learn english free software applications

Have Fun Learning English Fast

Busuu English offers English learners a dynamic combination of online lessons, language exchange and mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android.

Busuu offers many of their features for free :) This includes picture-based vocabulary training, writing exercises, reading comprehension exercises, video chat, interactive exams and a bustling community for social exchange in English.

The Busuu system allows you to keep a track record of your English studies and mark your progress as you complete each lesson. You can work through your lessons at any time, enabling you to fit your study schedule into your daily life however you choose.

Find Friends and Practice or Exchange

Finding friends is easy in the Busuu community! Quickly search and contact other English learners to practice with as well as exchange partners to share and trade with. Plus, there's a free video chat function for easy access to language exchanges right in the same interface you're using to learn.

Stay Motivated in Style

In order to keep you motivated, Busuu has created a beautiful interface which allows you to grow and visualize your own language garden as you make progress learning English. If you are interested in learning more than one language, you will have a tree for each language that sprouts and shoots to the sky as you progress through the lessons and levels. It's quite a thrill to see this grow and know it's a visual representation of your language skills!

Free English Mobile App for iOS and Android

Busuu offers free mobile apps for learning English on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and Android. The free app takes you through the basics for getting around, and is especially useful while traveling.

Summary

This (lengthy) article brings together a pile of Free Software (GNU GPL'd as Public Domain), freeware and shareware for language learning and reference for Mac OS X.

Software descriptions are taken from Apple Downloads. We will be adding more GPL applications soon.

Summary

Verbix is "an independent non-profit organization that aims to promote and protect linguistic diversity." The tools on their site "contain verb conjugations for hundreds of languages, ranging from national and international languages to regional and even extinct languages."

There are four main things to bring your attention to in this article:

1) WebVerbix, a great free online verb conjugator for over eighty languages.

2) WikiVerb, a wiki site dedicated to languages, verbs, and verb conjugation.

3) FreeVerbix, a freeware version of the Verbix Windows software which bumps the number of available languages to above one hundred.

4) The Verbix website, where all three of the above and more (including the $40 paid version of Verbix 2008 for Windows) are available. Your purchase will support the non-profit group and expand the Verbix non-profit organization and web presence.

Also of import is the list of supported languages for the above-mentioned free and commercial products and online services.

The free Verbix stuff (WebVerbix, FreeVerbix and WikiVerb) provides plenty to work with for language learners and educators alike. The free online version works great for conjugating an enormous amount of verbs instantly.

From Website

UNESCO, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Verbix is an independent non-profit organization that aims to promote and protect linguistic diversity [UNESCO Observatory: Multilingualism]. This site contains verb conjugations for hundreds of languages, ranging from national and international languages to regional and even extinct languages.

FreeVerbix 7.3 is a universal Verb Conjugator that shows verb inflections in 100+ languages. It is based on Verbix language extension technology, so after installation of Verbix you can easily install any language extension to add more languages in Verbix.

WebVerbix is a free on-line verb conjugator. It contains a subset of Verbix for Windows features.

WikiVerb is a site dedicated to languages, verbs, and verb conjugation. It's not going to be a copy of information available in WikiPedia, but it will focus in verb conjugation. It won't replace www.verbix.com either, but it includes information and languages that are not available there.

Visit Verbix.com

Summary

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!

From Website

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

Summary

Verbbusters is a sweet and simple web application for testing and learning over 175 irregular English verbs, some of which are even tough for a native English speaker!

This is a really cool utility that is fast to use, is fully searchable, has audio recordings of the verb conjugations, gives nice results sheets that can be saved and referred to later using a screenshot or "save as" function on your browser and, perhaps most importantly for many, is quite serious about preserving the privacy of users. No account is required and the results of tests/quizzes are only cached temporarily. Bravo on the privacy!

The site also has quick-reference "spreadsheets" which list all of the verbs and their infinitive, past and participle forms alongside the infinitive forms for French, Spanish, German and soon Turkish, allowing native speakers of those languages to easily review and prepare for the quizzes.

Overall, this is a great resource for the tricky irregular verbs for which English is so infamous. (Embarrassingly enough, I scored perfectly on the basic test, but missed two on the advanced test! Rest assured I will not make those mistakes again! ;) See results below to see an example of test results (and revel in my ineptitude).

From Website

Verbbusters is dedicated to the English irregular verbs and includes a competitive exercise with rankings, reports and searchable lists. The site is free and no registration is required.

Visit Verbbusters.com

Tutorial Video

For all the geeks out there, the creator of Verbbusters is using Ubuntu Linux with Beryl - note the slick 3D transition in the middle of the video. :)