Livemocha: A Review

Do you need to learn a new language but don't have thousands of dollars to dish out for a class? Livemocha is the answer to all your language learning needs. What is Livemocha? Livemocha is a social networking site geared towards connecting you to native speakers in the language you want to learn. It is a very simply designed, yet highly effective, website. You can learn a variety of languages at your own pace, from the comfort of your home computer.

First, after signing up and enrolling in a class, you are presented with images and the word or sentences in the other language. You can choose to see a translation of the words or view other users' translations. After this, you go to a review segment. The review segment was recently updated to randomly include both reading, listening and writing by matching the correct picture to the words that are either written or spoken.

After that you are asked a question or asked to write about a topic. You then write a few sentences or a paragraph in the language you are learning and submit it. The fantastic thing is that you can invite your friends who natively speak the language you are learning, to come and review your submission. They can correct what you have written and tell you if anything is wrong and why. And it is easy to meet people on Livemocha, as you can browse other users' submissions and look for people who have left good information to invite to be your friends.

The last part of each lesson on Livemocha is a speaking exercise where you are presented with a paragraph in the language you are learning, and asked to record yourself speaking it. A cheap microphone can be purchased for less than ten dollars at most stores, and you can then read the paragraph and again, invite native speakers to come and critique it! It is an excellent way to hone your pronunciation and most importantly to assure yourself that you are speaking in a manner that will be understandable when you need to speak the language you are learning. I found this indispensible for learning French with its difficult pronunciation. After the last portion of the lesson in some of the units there will be a dialog for you to read.

Right now there are only a handful of languages available on Livemocha, including English, French, German, Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Some of the languages only have one unit, such as Icelandic, whereas English has the most number of units, including practice TOEFL tests. The creators of the Livemocha have stated that they are planning on adding more content, which in the future might require payment but that what is on the site as of now, will remain free. They have said there was an overwhelming response for the addition of Arabic and Korean, so these languages will be available in the near future as well.

One of the only problems with the Livemocha site is that there are a few bugs yet to be worked out and a few mistranslations, but one can put in a bug report and the administrators will respond to it. They seem to be working very hard at making the site perfect, and so it is easy to overlook the small mistakes, especially considering that it is free.

And last but not least, one of the most rewarding parts of the Livemocha site is helping others learn your language. I thoroughly enjoy helping people learn English and have met some very nice people and have made some good friends from across the globe because of it. Livemocha is of such high quality that I would be willing to pay for it, but appreciate not having to because it is free.