The Language Learners Toolkit

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao-tzu

Learning a new language is truly one of the most amazing endeavors that you can ever pursue in your life. My life has been enriched in ways that I couldn’t have imagined.

Many people are intimidated with learning a new language, but with the internet providing so many free valuable language learning resources we no longer have a good excuse as to why we can’t pick up a second, third, or fourth language. When it comes to learning a language many of us come to find that we are our own worst enemy.

With the right attitude and consistent practice, a new language is within anyone’s grasp and not just some language-learning genius. We live in a highly globalized world, and by speaking only one language you put yourself at a major disadvantage.

On this page, you will find some of the best resources I have found to learn a new language online, and most of them are FREE.

Hope you enjoy it, please let me know if I am missing anything worthwhile.

Explore. Dream. Discover.

My own posts:

FREE ONLINE LANGUAGE LEARNING RESOURCES

  • Memrise: This is by far my favorite site to learn vocabulary. Download their app for a great way to study on the go.
  • Talk To Me In Korean: This is my favorite Korean language learning site.
  • FSI Language Course: These courses were developed by the Foreign Service Institute and are in the public domain. Over 40 languages are available with the full text and audio for each course.
  • Duolingo: This is a great site that my wife loves and is currently using for learning Spanish. Duolingo is great for learning Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian. They offer fun games with practice in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The apps for Android and iPhone are also very well made.
  • Livemocha: is one of the biggest online language-learning communities around. A good place to start would be their structured ten-week journey that will give you a good foundation to build on.  You can learn at your own pace and have the opportunity to interact with native speakers and provide language exchanges with learners from all over the world. Open up a free account and get started today.
  • BBC Languages: Tons of great multimedia materials and courses covering a wide array of languages
  • Radio Lingua: Learn a language on the go with your MP3 player. Radio Lingua language-learning courses are not simply lists of words for you to listen to and repeat: each episode is a real lesson with an experienced teacher and/or native speaker speaking directly to you. You can use their fun and educational podcasts for learning French, German, Italian, Spanish, or English.
  • Live Lingua – online Skype courses in a growing number of languages.
  • Busuu: This is an innovative online community for learning languages through fun interactive courses, and then practicing with the community through the integrated video-chat application! By doing so you can practice your language skills in a live conversation.
  • LingQ: This is another unique site that was created by a seasoned Polyglot Steve Kaufman. The site is a reading-based language learning program that seeks to grow your vocabulary by tracking and making as many contextual links as possible. It also features a big active community that submits much of the learning content.
  • Lang-8: This is a free language exchange social network. Just write a journal in any language you’re learning, and it will appear to native speakers of that language. They’ll correct it and leave useful comments and feedback. In return, you check other users’ journals written in your native language.
  • Verbling: Helps you connect with native speakers via video chat so you practice the language you wish to learn. You can take live classes as well as take part in video chat roulette which is kind of like speed dating for language learning. You are hooked up with a fluent native speaker and after several minutes the system pairs you up with someone else with whom you can practice having a conversation in your native tongue.
  • italki: Is similar to Verbling. It helps you find experienced language teachers for one-on-one live video chat lessons over Skype. If you don’t have access to native speakers this is a great way to get immersed into your target language.
  • Digital Dialects: Features free-to-use online games for learning languages. A good tool to learn basic phrases, numbers, useful words, spelling, verb conjugation, and alphabets.
  • Anki: Before Memrise this used to be my favorite flash card program. Still a good free program worth checking out. It helps you learn anything with its intelligent spacing algorithm.
  • Still need more? Here is another huge Online Resource List:  A list of 75 free programs you can use to learn a new language.

More Resources? What am I missing?

What is your favorite FREE online resource for learning your target language?

2 Responses to The Language Learners Toolkit

Leave a reply