Summary
Yolango is a new (free!) site for learning English through online videos complete with transcripts and level divisions. It provides users with loads and loads of real video content from all over the Web. Those with an account can keep track of the videos they have watched recently and mark their favorite videos. It also maintains a scoreboard for user score rankings.
Many things are cool about this approach. It is straightforward, allows users to learn through content that they enjoy and can relate to, find other content based on keyword tags and expose themselves to literally thousands of videos on hundreds of topics all in one place. In addition to using tags, they've made it possible to further filter a keyword tag by "Category" (Music, Film, Travel, News & Politics...) or "Scenarios" (Transportation, Education, Dating and Relationships, Scandal and Gossip!...). The added transcripts are a boon to any English learner to improve not only listening comprehension, but also reading comprehension and, thus, writing skills.
Also available through the site are a series of activities for each video - pretty cool! You can choose activities such as fill in the blank, questions and definitions. (In order to do so, you have to have an account and be logged in.)
Yolango does a great job leveraging the immense volume of online videos and filtering them for the users to jump in and start learning. A great idea and an excellent execution. The site design is clean and lively, loads quickly and it would appear that there's a bright future for this hard-working team. Bravo Yolango!
From Website
Yolango.com is a new way for English language learners from around the world to immerse themselves in a wide variety of authentic and interesting videos. What makes Yolango different from other sites, however, is that all of our videos have been carefully transcribed and captioned. What’s more, Yolango captions are clickable, enabling users to receive definitions, usage examples and world level translations in 13 different languages for words they don’t know or would like to study further. Every video at Yolango also offers several challenging interactive games that build users’ listening, vocabulary, spelling and comprehension skills. Users compete to earn points and rise to the top of the Scoreboard.
Yolango.com is currently in Alpha release. Many, many more videos as well as powerful new features and communication methods are planned for the future.