A guest post by Francesco D’Alessio
There are many different ways you can learn a language. One of the growing methods is using the wonderful range of applications on your smartphone. Apps are exploding in popularity thanks to their ever growing range of resources.
There are hundreds of language learning applications in the App Store now and you never know which to choose. In today’s feature, we are going to speak about the benefits of using language learning apps and how you can maximize your experience on them.
Benefits of using apps for language learning
1. Time Saver
Textbooks are great, but they can dull somethings. When you are learning something like Spanish, keeping your momentum is important, so making sure you are using fun resources to learn will save you huge amounts of time. With language learning apps you can connect with Spanish speakers around the world, play games in Spanish and immerse yourself with native speaker videos, all from the safety of your home or coffee shop. This method of learning really does help you save time searching the library to find the ideal textbook, hours of trying to find a Spanish tutor or convincing someone to learn with you. This is all perfect for getting started fast.
2. Portable
Whether you like it or not, cramming 5 books into your bag isn’t practical. The benefit to language learning apps are in the weight. Everything’s stored all inside of your smartphone, which saves you the treks with your over-packed bags. It’s even ideal for grabbing it in small moments across your day. If its the tube home, or even a train ride to the Airport, the portability comes in handy when you are trying to cram in a few more pieces of vocabulary.
3. Range of Methods
There’s value in learning through a different method, we recommend you use the app alongside other methods like Skype calls, meet-ups, native speaker face-to-face interactions, flashcards etc. The range of methods within an app is now extremely useful, from games to structured lessons, from courses to 1-to-1 videos, all of these different ways of learning will help you to build up confident as you learn Spanish.
Maximizing your experience
1. Connect with friends
One of the biggest mistakes is not asking your friends if they want to learn with you. Chances are they want to learn some Spanish with you. Perfect. You now have an army of learners to help you motivate yourself. In most apps now, there is the chance to create a Leaderboard allowing you to tally your points and grow your rewards. Ideal for challenging each other whilst at home or even in person.
2. Organize family learning
Have you tried bringing your family together to learn some Spanish? It’s not only an effective way to learn a language but a great way to bring everyone together in one place. Even if you make mistakes, that’s fine, you’ll be making them together. Try using one of the language learning apps together and run over the lesson together, making pronunciation and speaking one of the core focuses.
3. Schedule your learning
Most of the time, we are time poor. So making sure to optimize our time learning is important. With most of the learning techniques this scheduling comes natural but thanks to the nature of the technique you don’t think about scheduling the app learning, as we have our devices with us all the time, so we think “whenever I have a free moment”. Try to plan in your app learning, it’ll help improve your productivity when it comes to learning new Spanish vocabulary and keep you cool and collect as you aim for fluency.
This article hopefully convinced you to be more open to the “app” experience for language learning and the tips made it more understandable when looking to improve your Spanish as a whole with language learning apps.
Francesco D’Alessio works for UK EdTech startup, FlashSticks. FlashSticks currently develop a language learning app called FlashAcademy. Francesco’s passion for apps lead him to create a YouTube channel all about personal and team productivity applications that people can use within their daily routine. He also loves everything technology and long walks.
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