These activities can be picture matching, true or false and word and sentence building. The vocabulary revolves around words and phrases that are most useful to the learner at the beginner and intermediate stages of learning: food, shopping, transportation and many others. Best for: listening, reading, flashcards, everyday vocabulary and phrases, travel vocabulary.
Should you focus on grammar, vocabulary or listening and speaking practice? Mango Languages French is one of the best all-around apps for learning basic French. And best of all, Mango Languages is free with certain library memberships in Canada and the United States.
Simply log into your local library and see if your library has a partnership with the app. The primary Mango Languages French course has four units with five lessons in each. Each lesson revolves around a written and spoken French conversation. The subsequent activities include dissecting the grammar and vocabulary used in the dialogue through a flashcard-based approach. In addition to its basic course, the Mango Languages French app allows you to record your own French audio to accompany each French word and phrase.
This is great for comparing your recordings to native French speech and practicing the accurate pronunciation of French words and phrases. Mango Languages French also has grammar and culture explanations, and it uses Spaced Repetition System SRS technology to help you review flashcards at regular intervals to keep learned vocabulary in your long-term memory. Best for: digital immersion, listening, reading, speaking, vocabulary building.
Without going into the gory details, Rosetta Stone sets itself apart from many other language methodologies by offering a completely immersive experience.
By doing this, it simulates the environment that it believes is most conducive to learning a new language—when we were young children learning to speak our mother tongues. Even though it can seem alien at first, by linking concepts and objects directly to French words instead of their English equivalents , Rosetta Stone is a method that has great long-term benefits. That said, the program offers a free trial that you can take for a spin, and you can occasionally find some great discounts and sale prices on the site.
Price : Basic app is free. Premium subscription is available for additional features. Since a recent update, Memrise includes community-created as well as professionally-created courses. Their staple French courses, for example, have been created by French teaching professionals. This means that the French flashcard decks focus on the most useful French words for their level, and they include video and audio clips of native French speech.
In addition to these are the community-created French courses. These are created by everyday learners or amateur French teachers, but they are packed with useful French words and phrases. While they may be missing video and audio or both , these are fantastic for picking up where the professionally-made courses leave off.
Memrise has many modules ranging from Basic to Advanced levels, where words are presented in batches of 15 centered around themes like verbs, thoughts, feelings and colors. A really creative way of tackling one of the most difficult problems of learning any language acquiring vocabulary , the Memrise iOS and Android French apps are definitely worth checking out.
Best for: listening, native French audio, vocabulary and phrases, transcripts and exercises. This includes the actual in-app audio and video content as well as the descriptions and supporting materials. Because of this, this app is recommended for those who have at least a solid basis in French such as high beginners and intermediate learners.
The audio and video content revolves around podcasts produced in slow, clear French. New audio and video content are constantly added, and PDF files can be downloaded from the app for learners to follow along. Price : Limited features with a free account; full features for a monthly or yearly subscription plan.
On the first side is French content you love and want to learn from. On LingQ, you can find written and audio content on virtually any topic from history to travel to culture to classic French literature. The second side of LingQ is its fully interactive reading interface. Each word in LingQ is clickable, and you get an instant translation of the French word into English. With these LingQs, you can review them using the Spaced Repetition System and make them into known words, effectively transferring them into your long-term memory.
This app is incredibly effective. The technique of instant translations and flashcard creation makes learning smooth and painless, and the endless supply of French content will keep you excited at each stage of learning. Price: Monthly subscription fee with various levels of access Basic, Premium and Pro.
Best for: In-depth French lessons, French-only learning, vocabulary building, grammar practice, listening. Each day, a new Frantastique French lesson arrives on your device. The lessons actually revolve around stories about aliens! In fact, these cute aliens take us through various aspects of French culture from Edith Piaf to Victor Hugo, and they teach us loads of French along the way.
Oftentimes, learners practice newly introduced vocabulary and grammar structures, and there are plenty of practice exercises for reinforcement. Where Lingvist is professional and sleek, Clozemaster has an old-school arcade vibe. There are points, levels, and leaderboards to climb. We wrote a full review of Clozemaster here. Visit Clozemaster. There are several good digital options available; WordReference and Linguee are two. WordReference is free to use and makes looking up word meanings or verb conjugations very easy.
In these situations, Linguee is worth turning to. It sources phrases from a huge library of online bilingual texts to supply you with translations of entire phrases. Visit WordReference Visit Linguee. The apps above all offer good opportunities for vocabulary practice, but there are quite a few other apps in this category as well. Check out some more options below. Drops Review. Fluent Forever Review. This resource is quite a bit more than a simplified news source, though.
What makes this app great is that the content is actually interesting — nothing kills the motivation to study a language like dry and boring material. Visit News in Slow French. Podcasts are an increasingly popular method for learning a language. A strength of this resource is that it also teaches a good deal of cultural information, useful for any learner of French.
The resource is updated continually, which means there is always fresh material available. The mobile app might not be quite as good as the desktop version, but you can still use this one on the go.
Read the full review of FrenchPod here. Visit FrenchPod Is there a more complete way to get reading and listening practice than from an audiobook? Maybe not. French Today is a resource that actually offers much more than audiobooks Skype lessons and an immersion experience , but the audiobooks are worth mentioning.
The amount of material in these books is immense, and the recordings are entirely in French. There are also comprehension questions at the end of each lesson to round out the learning experience. We wrote a full review you can read here. Visit French Today. Instead, this is a good option for learners that are interested in upping their French fluency through a high level of exposure. Sounding natural in a foreign language is a serious feat — one that eludes many.
Read the full review here. Visit Francais authentique. Finding learning material that interests you is often half the battle when it comes to learning a new language. You can upload your own material to LingQ, and most of the content on the platform has been uploaded from various external sources. We wrote a full review of LingQ here. Visit LingQ. Manga Method is a community-driven project that offers language-learning opportunities for free via manga.
The stories on the site are engaging, original, and come with great illustrations. Visit Manga Method. A popular method for accomplishing this is through music. Talk shows, news, and sports shows are just a few of the examples. Radio France is a radio app for your phone that gives you access to over French radio stations, for free! Visit Radio France. Below are some additional options for getting reading and listening practice. Yabla Review. FluentU Review. Earworms Review. A lot of its features are even free to use, including the submission of a limited number of recordings.
Paying for a subscription allows you to submit an unlimited number of recordings each month. Visit Speechling. In the Exercise section of the app, users can submit pieces of writing on any subject they want or respond to prompts.
The writing will be visible to other users on the platform that can offer corrections and feedback. This is one of the best ways to get writing feedback because it involves humans. We wrote a full review of italki here. Visit italki. You can learn vocabulary, conjugation, reading, writing, pronunciation, and listening skills on the app in a way that is competitive and fun.
Duolingo has been ranked as the highest-rated French learning app on the Apple App Store for good reason. Just be aware that while it may be fun to make learning a competition with prize badges and everything! It's great for casual learners just starting out, but if you really want to learn French, you'll need to supplement Duolingo with other French activities.
Busuu is a French learning app with more functionality than Duolingo. While it has similar French practice activities as Duolingo, it builds in a better language community aspect where you can connect with French speakers that are learning English.
It also is better for letting you choose what you're interested in: French for business or travel. This ability to customize the app makes it better than Duolingo in some respects. However, the app has changed its model in the past few years. While it used to allow you access to native French speakers who would listen to you and correct your written work, they don't anymore. Instead, they now use have a speech recognition tool.
While Busuu's program is superior to Duolingo, it's also more expensive. You can start using the app for free, but for the real features, including speaking with native speakers and more advanced activities, you need to purchase a membership. Another downside is that it focuses mainly on grammar exercises and traditional ways of teaching French. The gamification of language learning isn't always the most effective way to teach.
Brainscape is much superior in terms of applying cognitive science to learn languages most efficiently. Still, this app can be useful for the busy professional that just wants to learn French for ten minutes a day. Beginners might benefit from it the most. The ability to interact with native speakers also makes it better for people who are a bit more advanced or who are reaching the limit of what Duolingo has to offer.
Reading in a language you are trying to learn is a must. Not only are these stories familiar, which makes it easy to absorb new vocabulary and grammar concepts, but Classics2Go even cross-links with its English app so you can read the versions side by side for a refresher. Plus, once you are getting more fluent, you can easily explore the library for some more complex books like Les Trois Mousquetaires or Madame Bovary. This app is perfect for those that need reading material.
It's probably not a substitute for apps that actually teach French. But it's a good addition to your French learning app set. Any language-learner needs a solid dictionary companion to their learning and study tools. And as much as we love Google Translate, it's not always reliable for the real meanings of words or for slang. The Translator provides accurate phrase translations that you can star for offline viewing.
It also includes a Dictionary feature that provides heaps of translations and examples for head words including slang and regional dialects.
And you can tap on pretty much anything to hear it pronounced at the speed and in the accent you select. The app also includes a verb conjugator with over , verb forms, as well as quizzes and flashcards to help you build your vocabulary. It's perfect for a quick trip to Paris, too! It won't teach you French, but it's a great reference! Download it for free on iPhone or Android. French verb conjugations are tricky. If you ever learned it in school, you might remember being terrified by Bescherelle.
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