We will introduce useful educational applications in a series of several articles of Cloud and education:
Learn a foreign language using the cloud
Helping tools for school
Learning in a playful way
Cloud technologies provide a plenty of useful applications that make our lives easier. Have you ever thought of using a smartphone as a help in learning a foreign language? There are many different applications available from your laptop, tablet or smartphone to enrich your vocabulary, improve pronunciation and access native speakers /a person who speaks a language from birth / anytime, anywhere. Aliter Technologies experts have prepared an overview and evaluation of these applications.
Preply is a platform for searching and managing language courses provided via Skype. In the first step, the user enters his / her preferences, such as reasons (education, career, travel, etc.), current level of language skills, preferred time and price of courses. Subsequently, Preply generates a list of recommended trainers, including profile and student evaluation. The reservation of the course as well as the payment is made via Preply, where each trainer sets the price individually.
Similar functionality is provided by applications such as Verbling, Italki, LOI English, MyLingo TRIP and others.
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Each trainer sets the price individually, trainings are available in the range of 1 – 35 Euros per hour.
Drops offers language learning in a playful way through the mobile app. More than 30 languages are available. In the free version, the user has 5 free minutes per day to use the app. Teaching is realized in a playful form, which requires putting words, assigning pictures to the right words, etc. New words are gradually added to the user to expand their vocabulary. When you purchase the premium version, the app is unlocked indefinitely depending on the subscription version.
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Price: Free version is available for 5 min. daily. Unlimited version is paid monthly 9.99 Eur, yearly 69.96 Eur (monthly installment 5.83 Eur) and lifetime license is available for 159.99 Eur.
ELSA is an interesting app focused on improving English pronunciation. It is accessible exclusively through a smartphone and uses artificial intelligence to provide instant pronunciation feedback through over 1,200 courses. At each course, the student reads the words or sentences displayed in the application, then the system evaluates the pronunciation level and displays the correct or incorrect pronunciation of a letter or syllable in the word. Courses are divided into different levels according to the types of pronunciation (eg r, short and long, TH, etc.) In addition to the possibility of teaching through levels, it is possible to choose topics such as. technology, travel, medicine, relationships, etc.
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Price: Limited free edition available. The full version can be tested for 7 days. The price of the full version is 4.29 Eur per month, 9.49 Eur quarterly or 31.99 Eur annually.
FluentU is an application that uses YouTube videos to teach foreign languages. There are over 3000 videos categorized by difficulty (six levels) and themes (eg culture, business, fashion, catering, etc.) for the English language. Some of the videos focus on teaching grammar, phrases, idioms, or the correct use of words (e.g., every time vs. all the time, usually vs. actually, Then vs. Than, and more). When you click on a video, the pronunciation and interpretation keywords are shown first. After the video is played, there are interactive captions available that can be interpreted by simply dragging and dropping words, sometimes with illustrations. Upon completion of the video, the student can verify their knowledge by quiz.
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Price: A 14-day free trial is available. The full version is priced at $ 30 per month or $ 240 per year.
Note: This article uses screenshots of applications.
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