App Smart: Powerful Tools for Learning a Language

But learning to speak another language is hugely rewarding and gives you access to amazing insights into other cultures. So I’m still learning, and nowadays the task is a little easier. Rather than having to pore over a book and answer multiple-guess questions, you can find sophisticated apps to help. These study aids are also easy to take everywhere.

The app I’ve found most powerful is Babbel. It’s a companion to the bigger Babbel online package and covers 11 languages. The different language apps are all similar, and they’re free on iOS and Android. You can set up a free account to keep track of your learning, and this will let you try the full fee-carrying online program.

Though Babbel apps may seem like mere companions to its online service, they’re potent language-learning tools. Each has 2,000 to 3,000 words split into topics that start with the basics like food and drink, then move to more complex ones like society and environment. Each topic has subcategories. In the relationships topic, for example, categories include family, couples and social life. Tapping on one takes you to the business end of the app, where the learning is split into three sections.

The first section runs through a list of words and phrases. It’s no simple flashcardlike “learn this word” experience. The app has tricks to help you memorize words, including great matching images, a speech recognizer that scores you on how well you say the text out loud (you can skip this, but you’d be missing out) and simple games like matching phrases in English to the ones you’re learning.

The second section is all about consolidating your learning with more sophisticated games that help with fewer English-based clues. It helps you understand how the words fit into a more complex paragraph or statement, which are written on-screen and read by a native speaker. Section 3 is a vocabulary reminder that can be used later to remind you about spelling or pronunciation.

The best thing about the app is that it remembers your progress and shares it with your profile online. You can access it from different places (like your iPhone or iPad) and then from your PC, where more complex packages round out the learning process with features like writing exercises. The app is also refreshingly clean and simple to look at, so there’s very little to distract you from the business of learning. However, you may find it a bit dry, which, let’s face it, may be an issue, particularly if you have bad memories of language class from your school days. A Wi-Fi or mobile data connection is needed to upload your data, by the way.

I’ve found the app invaluable and inexpensive. Babbel’s makers say they will bring the full course content from their online process to their mobile apps next, including beginner’s sections, grammar and phrase books.

If Babbel’s simplicity doesn’t appeal, then you may like apps from Busuu. It has a similar style of teaching words and phrases alongside an image and with recordings of native speakers, combined with games and exercises to really carve the language into your memory. There’s even a bit of gamification as the apps award you “busuu-berries” if you complete an exercise. You can donate them to someone to motivate them. The apps also hands out stars and digital badges for motivation.

It’s a bit more sophisticated than the Babbel app because Busuu has writing exercises that you submit to other users. You then comment, correct and mark their effort, and then you can check through the crowdsourced responses to your own. It’s a useful trick that offers alternative viewpoints on how words are used in context.

But the Busuu apps are ad-supported and visually more cluttered than Babbel. The iOS version I tried did crash from time to time.

Of course, there are many other apps to help you learn languages, including a powerful one from Rosetta Stone, though this is tied to its not-inexpensive learning package. So try one out, learn something new and if you spot me on the street feel free to say “Bonjour,” or “Bom dia!” or “Ni hao.”

Quick Call

Amazing Alex is a new game from Rovio. It has all the cuteness of Angry Birds, also from the same maker, but it’s a very different and more puzzlelike game that uses simple physics. It’s $1 on Android and iOS, and $3 for the iPad version.