Learning a language is not easy and cheap. One would have to enroll at an institution that is expensive but there is a solution to this. There are apps that can help you to effectively learn a language on a cheap budget from the comfort of your home.
LingoDeer is one of the language applications that has a great design and allows you to practice the languages by completing lots of different types of exercises. It is a fairly new app that started focusing on Asian languages but has since expanded to more languages.
Currently, it offers Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Portuguese, and Vietnamese that are taught in English. Additionally, there are courses taught in other languages. For instance, one could take an English course taught in Korean.
This app divides the lessons into different topics such as family, numbers, food, or health.
For each language, the alphabet section is quite comprehensive and it goes beyond just the alphabet looking fairly in-depth at the pronunciation.
It differentiates the content a bit according to the language they are teaching. For example, Spanish and Chinese courses taught different foods that would be more suitable for each language.
If you are not a complete beginner, you can jump ahead in the course by testing out previous content. It is essentially just a test of the material covered where you will complete a bunch of exercises to prove that you know the content.
One is limited to three mistakes and if you make more than that then you will have to start over or complete the preceding lessons.
Similar to Duolingo, the lessons are taught by completing lots of exercises but there is a bit more variety on LingoDeer. Other language apps include:-HelloTalk, Mindsnacks, Busuu, Babbel, and TripLingo.
The question types include; matching pictures to words, listening, speaking, multiple-choice, removing words that do not belong, adding words to the correct place, filling in the blank, matching, spelling, ordering sentences and writing sentences.
The variety of question types helps in two ways. The first one is it makes things more interesting so that you are less likely to get bored.
The second is that it tests you on multiple skills, helping you to be more well-rounded in the language that you are learning.
This app has short videos with captions. It is related to the individual units but takes things much further. For example, in the Nature unit of the Chinese course, the story goes and includes the names of all of the planets.
Additionally, there is a speaking exercise in which you will record yourself telling the story and in the end, you listen to yourself telling the whole story.
The sentences are recorded clearly by the native speakers which is an important factor when learning a language online or through an app.
