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I thought some people might like to see and do the same. The site I'm using is Readlang, and I've changed the settings to use a custom dictionary (Lingvo Live, because it's very good) and in a new tab. For Russian learners, the article is from Echo of Moscow, which has a lot of audio interviews that are transcribed. I downloaded the audio and put it in VLC in the bottom so I can listen at the same time.
The advantage is if I find a new word that interests me I can easily see it in other contexts to get a better idea of it's meaning. Sometimes I read the English phrase first myself and try to translate it in my head before reading the Russian version. It's a slow way to read that takes a lot of pausing, so it's not for the impatient, though you can use it to read quickly if you want to.
I've created a web-app which is made for exactly the kind of process you describe. It's called Readlang (http://readlang.com) and works like this:
- You upload any text to read (or use a Chrome extension to read a webpage)
- While reading, click a word or drag across a phrase to translate it
- Everything you've ever translated is stored in your account for you to learn with flashcards, which contain the surrounding sentence for context. You can either use the in-built flashcard system or export to Anki. The in-built flashcard system uses SRS like Anki, but also prioritises by word frequency so you learn the most useful words first.
If you try it out I'd love to know what you think.
Not 100% what you're looking for. But, this tool does put books translated in multiple languages side by side, so you can follow along the context. You can extract words that you do not know from there
I'd also recommend readlang. They have a great chrome plugin that does translation when you click on words, and words you want to study can be exported to a flashcard program. It's pretty fantastic.
I'm using Mi Vida Loca for Spanish and it's excellent. Looking at the French equivalent, Ma France, it looks just as good. Ma France
Duolingo is like grammar practice so you should be okay for that. I've heard a lot of opinions about whether or not to learn grammar explicitly or use flashcards for learning words out of context. Mostly, it boils down to "You should learn grammar because you're an adult and it's easier," VS "You shouldn't learn grammar because kids don't and they learn languages just fine!" I guess it's up to you; Living Language has a nice grammar book if you want to go that way.
Youtube has plenty of French music videos (Stromae, Pierre Lapointe, etc) and general information videos. Yabla has French videos with correct subtitles and transcripts but it's $10/mth; not that many videos. FluentU is the same as Yabla with some grammar lessons for free but $15/mth for unlimited video player usage; also not that many videos.
Accessory Resources: ReadLang has a lot of reading material at varying difficulties. HelloTalk (Android/iPhone app) is nice to start getting conversation in, at least through text. Mindsnacks (iPhone app) is another gaming app, mostly for vocab.
Children's books are a great idea! Also, a book in which you're already familiar with the plot is handy, since you won't get stressed about getting lost. Something you've read in English, or perhaps one that you've seen the film adaptation of.
You probably shouldn't look up every word you don't know, too much looking up can distract you from the flow of the story you're reading, so if you can guess the meaning from the context sometimes that's good. If progress is too slow it then reading can become a slog and motivation suffers - depends on your personality so do whatever works for you.
As an alternative to reading on the Kindle or with a dictionary at your side, you might like to try my webapp for reading designed especially for language learners: http://readlang.com - it provides very fast word and phrase translations and you can review new vocabulary later with flashcards.
You'll also find Extr@ with sync'ed transcriptions on Readlang - search in the German public library for "extra" to find them (can't make direct links to these searches, but plan to work on that!).
I make a webapp for reading in a foreign language: http://readlang.com
It lets you:
- upload entire novels, or use on any webpage
- translate words and phrases quickly as you read by clicking or dragging across them
- everything you've translated is remembered, along with the context sentence, for you to memorise with flashcards
I made it originally myself to avoid the hassle of looking up words and keeping vocab lists. Please give it a try and let me know if it works for you, I'm always keen to get feedback!
Instead of manually looking up and adding each word to Anki, you might want to give my website a shot: http://readlang.com
It lets you upload anything you like to read, click on words or phrases to translate, and everything you translate is stored to your account for you to learn with flashcards, either on Readlang or you can export them for import them to Anki.
If you try it I'd love to hear know how it goes.
You don't mention Readlang, irrespective of which method you use to learn a language, you need a way to be able to read novels, read the newspaper, or anything online, look up words you don't understand and automatically have them added to your memory cards that you can practice.. This for me was the biggest help in trying to learn Dutch. I use readlang every day, http://readlang.com/
Sorry, I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I had no expectation of people doing any real work before being contracted. I'm new to this and just wanted to get some info that would help me choose a candidate.
I've now edited the offer from this (before):
> 1. Send me () a link to your best work along with a rough idea of what you’d like to do with the Readlang landing page by next Friday (22nd Jan 2016).
to this (after):
> 1. Send me () links(s) to your work which best demonstrates your ability to improve the Readlang landing page by next Friday (22nd Jan 2016).
To make it clear I'm not looking for spec work.
I create the web-app Readlang exactly for this purpose.
It allows you to: - upload entire novels in plain text or epub format - read in a distraction free kindle-like UI on mobile, tablet or desktop browsers - click to translate any word or phrase to English, as long as you have a decent internet connection this is very fast, so you don't get distracted from enjoying the story - everything you translate is stored to your account to learn later with flashcards
Many people are finding it useful and I'm still working to improve it so if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it.
If you have (or can get ahold of) a digital copy of the book, you might want to check out Readlang (http://readlang.com). It is an e-reader designed for reading content in foreign languages. You can click on words and phrases to translate them and it’ll automatically turn them into flashcards (which can also be exported to Anki). It also has a built-in dictionary (although I recommend replacing the default with the Daum mobile dictionary for better formatting).
It's not totally ready for prime time, but I have an app I've been working on to search for YouTube videos with subtitles and import them into Readlang (which is a wonderful way to consume foreign language videos if you haven't used it). You can try it out here:
https://youtube2readlang.ryanbrainard.com/
I was just trying it out, but unfortunately, a lot of kids YouTube videos don't have subs. 로보카폴리 had a bunch with them, but the timing was so far off it was not usable (it was like this in the original videos, not because of my app). Sharing this anyway because you can try searching for some of your other favorites. You can also look for already imported and shared videos here: http://readlang.com/ko/library
lingvist and readlang are best for vocab (ReadLang assumes you know a bit already because there's no sense in reading before you know cases/verbs)
For true beginners I would do a combo of Lingvist and read a grammar book like Penguin Russian.
Do Lingvist til you hit about 2000 words, (about 20 hrs), then go to the readLang page and read some of the books I've uploaded for beginners.
This is Ужастики (goosebumps in Russian) как убить монстра. It's good for advanced-beginners but may still be too hard for you as of now.
http://readlang.com/library/5758d88148926d64107babf2/from/0
If you have money to spend, Red Kalinka is excellent for $10/hr or so but sometimes Skype calls overseas have bad connection problems.
I recommend using Readlang. You can find a lot of French texts on there, and as you're reading, you can click on any words you don't know, and a translation (powered by wordreference, which itself is a wonderful resource) will come up. You can also get it as an add-on extension in Chrome, so you can read articles on other sites and you'll be able to look up a word by clicking on it.
There's a book by Peter Jones called Learn Latin: The Book of the 'Daily Telegraph' Q.E.D.Series which contains a bunch of short lessons on learning Latin that originally ran in the Daily Telegraph newspaper in the UK. It covers most, if not all, of the grammar and includes short texts to read. He also wrote a book with Keith Sidwell called Reading Latin: Text and Vocabulary which might be good, though I haven't used that one so I can't comment on its quality. The first book I mentioned is quite good as an introduction, though.
Once you have the grammar down, or you're at least familiar with it, you can upload Latin texts into ReadLang. You can then click on unfamiliar words and see the definition from an online dictionary without having to switch tabs in your browser or look it up in a physical dictionary. The site is free, but if you want to look up phrases (as opposed to individual words) you'll need a membership to look up more than 5 or 10 a day. You can look up as many individual words in a text as you want for free, though.
I want to second the recommendation for Readlang. It is an amazing tool and the single creator (!) has done an amazing job on it! I'm very happy to give my support for such a job well done.
This is my favorite thing right now, болшое спасиьо to the Redditor who shared it with me, and while there is a pay option, the free version suits me just fine http://readlang.com/ru/dashboard
And to be specific, my favorite thing on that site right now is watching Виктор Цой's* mouth* pronounce ы in Дальше действовать будем мы!
- I'm taking a guess here, do I say рот Виктора Цоя?
Actually, nevermind - I figured it out. If you go on readlang and go to public texts under the russian language, you can search for intern or interny and they should start to pop up.
First 3 episodes:
01: http://readlang.com/library/55c3a6bb79f3814966b807b3
If you want to combine reading and a memrise-like spaced repetition system you might like my web-app Readlang.
It lets you upload any text you'd like to read and it translates any words or phrases when you click or drag across them.
Everything you translate is converted into a flashcard includes the context sentence for you to practise with flashcards later. The context sentence is very important to disambiguate the meaning of the word and to form associations which aid memorization.
If you give it a try please let me know how it goes!
I highly recommend using some sort of software to define and keep track of words.
I personally really, really like readlang, but I suppose you could also use Learning With Texts, LingQ, or FLTR. I find Readlang to be the most effective, efficient, and flexible software to date.
This way, you can look up words on the fly(though LWT makes this difficult and FLTR requires opening a new browser tab, whereas Readlang gives instant results from clicking) and store them(and in the case of LingQ and Readlang, review them later).
For reading articles online I find this tool very useful: http://readlang.com/
You can hover over a word you don't understand to see a translation, so it saves going to look in a separate dictionary. Of course, some words have more than one meaning so I don't know if it's always accurate but it's definitely helpful.
As someone said, reading is a great way to improve vocabulary. I think it's much better than vocabulary apps that teach you random words out of context.
Do you know http://readlang.com ? That's a great tool for acquiring vocab through reading.
One thing that's REALLY IMPORTANT if you're learning vocab through reading - you also need to learn the pronunciation for every new word. Don't guess pronunciation from the spelling because it's very likely you will guess wrong. Go to an online dictionary that has audio and listen to the pronunciation.
I study English from Dutch and Dutch from English on Duolingo, practice my words in Readlang throughout the day (I have 5700 words in there now) http://readlang.com/learn, I watch the news in Dutch on VRT in the evenings on television and when I have time I read Pieter Aspe novels and watch Aspe on television they have a 9 season police series which I have on the computer.. (this is the hardest because it is not easy to understand all the accents whereas they speak well on the news and that is mostly OK)
Ah, I shared that one: http://readlang.com/library/5a351b15dbea65001ff34d14/scroll/0
I was happy she included subtitles! I imported it into Readlang with an app I’m working on (https://youtube2readlang.ryanbrainard.com).
The best way to view it is with readlang.com: http://readlang.com/es/library (and search "extr@").
It'll embed the youtube video with subtitles underneath. You click the subtitles whenever you need a translation.
Until you're at an intermediate or possible higher level, I'm not convinced that just listening to audio that you don't understand is very helpful at all, hence subtitles. I could read subtitles without pausing long, long before I could half-understand native spoken spanish in TV shows.
I'm just trying to use the language. I'm reading news sites in my target languages, watch videos on youtube where people speak them, raid social media for conversations conducted using them, etc. There are a few resources I come back to, such as Memrise or Readlang, but they kind of feel like work, while just simply interacting with the language, especially when it involves things relevant to my interests, feels effortless. I also think the unstructured nature of this exercise helps my language skills more in the long run.
Oh, I also enjoy music a lot, so I am looking for music videos sung in those languages, then find one I like and listen to it over and over trying to increase my understanding of the lyrics with each replay. It may not be the most effective exercise, but it is one of the most enjoyable ones.
If your books are digital, try http://www.interlinear.io (my project) or http://readlang.com. They both have reading aid and flashcards for memorizing the words you looked up.
Also Kindle has a built-in dictionary. It doesn't always work nice for German words (especially verbs with separable prefixes), but it works.
I just started using Readlang.com, it's library of reading materials, not the extension, and I really liked it. It has very nice features like labeling materials' levels(A1, A2, etc.), something like Duolingo's peak words, flashcards and more. Also there is an option where you could choose to learn Spanish from German.
> we were forced to read articles from real news sources every week
Definitely a good idea; I credit that with a lot of my Spanish comprehension. A service like Readlang or Lingua.ly can help by serving up items appropriate for your reading level. They also both have browser addons that provide instant translations, making it more convenient to read any German (or whatever language) text.
<strong>FSI French</strong> has some pretty comprehensive intermediate courses. They're perfect for brushing up on your vocab and grammar. They also usually teach you subtle differences to sound more authentic.
French in Action is a pretty interesting French course that uses no English whatsoever. Unfortunately I don't remember where I used to watch it but I'm sure you can find it easily.
You can always increase your vocabulary by reading stuff that's understandable to you but slightly above your level. <strong>Readlang</strong> is great for that.
If you don't really feel like studying, Youtube is your friend. Native material like vlogs, documentaries, songs, talk shows, interviews or even TED talks, is everywhere. Also, French radio stations, podcasts and TV are always there.
Very nice. One to add: ReadLang is a great reading resource for many languages. Whatever texts they have (you can adjust based on level) you can read in the original, or click on an unknown word and it translates right there in the text. Whole phrases are translated quite well. Then any words you clicked on are saved for you on a vocab list.
I use it for Italian, but I've browsed their Spanish selection and it's quite varied.
Here you go, just synced "Let it go" in German for you :-)
http://readlang.com/library/53bbf471449f3d326400970f
It is a bit like Scribd in that anyone is free to upload and share texts. It's not only used for music videos and people also use it to read anything from news websites to novels. The key features are:
- Click to translate any word or phrase.
- All translated words are stored in your account.
- You can practise with flashcards that include the original context sentence. These use a spaced repetition algorithm for scheduling and prioritise the most frequent (most useful) words first.
Hi, I make a web-app for exactly this purpose!
It lets you:
- Upload texts to read, which can be entire novels.
- Click any word, or drag across any phrase to translate it.
- Every time you translate a word or phrase, a flashcard is generated including the context sentence around it.
- You can practise with spaced repetition flashcards on Readlang.com, or alternatively export your flashcards for use in other software like Anki, Quizlet, Memrise, etc...
Please let me know if it works well for you or not!
You could read books or articles and at the same time create an anki deck yourself from the all the words and phrases you look up.
(or alternatively, read using my site http://readlang.com, which makes this process a lot less painful :-)
Check out Readlang. I've been using it for reading Spanish recently. The website already has texts sorted by the CEFR level. Also, when I import a text, the website labels the text with its CEFR level. I tried importing a text written in Italian. I see that the website can identify the Italian texts by the CEFR level. That's the closest thing I know of.
Check this out: http://readlang.com
They have articles and books submitted by the community. You read through their 'web reader' which allows you to click words to translate them. It keeps track of which words you translated and you can later go back and train those words, flashcard style, or even export to Anki.
And my favorite thing: youtube videos with full scripts in a separate pane and the currently spoken word being highlighted. Also full translation.
Regarding "quite annoying to have to stop and look them up" - have you checked out http://readlang.com?
If you have the time to create custom Anki decks and like memorizing vocabulary - to make it more challenging, instead of bilingual cards with the word on one side and the translation on the other side, you could try clozed example sentences where you guess the word from a monolingual definition plus synonyms. I did that with English (pilfering the example sentences from Oxford and Cambridge online dictionaries).
http://readlang.com/ is a free tool (with optional premium upgrade) that sounds like what you're looking for. It lets you create flashcards out of new words you encounter. They accept .txt or .epub uploads, but you can use tools like Calibre to convert pdfs to epubs. You can also get a browser extension to translate and make flashcards out of words you encounter on various sites
My favorite tool for vocabulary is Readlang. It's a webapp. You have to supply your own reading material and then you mark what you don't know and it makes flash cards based on it. What makes it great is that the flash cards have the context that the word was used in, which helps comprehension.
It has a premium mode, but it doesn't limit you too much.
I'm a huge fan of ReadLang! you can set your difficulty level and get a whole bunch of texts, songs, whatever. The cool thing is that you can click on words you don't know for a translation, too!
If I only wanted to learn German or Italian in order to listen to opera, I would get a transcript of an opera and make flashcards for each unique word. After I learned the words on the flashcards, I would listen to the opera multiple times until I understood 80% to 90%, then I would repeat the process with another opera. No need to study grammar unless you are really curious about something in particular.
Another method would be to put the German or Italian opera transcript in ReadLang, learn the vocabulary, then listen to the opera multiple times until 80%-90% understanding.
Check out Readlang. They have a small section of shared Korean texts (http://readlang.com/ko/library), but you can import your own as well. Wherever you end up getting your material, Readlang is a great way to consume it because it integrates the material, a translator, and flashcards into one interface.
I made the web-app Readlang to help with exactly this:
It allows you to:
- Read any content you find, upload your own texts or epub books, or use the Web Reader extension to read any webpage.
- Click on any word (or drag across a phrase) to translate it to your first language.
- Every word or phrase you translate will be stored to practice with flashcards, either on readlang.com or you can export them for use in Anki. The great thing about these is that they include the context sentence that you originally encountered the word in.
If you try it I'd love to hear what you think!
It's a web-app and browser extension that lets you:
- Click to translate any word or phrase
- Stores all your translations, along with the context sentence, for you to review with flashcards later.
Check it out: http://readlang.com
I know this site and like it, it's well done. I feel it's always helpful to read along with something while listening at the same time, and even if you don't know many words, you are still learning something about pronunciation, word endings, etc, as well as increasing your reading speed, which will make studying go so much faster and easier.
I would also suggest you try this site which will let you click on unknown words, see english translations, and then study the new words of your choice as flash cards: http://readlang.com/ru/dashboard
You might like to check out the most popular German websites among Readlang users: http://readlang.com/de/links
These are listed based on the number of users that have used the Readlang chrome extension to translate words on each of the sites. You'll find lots of news sites, along with others for short stories, fairy tales, etc.
Chinese (中文) is there, but it suffers the same problems I mentioned for Japanese: no word detection, no word frequency list, and no Pinyin. These are all solvable problems but would take time, I may get there one day but for now I'm focussed on improving the experience for those languages based on the Roman alphabet.
Finnish (Suomi) is on the list too, this is lacking an please give it a try, there's a list of popular Finnish websites to practice with here: http://readlang.com/fi/links.
BTW: Depending on your device, you should be able to use the Web Reader bookmarklet on mobile, although the process of installing can be tricky, you'll find some instructions here: https://readlang.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/160926-install-readlang-web-reader
(It's getting to the point with 50+ languages where I should probably add a search box!)
I think you want to say. A donde puedo practicar You want to use present indicative because in the moment that's what you want to do even though you're going to engage in it in the future it's still a reference to the present. I'll list some resources for you.
I made Readlang exactly for this purpose. It lets you:
- Upload texts, read texts and videos shared on the site, or read webpages with the Web Reader Chrome Extension.
- Click any word or drag across any phrase to translate.
- Review these words and phrases later with flashcards, which contain the context you encountered the word in.
Please give it a try, I'd love to hear what you think: http://readlang.com
If you already have the basics and romance vocab, I would recommend going to www.readlang.com and reading a book through the site. That way you can click on unknown vocab and get the definition without having to check a dictionary all the time, which gets real tiring real fast. It even saves the words you click on as flashcards for Anki if you want. 1984 is on the site already, and if you have the text, you can upload any book you want to read.
Like others said, using Esperanto is really useful too. You can learn a lot just hanging out on the Lernu forums. There are also active Esperanto facebook groups, but the average level of the users seems lower than Lernu.
I agree this is difficult. I made the web-app http://readlang.com to make it easier to consume content as an intermediate learner. It lets you upload whatever text you'd like to read, click to translate words & phrases, and then practice them later with flashcards which include the context sentence. There's a public library texts and videos, some of which are suitable for intermediate learners. Depending on the language, the amount of high quality content may be quite low, but it should improve and you are free to add whatever you can find. If you try it I'd love to know what you think.
My favourite way to pick up vocabulary is by reading, and I created a website to help learn this way: http://readlang.com
It lets you:
- Read articles, novels or webpages
- Translate the words and phrases you don't know
- Memorise those phrases with spaced repetition flashcards, similar to Anki or Memrise, except that it also prioritises the high frequency words, so you learn the most useful words first. (If you prefer, you can also export your words to learn in Anki or other software)
- It's free (there is a premium version but the free plan is VERY usable)
Please give it a shot, and drop me some feedback!
PS: For those who have never used Readlang - I'd love to conduct an online Skype session in which you talk through your thoughts as you figure out how to use it - this will help me to spot usability problems and improve the experience. Contact me at if interested. In return I'll give you a premium account for 6 months! Please don't try using the site first though - I'm looking for complete noobs only! ;-)