Can we learn a language with a mobile App?

When we consider learning a language, what we usually do is sign up at a language school. We go once or twice a week and a teacher, a native speaker in most cases, gives us some grammatical rules and vocabulary that combined help us to build up sentences. In addition, we listen to audios about various situations so that our hearing gets used to the new language and little by little we understand what is being said. Another advantage of going to classes is that we can interact in that language orally, with other students and with the teacher.

However, not everyone has the time or the financial resources to go to a language school. In order to provide solutions for all these people, and with the help of new technologies, online language courses and mobile apps have emerged with the aim of offering new and effective teaching methods.

As far as courses are concerned, more and more high quality online language learning platforms are appearing. Improved grammar content, various exercises to practice, vocabulary to learn and audios to listen to. If you want to see this for yourself, you can enter Lewolang, an online course that offers all the above and much more.

An online course offers something that a conventional attendance course does not. On the one hand, flexibility in time and how to manage content, and on the other hand, being able to express oneself freely orally, without worrying about making a mistake or bad pronunciation, since we are alone, nobody judges us except ourselves.

How do mobile applications help you learn a language?

As we have already said, in today's society where our free time is limited, new technologies help us to take better advantage of and optimise the precious minutes of leisure we have during the day.

Therefore, the tool currently used, par excellence, is the mobile. This device is very practical because, given its size, we can take it anywhere. With a mobile phone we can do practically anything wherever we are as long as we have an Internet connection. Consequently, it is logical to think that we can also use the mobile to learn a language.

Different applications have been produced that are basically focused on learning vocabulary. They are usually conceived as a game so that learning is enjoyable. The exercises are easy and quick to do, so you don't need to spend a lot of time on them. The latest applications allow you to find native speakers with whom to have conversations in the language in question. There are also other applications that show videos with conversations on different topics.

Many studies have been carried out in order to ascertain whether one can really learn to speak a language using only one or several mobile apps, but there is still not enough specific or sufficient data on the effectiveness of these apps.

What seems to be true is that these types of applications are very suitable for those who do not have previous knowledge of the language, as they provide a basis, with common, simple words and basic grammatical structures.

It seems obvious that using just one or several mobile applications is not enough to learn a language. However, they can be very valid extra help, just like watching series or movies in original version, etc.

In short, the more resources we have at our disposal to learn a language, the better. There are people who need traditional classes because this way they feel obliged to dedicate some time to the language, and find it more enjoyable than doing it at home, or for simply having a teacher who clarifies their doubts. Others don't have time to go face-to-face or prefer the privacy of their home to practice and prefer an online course.

What is clear is that, whatever method is chosen, the more time and effort we devote to learning the language and approaching it from different aspects, the better. Here we can consider the applications on the mobile as one of the tools that can be very useful, for example, to review and learn vocabulary and structures that we have studied previously. As mentioned before, the mobile allows us to practice anywhere and at any time.