Sunday, May 31, 2015

Welcome to Summer!

During the summer months, students have greater opportunities to play.  And play they might.  There are some apps and online games that will assist them in sharpening or honing in on language skills that can improve their language learning and acquisition.
Please take a moment to experience these helpful resources that can be used any time of the day.  Parents can join in on the learning fun too!


Duolingo

This interactive website can be obtained as a smartphone app and offers: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish Swedish, Esperanto, Turkish, Norwegian, and Ukrainian, just to name some.  This company believes that everyone should have access to a free quality language education.  I use this only 5 minutes a day, but have seen great improvement in my own experience with Portuguese, a new one for me...



This website is offered through my local library's website and has free resources, like newsletters, blogs and a word of the day,  They offer over 100 languages (too many to list here), but through your library or educational institutions, you should be able to access it.  I used my library card to open the account and it can be used at the library or from the privacy of my home.  They also have a mobile app.  Check this out!



In my research, I discovered this site.  Before looking into it, I had not heard of Memrise, but I discovered that my daughter was using this app for reinforcement in Korean.  "It has topic words, but it isn't like what you think it is.  It is more like lessons, rather than a course," she said.  But it can be used to access more than 200 languages (also too many to list here). I'm definitely going to try this one out this summer.



Busuu

This app and website offers:  Chinese, English, French, German,  Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.  It also allows video/audio chats with native speakers and appears easy to use.  I have not tried this one, yet, but have seen that it received high ratings


                                                                                    LiveMocha

This online learning community connects people from around the globe to experience authentic interpersonal communication.  My eldest daughter used it to enhance her Spanish and Japanese, while helping others with English.  It is definitely one to try!


All of the images are copyrighted by their owners and can be found on their perspective websites.

Have a Safe and Happy Multilingual Summer!