentU is not designed as a text book. If you are looking for something to systematically learn a language, then FluentU is not for you. However, if you are looking for first hand immersion experience, this is a great tool to use. It currently has Spanish, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Japanese.
FluentU is available for iPhone, iPod and iPad. It is free to download. With the free version, you have limited number of videos. To access all the videos, you can purchase membership via In App Purchase, or sign up on their website.
If you would like to check it out or purchase it, please use the App Store link provided below. The cost is the same to you, but iGameMom gets a small percentage. Thanks for your support! Note: The link works for all countries.
Looking for more foreign language learning tools for kids? Check out the Best Learning Tools for Kids to Learn a 2nd Language.
