Whether beginner or advanced, whether English, Spanish or French: learning languages has never been easier than it is today. And even for free. We’ll show you the best apps and reveal tricks that make it not only easy, but also fun.
You should know these tricks and tools
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1-Learning a new language? These are the top 5 apps
2-Duolingo
3-babble
4-Drops: Learn and improve languages
5-memrise
6-LingQ – Learn Languages
7-Learning a new language: helpful tips
8th-Learning a language with “Money Heist” and children’s programs?
Whether it’s brushing up on school English because of a new job, learning a few sentences and phrases for the holiday or holiday love, or emigrating: anyone who wants to learn a new language usually has a motivation. An alternative to an adult education center, an English or Spanish course at a language school or distance learning: apps for mobile phones. This not only allows you to learn languages regardless of location. You can also set the pace yourself.
LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE? THESE ARE THE TOP 5 APPS
In addition, apps allow you to take a look without it costing you anything. If you don’t like it, you can simply uninstall the app again. Language learning apps, which are available in abundance and mostly even free of charge in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, are not only suitable for beginners. However, if you really mean it with a new language, you should do more than just use an app to learn it. That’s why we’ll first introduce you to what we think are the best apps and then give you a few tips and tricks that will get you there.
DUOLINGO
Learning with Duolingo should not only be fun, but according to the developers also addictive. You learn languages in a playful way. You can earn points for correct answers and advance to higher and higher leagues if you keep at it. Whether learning English or improving Spanish: everything happens in small and short lessons that you can do in between. According to their own statements, a study is said to have found that 34 hours on Duolingo correspond to a whole semester in a university language course.
The great thing about Duolingo: The app is free and available for Android and iOS. If you want to do without advertising after the lessons and also want to take courses offline, you can also book a plus version. However, the free version is sufficient for learning – even for advanced learners.
BABBLE
Probably the best-known and, according to its own statements, the most successful language-learning app is Babbel. There are a total of 14 languages to choose from. In addition to popular languages such as English, Spanish and French, Turkish, Polish and Indonesian are also available. Babbel offers over 5,000 courses and over 10,000 hours of learning content. The Berlin company is self-confident: “Speak your new language as you always wanted to. And that works. 73 percent of Babbel users feel ready for a first conversation after just five hours with Babbel.”
The language learning app is available for Android and iOS . You can try the app for free for 7 days. Babbel then charges at least 4.95 euros per month for a one-year subscription. With Babbel-Live, the e-learning platform also offers users virtual online lessons with experienced teachers.
DROPS: LEARN AND IMPROVE LANGUAGES
The Drops app is built around visual content. With pictures that match vocabulary, you should be able to remember the words better and easier. In addition, learning is very playful. Instead of a keyboard, you move vocabulary and pictures or wipe them away like in the Tinder dating app . In addition to popular languages such as English or Spanish, there are also exotic languages such as Esperanto, Samoan or Māori.
In total, Drops offers 46 languages. There are also dialects such as Castilian or British English. In the free version you can study about five minutes a day. If you want to learn more, longer and more intensively, you can take out a premium subscription for EUR 9.99 per month or EUR 70 per year. The app is available for Android and iOS .
MEMRISE
Memrise is a language learning app that makes learning new languages fun and effective. At least that’s what the makers of the company, founded in 2010, promise. According to their own statements, more than 50 million people worldwide use the app and learn English, Spanish or one of the 19 other languages. Memrise is free for iOS and Android. If you pay 7 euros a month or around 25 euros a year, you get access to all language courses, videos by native speakers and can make courses available offline. Everything is not a must. The free version is sufficient to start with.
LINGQ – LEARN LANGUAGES
“Learn foreign languages by immersing yourself in a world with interesting and authentic content,” that’s what the LingQ app promises. Instead, the app offers thousands of hours of lessons, podcasts, audiobooks, interviews, and more, all with a transcript. LingQ (for Android and iPhone ) also allows you to use any content from the web to learn. The app, which is also available for the browser , follows the Birkenbihl method, similar to “Linguajet”. You listen and read the text at the same time and can immediately look up unfamiliar words and save them in a personal database. And that in 42 languages.
LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE: HELPFUL TIPS
If you want to learn a new language, apps can be very helpful. But anyone who has ever signed up for a fitness studio knows that it’s not always easy to stay on the ball. Therefore, if you are serious about it, you should not only use apps, but also seek as much contact as possible with the language you want to learn.
You can listen to audio books, foreign radio stations or podcasts on the go that are recorded in your learning language or are designed to be similar to a course. Spotify , for example, has podcasts from Duolingo and – depending on the target language – from other providers. Just search for it. If you don’t have a Spotify account, you can also just use the free Google Podcasts app and search for podcasts to help you learn the language.
LEARNING A LANGUAGE WITH “MONEY HEIST” AND CHILDREN’S PROGRAMS?
In addition, films and series can help. So you can watch them in the original language, for example in English, and display German subtitles. This works just as well on Netflix as it does on Amazon Prime Video . For example, if you want to learn Spanish, you can watch the Spanish series “Money Heist” on Netflix in the original version with subtitles. You already know the series? All the better. Then you can already connect many actions with the Spanish original sound. Children’s programs are ideal for beginners, as they are usually kept in simple language and the pronunciation is often very clear. So you already understand quite a bit with basic knowledge.
Listening to music and studying the lyrics is also a promising way to improve your language skills. Just grab your favorite song in the language you want to learn and look up the lyrics to it online. Now you translate the text with programs like Reverso or Deepl and write it down line by line in both languages.
