More english software review

And while you'd think Duolingo being free would make it a sub-standard learning experience, you'd be wrong.

It's actually very well structured and planned, albeit with one eye on pestering you to pay for upgrades and extras. It's also perfect for kids because it's user-friendly, bright and colorful, and starts out very simple.

The thing Duolingo does best is teach you words and phrases, which you can then use if you visit a country that speaks your chosen language. While it won't teach you much about culture, grammar rules, or structure, it's very useful for anyone looking to get a few key phrases for things like holidays or short visits.

While Duolingo will reward you for logging in each day, and will send you push notifications to prompt you to learn more, it does get very repetitive very fast, and can be a little annoying at times. You'll struggle to progress beyond a certain level unless you start paying money for it, at which point we'd recommend you move on to something like Rosetta Stone, which provides a far superior paid-for learning experience. If you want to learn English, but find yourself too busy to do so, then Memrise is the app for you.

It's designed for smartphones and tablets, so is intended for use on devices that you take everywhere with you. The course itself is also intended to fit around busy lives, to help you make the most of a commute or spare ten minutes when you're cooking, cleaning, or doing other household chores.

It's a largely-free app, although you will be asked to pay for some content, and it uses flash-cards to prompt learning. These flash-cards are great for visual learners, and will reinforce language and phrases through repetition. The downside here is that the app does, indeed, get repetitive if you use it for long periods of time. We like the app itself, and the interface is good whether you're on iOS or Android. It doesn't quite match Duolingo for content, however, but is a good visual method for those who prefer that kind of learning.

Pimsleur is an actual method of language learning, and is academically-rooted. It's very effective, as a result, and can have you speaking English in a matter of months. This is primarily an audio-based course, and it's also fairly expensive, so you do have to really want to learn English if you decide to pay for this course. Pimsleur's method uses sample conversations to help you immerse in the language, and to give you helpful answers and phrases for everyday situations.

While there are some visual cues, it largely relies on audio to deliver teaching. What we don't like is that Pimsleur can be a little too academic in places, and will get boring after a few months of use. Learning can't always be fun, but you will need to motivate yourself to push through from the intermediate to more advanced stages.

The high price of the software, however, should motivate most people. EasyWords is a quality software for learning some of the very popularly used words and phrases from various languages, such as: Spanish, English, German, Portuguese, Turkish, etc. Some of the key features of this software are:. ProvaLingua provides more than English words or phrases to learn from more than lists.

It lets you learn English by giving test for all these words or phrases. You can also add lists of words or phrases which you want to learn by yourself. Note: The developer of this software has stopped working on it.

Therefore, there is no support available to this English learning software. It provides different ways which you can try for learning English, such as: spelling Tests, dictionary, free English lessons, cards, etc.

You can also use it in Mac and Linux operating System. Its user-interface is also available in multiple languages, such as: Spanish, Arabic, French, Greek, Finnish, Russian, etc.

Note: You can download dictionary for learning English for this software from here. ETS is a quality English language learning software as it provides Grammar tests, Vocabulary tests and Pronunciation tests.

Total number of tests in all these categories exceed above 50 and each of the test contains at-least 10 different questions. Definitions, phonetic transcriptions and example sentences should be laid out in a clean and readable way. The user should not feel overwhelmed by interface elements. I spent 5 minutes reading or watching each source , writing down every English word or phrase that would be interesting to an English learner.

Sometimes there was a short example phrase instead of a full sentence. The quality of the definition on a scale from 0 no definition in the dictionary to 3 very good definition. Phonetic transcriptions I checked the dictionaries against a list of 38 specific issues, for example: Does the dictionary give two pronunciations of employee or only one?

Does the dictionary show both the British and American pronunciation of new? Does the dictionary list all the weak unstressed forms of the word him? Does the dictionary list the American pronunciation of hover? Does the dictionary list the American pronunciation of buffet? Does the dictionary list the structure to write somebody and identify it as an Americanism?

I checked the following things: Does the dictionary show which transcription is pronounced in the recording?

If so, does the recording match this transcription? Does the speaker pronounce the word clearly? Is the technical quality good no noise, no compression artifacts? Are there additional recordings for word forms -s , -ed or for example sentences? I evaluated British and American recordings separately. B- sentences for 97 words including in main entry extra examples are displayed in a small box you can make it bigger the extra sentences have been chosen by the editors. C sentences for 97 words including in main entry no extra examples.

B- Smart Thesaurus shows related words, e. C to make it run without the DVD in the drive, you have to install a patch from Longman. A- startup time: s generally fast; scrolling sometimes feels a bit slow. A startup time: s feels very fast. C- startup time: s patched version satisfactory speed; scrolling feels slow sometimes.