Feedback for Online Language Learning- Livemocha

My company just launched a new online language learning service and I'm hoping some of you would be interested in taking a look and giving me some comments, feedback, or suggestions! We offer lessons and real time conversations with native speakers, tutors or other learners. Anyone can sign up - it's free! Right now we offer Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Hindi and English. We will have 30 languages by early 2008. We have participants from all over the world. Please let me know what you like or think we can improve upon. Thank you! Livemocha.com

go to http://www.livemocha.com/promo_codes/code/1192636374

Tags: fl, learn foreign language online

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Permalink Reply by normank on May 22, 2008 at 2:25pm

I am not a foreign language teacher, but I am learning to speak Spanish and livemocha is the best online resource that I have found. In lieu of going to a class with real people to talk to, livemocha hits all the skills one needs to acquire a new language. I've been sharing it with many people (including foreign language teachers whom are very excited about it).

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Permalink Reply by Jared Bloom on May 22, 2008 at 3:45pm

I have been "using" Livemocha on and off for the past few months. In my opinion, the activities and features are really good. Though, I have not had a chance to use the social networking areas of the site. Once my PhD is done this summer I plan to spend more time trying out the site and with any luck...learning a new language!

Jared

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Permalink Reply by Fred Ravan on December 29, 2008 at 10:07am

I am a Spanish teacher and I have created an account there as a way of previewing the activities and finding any "issues" before I use it live with my students. One issue that I see popping up is that some of the graders are harsh. I have a student assistant who is doing some of the activities and she was very upset--in a melodramatic way--about some of the things that people said. Other than that, I find the activities enjoyable and appropriate. I have only been a member for about a month but I have not had anyone say or do anything inappropriate.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Weden on December 29, 2008 at 3:38pm

I like it. It is a pretty good site.

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Permalink Reply by Davina on January 21, 2009 at 2:04pm

It's definitely the best online language source I've seen.

My only major suggestion would be to add a grammar section to each lesson. You basically assume that people know or will be able to understand the grammar automatically from the lesson but that's not always the case. For instance, in the French lesson you give the feminine word for fat (grosse) but not the masculine (gros). It would be great just to have a small grammar section that indicates words that end in "e" are generally feminine, etc. If you won't want to put in the extra effort, you could even take maybe the top ten tips and use those as a type of reference.

Also, it would be great to have more of the Hindi script in the Hindi section. It's difficult to read Hindi in English and some of the answers turn out to be just plain wrong since the transliteration is difficult.

Nonetheless, good job! I like the somewhat competitive aspect it has in that you can earn medals, points, etc. I also like that you can chat with native speakers and have peer rated reviews of both speech and text.