Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

A Social Network for Learning Languages

LiveMocha is a social network for language learners. You can choose to study English, French, Hindi, German, Spanish, or Mandarin Chinese with more to come. There are self-study lessons, conversations, tutors and native speakers, and tools for tracking your progress.

The social framework gives this site a strong community spirit and networking ability -- excellent features for language acquisition because people learn better and faster with interaction and support from other speakers or learners. I am further intrigued to note that the vocabulary includes audio and visual features, making it easier to associate the new term with a concept rather than its translation; and that members can leave tips so you get a more natural presentation of the language as it's really used. Also, interaction with native speakers is ideal for worldview expansion.

This looks to me like a very promising way of practicing languages.
Tags: community, linguistics, networking
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  • 5 comments
greenkira

greenkira

July 28 2008, 23:33:54 UTC 12 years ago

I used Livemocha for getting a basic grasp on German and also regularly recommend it to my English students as a good place to practice. Depending on how social you feel, you might want to set yourself to "invisible" whenever you're studying... Livemocha has a strong core of users treating it like an international dating site.

That said, their 101 German course and some time with a textbook while waiting for buses have been enough to get me around Berlin. Good courses, and the chat options are great writing practice.