Summary

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!

From Website

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

Summary

FrenchPod represents the beginning of a new era for all the folks on the Praxis Language team. Things are cooking in Shanghai!

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

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

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

From Website

FrenchPod 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 FrenchPod 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:

Listen

There are many ways to listen to FrenchPod lessons, making learning French 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.

Review

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 FrenchPod.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.

Practice

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 French with a native French speaker. In each practice session, you can expand and broaden your French 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 French communication skills.

Reinforce

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 FrenchPod 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 FrenchPod.com

Subscribe

Subscribe to FrenchPod's Free Lessons Podcast.
View FrenchPod Podcast Feed on Free Language.

Summary

Loquella has done a great job of taking Public Domain language learning materials created by the US Foreign Service Instute and porting them into a web-based language learning platform.

Their website provides users with an online interface for learning French by listening, reading and speaking. You can even customize how the site delivers the content to you by adjusting your preferences (no sign-up required!). This means you can choose to hear audio first in French and then view the sentence in English or view the sentence in English and then hear the audio in French. There are two other options as well.

Loquella also has a blog and a community area anyone can join and participate in a forum, and share photos and video. (View RSS feed for the community forum.)

All in all, Loquella is a great way to learn French free online by listening, reading and repeating. In addition to the free materials, Loquella sells a download of all the Chinese MP3s with a 30-day money back guarantee.

From Website

About The Language Course

The Foreign Service Institute and Loquella

Loquella developed the language course based off the well-respected Foreign Service Institute's language lessons. The method Loquella uses to teach you languages is not new, the Foreign Service Institute has been using this method for over 30 years to teach thousands of serious language students. Loquella simply developed the language tool that you use to view and hear the Foreign Service Institute course, and we also improved on the Foreign Service Institute system by adding Dialects Interviews for the Spanish lessons. The Foreign Service Institute method emphasizes language drills and pronunciation drills to ensure that language students retain and comprehend all material before moving forward.

Improving On An Already Good Thing

Although the Loquella language tool is largely based on the foundation that the Foreign Service Institute created, we believe we have made many essential improvements to the system. Instead of having to follow along with work-books while listening to tapes, Loquella.com offers two unique language tools for accessing the lessons. The first is through the free online language tool. The second is through lessons that can be downloaded to your MP3 player. You follow along with either program at your own pace. You can stop the program at any time and pick back up where you left off.

"The Foreign Service Institute is the Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, preparing American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington."

- U.S. Department of State website.

Additional Notes On The Foreign Service Institute

Since the Loquella language tool pulls information from the Foreign Service Institute which was designed in the 1970's for government officers, professionals and diplomats, a large number of references to government entities and processes are referenced in the language lessons. Keep in mind that events and political figures referred to in some of the language lessons are most likely out dated by several decades. Instead of editing out all these items, the Loquella tool includes these items as they do not hinder students from learning, instead they can be seen as an interesting reminder of our own political and cultural history. We hope you enjoy the language lessons, and maybe you'll even get a brief history refresher as well.

Immerse Yourself In Your Language

We also encourage language students to try to immerse themselves in the language they are learning. Many experts agree that the best way to learn a language is to be surrounded by it constantly for a prolonged amount of time. If you have a couple weeks to spend in Mexico, bring your lap top and work with the Loquella language tool when you have some time, plug in to an audio tape when you are traveling and simply try to listen and speak to the locals any chance you get.

About The Foreign Service Institute Method

The main method for teaching used by the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), and also used in all the language courses offered by Loquella.com, is called "guided imitation". If you listen to the way you speak your native language, you will notice that you do not use the exact same variation of common phrases in every context. Instead, you change your way of speaking to adjust to each individual situation. Therefore, this language course is designed to help you master the foreign language in most situations that you could run into in daily life in a new country.

Pronunciation

The Foreign Service Institute method focuses heavily on teaching proper pronunciation. We focus the first language lessons in each level on pronunciation due to the importance that correct pronunciation will have on your ability to master the new language.

Basic Language Dialogs

The basic dialogs are the core of each language lesson. These dialogs are recreations of the real situations a language student is most likely to encounter, and the vocabulary and sentences are those he or she is most likely to need.

In the first language lessons, new vocabulary is introduced mainly in the basic dialogs. Sometimes, in the illustrations of grammar points, new words are introduced in order to fill out patterns needed to do the exercises. Each new word will reappear many times later in the language course to help you associate each word in many different contexts.

Language Pattern Drills and Grammar

The basic dialogs are the theme throughout the language course, and the language drills are the variations of those dialogs. Patterns of basic dialogs are expanded and changed in the drills.

Pattern drills are designed to allow you to practice the sentences and phrases you have learned, and the grammar tips are there to provide further explanation. At the beginning of each drill you will be given a basic sentence or dialog, then various kinds of drills that offer variations of those basic sentences and dialogs.

The language course consists of listening to and repeating basic sentences that illustrate the grammar point that is to be learned. This structure will give you enough clues to understand and use the pattern correctly in the drills that follow. These drills are mainly exercises that use substitutions, responses, and translations that highlight the grammar points that are being covered.

There are four kinds of language drills in each unit. Two are designed to vary some basic dialogs within the vocabulary you have already learned. The other two are oriented toward the structure of the language to provide coverage of important patterns.

You Choose Your Level Of Difficulty

No matter which language tool you decide to use, you choose your level of difficulty. You can skip ahead or continue to repeat a language lesson until you feel comfortable with it. Using the MP3 downloads, you can buy just the level you want, or the complete 50 hour package. Using the free online language tool, you can skip forward or backwards through each language lesson until you find your perfect level of difficulty.

Learning Dialects Using The Language Tool

As anyone who has tried to learn a language will tell you, it's one thing to understand and respond to a question in a foreign language when it is spoken in a slow and well-annunciated manner. It's completely different to listen and repeat when actual people are talking in real dialects. As you get deeper into any language you will start to hear that people speaking the same language have very different dialects. That's why we provide sections that allow you to hear dialects used in various parts of the world.

Summary

FSI is an acronym for the Foreign Service Institute, "the (US) Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community".

Over the years, the FSI has researched, designed and taught language courses to Foreign Service staff and diplomats. These courses are now available and licensed to the Public Domain.

FSI-Language-Courses.com (and .net) is a sweet and simple website that provides users with the ability to view and download the Foreign Service Institute's courses for 31+ languages. The content is provided by individuals donating time and resources in an overall effort to provide quality languages-learning materials for free worldwide.

Sounds good to me. :)

In the French section of the site, there are currently several courses and texts available for download:

• Le Monde Francophone
• Introduction to French Phonology
• French Basic Course Volumes 1-3

Altogether, these resources give total beginners a considerable amount of information for practical situations that you actually encounter in your average day while traveling, studying or working in le monde francophone.

From Website

Welcome to fsi-language-courses.com, the home for language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute. These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain.

This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. This site is not affiliated in any way with any government entity; it is an independent, non-profit effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages. Courses here are made available through the private efforts of individuals who are donating their time and resources to provide quality materials for language learning.

Visit FSI-Language-Courses.com French Courses.

Summary

Babbel.com is the bomb. Not babble or Babel but Babbel! It's a website with slick tools and a smooth interface (modeled after a video game console) geared primarily towards learning and retaining loads of vocabulary terms and key phrases through audio visual.

The interface is pure eye candy and it loads quickly (I use a standard DSL connection) and works solidly. I have been testing Babbel out for a while now and it has never gotten buggy on me. The system tests me on terms and phrases I have already learned while incorporating new ones about topics that I elect and, thus, are more likely to be interesting and useful to me.

This excellent virtual flash card software also allows users to upload images to represent vocabulary items (be they nouns, verbs, phrases or what have you) and improve the learning experience for others. Users rate these images on how relevant they are for the term they represent, collectively choosing what most people feel best represents that term or phrase.

The flash card stacks are organized into "packages" (groups of cards) that treat a common theme, such as youth hostels, winter sports, restaurants and eating out, fruits and vegetables, clothing, standard greetings, giving and receiving compliments, etc. With input and contributions from the users, these packages get consistently better as more folks contribute.

Add to this the social twist that Babbel offers - the ability to hook up with other users interested in sharing language skills - and you have a well-rounded platform for beginners to excel rapidly in their first weeks and months working with a new language.

Currently, Babbel offers these features for learners of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. This site is also localized in those languages, so if you like a challenge you can learn German in French, study Spanish in Italian, etc. This is cool for people who already have enough knowledge in a foreign language to understand and navigate the interface and can simultaneously maintain one language while learning a new one! I am learning German through the site, and I have chosen German as the interface language. That's another option for total immersion in the target language.

Thanks and many props to the folks at Babbel. :) I will definitely continue using the site to learn German - and I'll be waiting for more languages to appear on soon.

NB: Babbel isn't just a website, it is a full Web-software-powered environment for foreign language learning built with Flex. You'll need the latest Adobe Flash Player for your browser to enter the learning space. I recommend using Firefox for the best possible browsing experience.

From Website

Babbel.com Brings the Whole World Home

A new website with a social twist makes language learning easy and fun

Up until now, the best way to learn a language -- besides, maybe, in the classroom -- was to pack a bag, get on a plane or a train, and immerse yourself abroad. But what if you could learn, say, French, while eating a croissant in your own home and meet a real Parisienne in the process?

The idea of Babbel.com, the new, free language learning website with a social twist, is just that. This playful application is ideal for a quick start into a new language. With a design inspired by a game console, Babbel makes picking up new vocabulary effortless. But it also enriches and motivates by connecting you with the best teachers around: other Babbel users.

Babbel is truly multimedia, incorporating human voices and user-generated images into the teaching of real-life vocabulary. In Babbel's current languages of English, German, Spanish, French and Italian, you can learn, for example, how to shop for groceries, express your feelings, or flirt. In place of the traditional flash cards, an effective and "intuitive" repetition system makes cementing new content easy. Meanwhile, the unique Refresher tool tracks your learning progress and reminds you what to review.

A participatory experience, Babbel relies on you and its other users to create much of its content. Through a clean, easy-to-use interface, you can make a personal profile, finding a a "Tandem" partner who speaks the language you are learning as a native, or a "learning partner" studying the same language. You also can upload pictures that correspond to vocabulary, and then their relevance is voted on by native speakers before they are included in lesson packages. An extra fun aspect is a high-score tracker, which compares your progress with other users, like a video game.

And now, a new Board multiplies the opportunities for connecting by allowing you to chat real-time about -- or in -- your learning language. It has a section to find and check translations, search for alternatives to fixed phrases, or express spelling or grammatical doubts. There, you can also get in contact with people living in places you may be traveling, ask for tips, or even find a couch to crash on!

As users progress in their language studies, Babbel is fast developing, too. It has just launched full localized interfaces for native Spanish and French speakers, in addition to the current English and German ones.

Babbel is enthusiastically designed by a team of young software experts and language-instruction professionals at the Berlin-based company Lesson Nine. Founders Thomas Holl and Toine Diepstraten have many years of application development, IT management, community cultivation and interactive media experience. The other two founders, Lorenz Heine, was a co-founder and CFO of Native Instruments, and has extensive entrepreneurial experience in the software industry, while Markus Witte has online marketing and management experience, and a solid academic grounding in language, cultural theory and media. Content Manager Ulrike Kerbstat holds Master's degrees in language instruction and interpreting, and is fluent in German, English and French.

Through word-of-mouth, positive response from users, and excitement in the worldwide media, the number of Babbel users has increased at an astounding rate in places as far-flung as Caracas, Manhattan and Mumbai. And the best part is that, for the time being, learning for example how to order a Tapa in a Spanish bar costs a lot less than flying to Madrid: It's free.

Visit Babbel.com and start learning a new language in seconds.