Summary

It seems that the absolute best way to learn a language is to go to a country where it is spoken - live it and study it, simultaneously. This can be a challenging path to take, but the reward is instant progress, the fastest way from "I don't understand" to "As easy as falling off a log". Traveling, living and studying abroad is an exciting way to learn any language while broadening your cultural awareness.

All the theory, methods, etc., are excellent fodder for your intellectual mind and can lead to a deeper understanding of a language, it's writing system, grammar, pronunciation and the rest. But actually using it everyday as a necessity in a variety of practical social contexts (shopping, transportation, directions, restaurants...) - without interruption and noise from other languages you know - will quickly whip you into shape with the essentials! Supplement that with a number of hours per week spent studying the language with qualified educators, and you will acquire fluency more quickly than any other way.

This is an attempt to provide a small number of links that lead to multitudes of links regarding studying foreign languages abroad. The directories and the links they lead you to cover loads of languages, so this article is included in all the language sections on Free Language.

Foreign Language School and Study Abroad Directory List

Open Directory (DMOZ) Language Schools Directory
Open Directory (DMOZ) Study Abroad Directory
botw.org Language Schools Directory
botw.org Study Abroad Directory
Google Language Schools Directory
Google Study Abroad Directory
Yahoo Specific Languages Directory
Yahoo Language Schools Directory
Yahoo Study Abroad Directory
Directories and Lists of Language Schools on csun.edu
Selected Study Abroad Websites on umich.edu
Key Study Abroad Websites on Transitions Abroad

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

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

The Firefox web browser from Mozilla is not only a great open source web browser. It's also a fabulous tool for language learners! It would take a long time to list and go through all of the cool things you can do with the addons (extensions of Firefox's core functionality) in the language section of Firefox Addons. Several articles have already been published a few of articles on the topic (see related articles below), one of which contains a link to Firefox addons for translation.

However, another, cooler, resource has just popped up on the radar and anyone dealing with learning languages online, translation, researching and/or reading content in foreign languages on the Web is encouraged to check out this amazing repository for Firefox addons for Language support. The link has been pre-defined for showing the addons that have been updated most recently, both experimental and stable. Here are a few more pre-defined links that will sort the addons by number of downloads, rating and name.

There is a lot of them, but it's definitely worth the time to sift through and find the ones that work for you.

Cheers to CodePublic.org for the link! Below is an example of an addon listing for a Chinese pop-up translator.

From Website

Add-ons extend Firefox, letting you personalize your browsing experience. Take a look around and make Firefox your own.

Related Articles

Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
Foreign Language Translation Extensions, Tools, Plugins, Add-Ons for the Firefox Web Browser
FoxLingo Free Firefox Browser Extension Software for Translating Web Pages

Summary

The FreeLanguage.com.ua Online Translators page has 35+ resources listed for translating to and from many languages online - surprise - for free!

A list of these will be started here soon, but this is already a pretty comprehensive list of the freebie translators available online. Of course, some are better than others, but this site lists lots of them with brief descriptions that are helpful.

From Website

FreeLanguage.com.ua is a directory dedicated to language learning online. Browse free online language courses, language lessons, phonetic resources, language tutorials, language study centers, online dictionaries etc.

Visit the FreeLanguage.com.ua Online Translators Directory