Everyone knows that there is an app for nearly everything, be it for business, pleasure, or just plain old time-wasting. One of the areas where apps excel is the sphere of language-learning. Nothing makes getting a handle on a new language easier than the bevy of cheap (and free) smartphone apps dedicated to that end. Dictionaries, flashcards, mnemonic exercises, all this and more is now just a couple taps away. Gone is the need for boring, heavy, and expensive textbooks, because now the ability to learn a foreign tongue is never heavier than your phone, usually only a few dollars, and endlessly entertaining.
Most of these apps are self-contained, and have a limited amount of content, as much as it may be. Lingua.ly is changing that with their new app, which aims to turn the entire internet into a language-learning tool.
Lingua.ly started as a Chrome extension, allowing users to convert website content into flash cards as a form of immersion-based learning. The app connects to the web extension and allows you to access your cards directly from a smartphone or tablet. Each card incorporates photos, a pronunciation guide, and a bit of the text you originally took the word from to help you remember the context. You can also use an autopronounce feature if you’d like to hear what the word sounds like when you flip the card over.
Flashcards are nice, but the app’s best feature is arguably a ‘reader’ feature, that selects web articles on a wide variety of topics, in the target language, and match them to your reading level. Lingua.ly will automatically select vocabulary from each article and add it to your list. On top of that, a social media feature will be added shortly, where reading selections are taken from Facebook and Twitter (this is already available on the browser extension).
The app is aimed at intermediate learners and is available in English, Spanish, French, Hebrew and Arabic, with more to be added soon. The app can be downloaded for free in the Google Play store, with an iOS version on the way.