Founded in 1991, the heavyweight language learning software worldwide is Rosetta Stone. In 2010 Rosetta Stone made approximately $220 million in profit. Rosetta Stone is currently incorporating live tutors into their overpriced software. My question is, why is anybody spending money when Livemocha.com and Busuu.com are great free language learning communities?
The following graph shows the similarities and differences between Livemocha.com and Busuu.com.
The following graph shows the similarities and differences between Livemocha.com and Busuu.com.
With all of the great value you get from Busuu and Livemocha, you might be wondering “what is the catch?” The beautiful answer is that there is no catch! Busuu was a UNESCO partner during the “Year of Languages”, and it was started in Madrid, Spain. Livemocha is the world’s largest language learning website, and the popularity soared after was mentioned in the New York Times, period.
But, what if you really want to get a tutor in your designated language and you live in the United States? You can always post a “gig” on craigslist.org. Say, for example, you wanted to learn Spanish. You could put up an ad in the city in which you live and get a native speaker, pretty much wherever you are. The same works for most languages in most metropolitan areas. I., myself, learned Spanish via telephone this way with a very nice and professional woman from Honduras.
In the age of Skype, you can reach out across the globe for a tutor, and while Craigslist is king in the United States, it is not popular in other countries. I have included the popular free classified ads boards below for those who wish to reach out across the world.
For the Spanish speaking world mundoanuncio.com is king.
In France vivastreet.com is popular.
If you wanted to learn English from an American Craigslist.org is a great choice.
If you wanted to learn English from an Englishman thesun.co.uk is a great free place to post
if you want to learn German kleinanzeigen.ebay.de ist sher gut!
if you want to use the mainland Chinese version of craigslist it is 58.com
Or, maybe you want to learn Russian, so you can post on avito.ru
Between Google translate and the help of a friend, learning a language has never been easier or cheaper! Most countries accept PayPal as a payment option, and those that do not allow PayPal generally do allow Western Union. if you want to learn how to speak Spanish like a native of Barcelona, go ahead!
Onelook.com should be mentioned as the world’s best dictionary for the English-language as chosen by me because it is a dictionary meta-search engine that indexes hundreds of specialized dictionaries and general dictionaries that can be searched from one easy to use interface.
Wordreference.com is the best multilingual social media dictionary because there are forums where current word usage is discussed in addition to giving you the definitions. Very useful!
Last but not least, when talking about defining words, there is the Google chrome extension Google Dictionary that makes looking up words you are unfamiliar in most major languages a snap and a heckuva lot easier.
Now we know the definitions of all of our words. But how do we conjugate the verbs? Easy verbix.com ‘s free web-based conjugators for every language I’m familiar with. Don’t buy those books that teach you how to conjugate verb. Save a tree and some more green!
With this short overview of free and no cost resources, there is no use for you not to start learning a language today!
if you would like help researching a topic, contact me at kd3qc@yahoo.com
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