It’s exciting – your Erasmus+ or Turing Scheme trip is looming fast, and you can’t wait to experience another country, culture, food and people. Whether you have some basic language skills, no basic language skills or you can speak a foreign language well, generally, students and learners going on these types of placements abroad do so to improve their linguistic abilities. However, it’s wise to give yourself a helping hand, and with today’s technology, there are plenty of excellent apps at the swipe of your fingertips to guide you. All you need is your Smartphone! Here's our pick of the best.
Available in 25 languages, this is an incredible app that’s easy to navigate and works very well on a Smartphone – we’d suggest looking at it in landscape to get the best view. Another benefit is that you can use this app on a computer too. There are three choices to make, depending on your language skills, beginner, intermediate and proficient. You may even find a discount if you search online. Then, once you’ve chosen your level, you can select what type of lessons you need.
This is one of the most well-known apps, and it’s been around for quite a long time, which is testimony to the type of product it is. Put simply, it has excellent reviews and offers most 14 languages. One of the benefits of Babbel is that you can take part in live lessons, rather than navigating through the online lessons provided. Registration is free and the first lesson of every course is free to try, plus there’s a 20-day money-back-guarantee, so if you don’t like it, you don’t lose anything by trying!
This app is good if you’re short on time as lessons are bite-size. It teaches a lot of basic words and phrases and at the end of each lesson, there’s a short quiz to check what you’ve learnt. We think this is a good app if you have some prior knowledge of a language and the app offers 13 different language. You can also use Busuu on a computer as well as your smartphone, which is always useful. Signing up for Busuu basic is free and if you pay for the premium app, you can get your money back in 14 days if it doesn’t suit your needs.
This app uses short videos to teach you how to say short phrases, scientifically designed to cement these phrases into memory. It also provides 23 languages and it’s available on a computer as well. What’s more is there’s a subscription plan which you can unsubscribe from whenever you want.
This is our last language app on the list and begins very gently with single words or brief sentences. What we like about this language app is that it provides learning in small steps, so you move along quickly and remember words and phrases faster than more involved lessons. It’s fast and easy to learn with Super Duolingo and you can easily look at it for a few minutes every day, picking up some words here and there. You’ll need to use it for longer periods to really learn a language. Super Duolingo offers the most amount of languages compared to other apps on this list – 38 to be exact and the basic version is free. It also offers a free upgrade to the premium version for 2 weeks and after that, you’re billed monthly (you can unsubscribe whenever you want to).