Livemocha Growing

Livemocha continues to grow. They are up to 3 million members in 220 countries, which shows that language learning is a serious concern for a lot of people around the world. They have added several languages with even more to come.

Interestingly, they have used their own membership to increase the languages available by 'crowdsourcing.' Members can add and verify content in their native languages, thus making more languages available for other learners. It's smart and guarantees that some of the less commonly learned languages will eventually have learning materials available.

For example, they have content to learn Icelandic, Ukrainian and Estonian - three languages that have very little material available for the learner via published courses.

Other languages available to learn with Livemocha include Arabic, Greek, Dutch, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, English, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Livemocha Updates

Livemocha has been updating their site. In addition to adding features, they have added support for learners of two more languages - Arabic and Korean. They already had an impressive list of languages. In addition to the usual English, French, Spanish, German and Italian, they also have resources for learners of Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, Russian and even Hindi and Icelandic!

Language Communities

There are a growing number of language community sites on the internet. I know I've mentioned Lingq and Livemocha before. Mango Languages is another such site that comes highly recommended.

These 'language community' sites have lots of features for language learners. There are tutorials, lots of audio, podcasts, ways to track your progress as you learn and interactions with teachers and other language learners. Most have plenty of free resources and features, but reserve upgraded features for a fee.

The lines can be very blurry as to what constitutes a 'language community' from a 'language exchange' site or even a tutorial, penpal site or forum. Take a close look at as many sites as possible to get a feel for them and what they offer. Choose one or two that most interest you or you can best fit into your study routine. These sites, when used properly and diligently, can form the core of your study for a long time.

LiveMocha - More Sites for Learning Languages

As part of our study regimen it is essential to add penpals, live chats and even voice chats to our mix of language learning tools. There are dozens of sites that offer these features specifically for language learners. I thought the Language Penpal Resources page had more than enough variety, but every time I turn around, there is another site for language learners. I don't think having anymore of these sites can hurt, but I just can't keep up with them all! The good news is that some of the newer ones have deep pockets. They can afford to spend on some very good features. Here is an in-depth review of LiveMocha - one of the most popular new sites - http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/livemocha-smell-the-coffee-and-learn-the-lingo/