Memrise

Memrise isn't specifically language learning site. It is actually a memorization helper site. You pick a topic you want to memorize and memrise will periodically test your memory. Memrise will pick its questions based on your results. Things that you successfully memorize will take a long time to be asked again while the things you forget will come more frequently. This way you are forced to correct your mistake as quickly as possible while not bore you asking thing you already mastered. By asking more about the things you failed to memorize it also prevent the wrong fact to be embedded strongly in your memory.

Learning language always involved a great deal of memorization especially to remember all the foreign vocabulary and this is the general way course in memrise is structured. While it is possible to make a course that focused on grammar, most course are just in the form of question asking "What is the word for [x] in language [y] ?" 

The good thing is memrise is totally free and everyone can make their own course that suit their needs.

Italki

Italki is a community website for learning foreign languages. The key word here is 'community', italki doesn't provide language lessons of its own. Instead, the member of the community is the one giving language lessons to other member. Member can apply to become a language teacher, whether professional of informal. Professional is meant for experienced teachers who can make proper instruction in the languages they teach. They also expected to have a curriculum for their lessons. Informal teachers are usually native speakers who willing to teach other their mother tongue. These lessons are not free though, the currency in italki is italki credit with rate 10 italki credit = 1 dollar.

Fortunately, for people who don't want to spend any many (like me), italki has other useful features. One of them is language exchange partner. Basically it's a way to pair you with other member who understand the languange that you are currently learning and is trying to learn language that you understand. Under this system, you and your partner take turn to teach the other the language he/she understands. Italki provides you with chat and message system to converse with your partner.

Another useful feature is notebook and question. Notebook is where you can make personal entry about your current progress and your partner/follower will be notified when it's happen so they can offer their comment/suggestion. You can also post global question that can be seen by all members. There are many language teachers that will readily answer your questions. It's a good way to build reputation and attract students.

Italki is really great is you are a social person, you can learn and make many acqauintances at the same time.

Duolingo

Created by a Carnegie Mellon professor Luis von Ahn, Duolingo is free language learning site that currently offer lesson in learning Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese and German. 

Like many others, Duolingo use gamification to spice up the learning process with score and leaderboard. The usual session is in the form of Duolingo gives you some explanation about the current topics and then give you related questions. The interesting thing is in every session you have limited "lives" in the form of heart. Every time you answer incorrectly you lose one heart and if you give wrong answer when you no longer have any heart, its all over and you have to start over from beginning. Just like when playing games it can give you a sense of dread like "Oh my God, there is still six questions left and I already lost all my hearts". I never thought that learning language can be so intense.

The original idea of Duolingo is actually to make a crowdsource translation site and that goal is implemented in the feature that let Duolingo take random quote from the internet and ask you to translate it. It's really neat idea to familiar you with the real world usage of the language that you are currently learning. Your translation will be compared with other people translations so you can see how accurate your translation is.

This day, the success of a website is usually means making a vibrant community built around it. Duoling has discussion feature where Duolingo users can engage with each other. Discussion is really like forum when one user post a question and others answer it but it placed right inside the main site.

All in all, it's a pretty good site. Highly recommended.

Speaking More than One Language is Fun

I always like hearing foreign languages even if I don't understand them. It feels like magic that this sound that meaningless to me is actually conveying the speaker's thoughts and ideas. I used to dream of becoming polyglot but sadly the only foreign language I mastered so far is English (I'm an Indonesian). 

Luckily there are lots of websites in the internet to help you learn foreign languages. In my upcoming posts I'll write about some of the sites that I have tried.