Beelinguapp: Language Learning

The app is worth it for having access to graded level appropriate texts with clear audio, but it suffers from poor design, and learning tools that don’t really help with learning. It is very hard to re-listen to the sentence you just heard. The flashcard system is very poorly designed. The quizzes don’t really test language skills, but memory for trivial detail details. And numerous other small issues. Still, so far I find it worth it for the core content, though I feel frustrated every time I use the app.

The main purpose of this app receives 5 stars. It provides cultural stories and news stories for people to read. You can also have a story created for you based on your competency level, your desired length of story, and your preference for fiction or non fiction. You have the option to read it to yourself or have the app read it to you at your chosen speed in your target language. You can look up words you don’t know to get the definition and to save it to your glossary. You can also record yourself saying the word. Now to the 3 star downsides of the app. The app doesn’t work completely. There are supposed to be a vocab matching game where you can practice matching words between languages for that story. It opens to a blank screen. It has never worked. There is also no mechanism for spaced repetition of vocabulary that they add or you add yourself. This app would be amazing if they implemented a vocabulary review section like on the Busuu language app where it lists all the vocabulary and has sections for strong and weak vocabulary that you can choose to review so that you don’t forget with time. There’s also a bug where sometimes when you had a word to the glossary that it adds multiple cards of the same word. The app is also a little clunky for language learners who are studying more than one language, especially for the glossary. It doesn’t always keep the languages straight. Also, when you record yourself there is no feedback as to the accuracy of what you’re saying. Some of these are bugs and some are ways they could improve to make a good app great. The stories are already great. Just build up the app infrastructure around them to be just as great.

Sample content was extremely limited. I took a leap of faith and bought the year but so far am not all that impressed. I was intrigued by the reading angle and the promise of music. I could not find any music in Greek, which is why I got this app. I like the idea of learning via news snippets and the folk tales but these are very dry/ need to be supported with pictures and more audio samples during the vocabulary matchups, and when you select a final answer if you are correct it should show your answer with the equivalent in your native language so you can actually learn the sentences better. I will stick around to see if improves because it is hard to find decent language learning content in Greek and I like the concept. Not overly impressed at all though. It could be a decent supplement to another app but I doubt you could start as an absolute beginner with this app, you need more of a foundation to make this work.