foreign languages

2012 Language Survey Uncovers Interesting Trends in Language Learning

Busuu, one of the world's most popular online language learning platforms, has just announced the results of its 2012 Language Barometer Survey.

With over 45,000 participants from 230 countries, this survey sheds light on successful and popular learning processes and well as what the future of language education may look like.

From busuu blog

More than 45,000 busuu.com users from 230 different countries responded to our survey, held at the beginning of March 2012. Let’s have a look at our users’ preferred methods for improving their language skills, what encourages or hampers their learning process and many more exciting outcomes!

The future of language learning relies on online methods!

Read more.

I thought the blog subscribers might be interested in knowing that Free Language is rising considerably in the Chinese search engine Baidu. See the screenshot below to get an idea of how much traffic is coming in from this search engine, which peaks at off hours for Google.com because it is on the other side of the world!

I recently wrote on Freestyle Language about how CaféBabel.com's Tower of Babel has articles about linguistic variations amongst 7 languages published in 7 languages!

I am planning to take this further by adding to Free Language the seven news feeds in catalá, Deutsch, English, español, français, italiano and polski. This will provide a new range of news articles for use learning and teaching languages.

As they say here in Grenada, West Indies: soon come!

Summary

Collins is one of the longest standing publishers of English and bilingual dictionaries. They are currently working to pioneer ways to publish dictionaries for today's world by rapidly increasing the availability of their products in digital format.

The company has created several high-quality, professional digital products that are offered through their online store. Free samples of these products are available for download through the site.

Two of the digital products they currently offer are very useful for travelers and language learners alike: iPhraseFinders and Collins 40-Minute Lessons.

iPhraseFinders are phrasebooks tailored specifically for the iPod. These are currently available in Windows and Mac format for English to the following languages: French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. You can download free samples from the link above.

Collins 40-Minute Lessons are beginner lessons designed to empower learners with the essential phrases necessary to navigate daily life in a given foreign language. These lessons are available for English speakers interested in learning Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish and Vietnamese. Wow! You can download free samples from the link above.

I know from my experience of testing the free downloads that these digital products are indeed professional, high-quality, practical and useful.

The website also offers a free dictionary search feature, with more comprehensive commercial versions available.

From Website

Free English, Cobuild and Foreign Language Dictionary look-ups available. Subscribe to or download a dictionary to your desktop or mobile device. Learn a language fast with iPhrasefinders and audio courses for iPods and mobiles. Free trials available.

Find out about these products and more at CollinsLanguage.com

Over the last few days I've added eight articles on podcast resources from the LingQ podcast network. This is a group that currently consists of eight podcast websites that provide a steady (weekly) flow of listening material for each individual language. Accompanying transcriptions are made available through the LingQ [liŋk] store. Some are free, some are not.

Pursue the LingQ above or click on the huge image above to learn more about the LingQ Method.

LingQ Podcast Network

EnglishLingQ
FrenchLingQ
GermanLingQ
JapaneseLingQ
PortugueseLingQ
RussianLingQ
SpanishLingQ
SwedishLingQ