Reviews
Hundreds of resources to help you teach yourself
Elementary Korean Workbook (with CD)
Korean, Books, Multimedia
In my very brief encounter with this Elementary Korean Workbook, I liked it reasonably well. It comes with a CD and is a companion to the big orange Elementary Korean textbook also reviewed in…
Foreign Service Institute Language Courses
Arabic, Dutch, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Audio Lessons, Websites
These Foreign Service Institute language courses were recommended by a reader. I haven’t tried them, but the holdings are extensive and consist of older courses that are now in the public domain. They are also free, so the main…
Modern Language Association Language Map
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites
The Modern Language Association has a spectacular online language map showing the languages of the U.S., as well as a data center with searchable language information. For free! These tools will be updated soon…
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites
If you are a social-media holdout, I am not going to try to convince you that you should dive in now. There are, after all, pros and cons to being on Facebook. If you are already on Facebook,…
Cable/Satellite Television
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish, Radio/TV/Video/Film
I no longer have Time Warner Cable, but in the early days of this project, I found it very useful for language-learning purposes, and I would imagine other cable or satellite or fiber-optic service providers would offer similar or perhaps…
ConversationExchange.com
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, General, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Yiddish, Websites, Classes/Conversation
Even if you live in a remote area, you can use sites such as ConversationExchange.com to find a Skype partner overseas and start speaking, say, Finnish or Xhosa. The web is a fabulous thing. Through this language-exchange community, you…
Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center
Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Audio Lessons, Multimedia, Websites
A reader whose opinion I respect directed me to this website for the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC). Here you can find a lot of free multimedia language-learning material (audio, video, print) for numerous languages, including multiple Arabic…
Livemocha
Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Websites, Classes/Conversation
“As the world’s largest online language learning community,” reads the Livemocha site, “Livemocha fuses traditional learning methods with online practice and interaction with native language speakers from around the world. Livemocha delivers an unparalleled learning experience that promises…