The BEST free apps for language FLUENCY in 2021! (+ Free PDF & Quiz)

Hello everyone, and welcome back to English with Lucy. Today, I am going to talk to you

about the best apps and websites for learning English. And they're not going to be your

average. I'm not going to recommend the normal Duolingo and Babbel and all of that. These

are more specific things to help you work on individual skills, skills like pronunciation,

writing feedback, speaking, et cetera. As always, there is a free PDF that goes with

this lesson. It contains the full transcript along with key words and their definitions

as well. So you can use this for listening practise to how metta. If you'd like to download

the PDF all you've got to do is click on the link in the description box. You enter your

name and your email address. You sign up to my meeting list and the PDF comes directly

to your inbox. Then every week after that, you automatically receive my PDFs, and all

of my news, course updates, and offers. Let's get started with app number one. And

this one is really rather special. It's incredibly unique. It is something that I think will

help almost anyone who is learning a language. Now this app is free and it's sponsored this

segment of today's video. It's called HiNative. Oh, my word, it's wonderful. It's such an

incredible tool for learners of virtually any language.

In my experience, one of the most frustrating parts of learning a new language is the constant

stream of doubts and questions going round and round in my own head, especially when

you're in an earlier stage, there are just so many questions. And when you get to that

more advanced stage, the questions you have are so niche and you need a native speaker

or a teacher to answer them. Why is this like that? Why don't you say it like that? Will

I sound natural if I say it like this? I needed a teacher or a native speaker around

me 24/7 to be able to ask them all of these constant doubts and questions. And obviously

for 99.99% of us having a teacher around 24/7 is pretty much impossible unless you're lucky

enough to be married to one, I guess. This is especially true if you're learning a really

popular language like English, because there are lots of other people in the same situation

who also want a lot of attention. The HiNative app provides the solution here. On their free

app, you can ask any question about language and native speakers will answer you. They

support questions for over 113 languages. You can sign up and take advantage of this

free app on Android, iOS, or on desktop. You enter your own native language and the

language that you're learning. You can see right here how many questions have been asked.

And they are receiving a lot of answers as well from native speakers. It's so valuable

because you're not just learning textbook English, you're learning expressions, phrases,

and slang terms that are genuinely used by native speakers every day. You enter your

language and the language that you're learning, type in your email, create a username and

a password, and you're ready. Now, when you go to ask a question, you choose

a question template. You can use all of the templates for free apart from does this sound

natural and foreign language diary. The rest are free. Is so easy to do, even beginners

can ask questions easily using these templates. Let's give it a go. So let's ask what's the

difference one. What is the difference between affect and effect? I've waited just a short

while and look at all of the responses. I really like the premium feature. It does

just sound natural because you can get your writing corrected by a native speaker. So

let me write an example sentence like this one, the children are being very misbehaving

today. It's not any wrong. Then let's see what the native speakers do to correct my

writing. Exactly perfect correction. What a fantastic resource that does this sound

natural feature is only available to premium users.

However, you can upgrade your account for free for seven days. So I really recommend

you do that. One more feature that I really, really appreciate is that there is no private

messaging feature. So this can not be used as a dating site, which sadly is a big worry

for a lot of people who use language exchange services. Users can only communicate with

each other through question and answer. So it feels very safe. You can study the languages

in comfort and safety. No one's using it for dating. If you'd like to download HiNative

and try it for yourself for free, then you can get it on iOS, Android, and desktop. I've

left all of the links down below in the description box.

Let's move on to app number two, and this one is an oldie, but a goodie. It is Google

Docs/Drive. And this is the most wonderful language correction and organisation tool.

I used to teach group classes and I would always make my students complete their homework

on a Google shared document. This is so that I could make tweets and my students could

see where I had made corrections, view what I had changed, the edits I'd made, and see

my comments that I'd made on them as well. It also meant that my students had neat files,

a nice organisation system of all of their homework and their essays that they're done

throughout the years. So they could see their progress and they could use it. They could

use the corrections most importantly as a revision tool. So if an exam was coming up,

they could go through all of their past mistakes to make sure that they don't repeat them.

If your teacher is still making you hand write essays and store them in a folder, talk to

them, it's time to modernise. Alternatively, if you find someone who's willing

to correct your work, ask them to do it on Google Docs so that you have this amazing

resource. When I was a student learning Spanish, I never kept hold of my feedback in my essays.

They were on pieces of paper, and I'd put them on my bag, and I'd lose them. I was terrible

at that. When I went to university and started learning Italian, I was really, really organised.

And I still have these folders and files month by month, year by year of all of my work.

I promise you this will be your best revision resorts.

Next, let's talk about one of my favourite, favourite dictionaries. As a teacher and a

language learner, I can promise you this is one of the best of the best. Well, I've been

teaching on YouTube for nearly six years and I've used it since the very beginning. It

is Oxford Learner's Dictionary. And the reason I love it so much is because they have the

most fantastic IPA transcriptions. Some will offer lots of different accents, but they

won't provide the transcription. Oxford Learner's Dictionary provides everything

you need. You can listen to the audio and standard American English and standard British

English as well as many other accents on some words as well. And the written transcription

too. It is beautiful. It's a dictionary that's designed for learners in mind. So the definitions

are really clear and understandable. They have the word origin on most words as well,

which is really interesting as well as antonyms and synonyms. It's always really, really good

to look at the synonyms so that you can further expand your vocabulary.

And something that I think is absolutely fantastic, as a massive advocate for word diaries, you

can add words to your own word list. Phrase word list doesn't sound that exciting, but

it gets me going. Every time you search a word, you can add it to your word list. It

only takes a click. And then at the end of the year, or before an exam, you have a list

of everything that you've had to research right there for you with the pronunciation

and the definition, and the synonym, and the origin. Oh, it's just gorgeous. It's the perfect

vocab acquisition tool and pronunciation tool as well. It just ticks so many boxes. I love

it. There are lots of other dictionaries out there, but this one is my favourite.

Let's move on to website number four, this is called Forvo. It's a pronunciation website

and you search for any word in a lot of languages. It's got a lot of languages, but obviously

we're focusing on English on this channel, English with Lucy, slight hint. You search

for any word, let's search for the word old, for example, and you have lots of examples

of people from different parts of the world. You have a male from the United States.

Old.

Perfect. You have a female from the United States.

Old.

We have someone from Australia.

Old.

Canada.

Old.

Yes. We have someone from the UK.

Old.

So basically you can compare how words are pronounced differently in different countries

and in different accents. And you can also contribute audio recordings to your own language

as well. I might secretly do a few for this website in return is really, really cool if

you don't want to rely on phonetic transcriptions all the time, you want to hear how a word

is actually pronounced, or you want to compare two different countries pronunciations. Whoever

came up with that idea is a genius. Let's move on to number five. It is Quizlet,

such a good app, perfect for teachers and students. If you want to learn lots and lots

of vocabulary, but you don't know where to start, this is the perfect place for you.

On this app and website, you can create flashcards. Flashcards have been used for years and years,

decades, centuries to learn languages. It's a no brainer, it's a perfect tool. But wonderfully,

you can also search through other flashcards sets made by other students or other teachers

as well. They make them public. You can search for anything. You can search

for politics vocabulary. You could search for gardening vocabulary, whatever you like.

If you're studying to be a doctor, you could study medical vocabulary. There is so much

there. They also have some games too, which are really fun. I like to gamify the learning

process. It's also really nice when you create a set that you're really, really proud of.

You can share it with other people. Lots of teachers now use it with their students, leave

them public. So you can gain access to a lesson that you maybe wouldn't have access to before.

Moving on to number six, this is different to what I've recommended before. I always

used to recommend the BBC Sounds app as a really good place for audios like podcasts

and radio shows. But there was one thing that I didn't like about that app. They really

didn't prioritise transcripts for their audio shows. That annoys me because it's not good

for accessibility. If somebody is hard of hearing and I've got quite a few people in

my life that are hard of hearing they cannot access podcasts. And that's so sad because

there's so much wonderful information in them. It's also not that great for English learners.

One of the most amazing tools is to listen to something whilst you're reading it because

your brain makes connections. It helps you learn the pronunciation. It helps you improve

your listening. It helps you expand your vocabulary. It's just so good. Well, Spotify has now overtaken

BBC Sounds as my favourite audio app for learning English. They have recently started adding

transcripts to their shows. At the moment, it is only the original and

exclusive shows. So the ones that are native to them, I guess. There aren't that many available

at the moment, but those that are have the transcripts. And it's an amazing learning

opportunity. I also heard that they were considering expanding this to the rest of their shows

as well. So I really, really hope they do that. If you're looking for a new podcast,

make sure it's one of Spotify's original or exclusive ones. And hopefully you can access

their transcripts. The last app that I have for you is Google

Translate. And no, I'm not a teacher recommending that you just translate all of your essays

on Google. I remember marking essays and it being very, very clear who had just put their

essay in their own language, into Google translate because sometimes they'd make spelling mistakes

and their misspelt word in Spanish would be in the middle of their English essay, and

it would be very, very obvious. But that's fine. I mean, they may have been at short

on time. The reason I'm recommending Google Translate

is because of the amazing Google lens feature, where you can use your camera to translate

things in real time. And this is perfect if you're out and about, and you want to quickly

see something, but you don't have time to type it all up. For example, if I'm in a foreign

restaurant and their menu is in Chinese or something, I can just hover it over. This

is just a fun one. It's not necessarily an English learning tool, but it's a really useful

life tool, I think. And it's something I was just blown away by when I first saw it. I

just couldn't believe that we're finally living in the future.

That is it for today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something.

Don't forget to check out the sponsor of today's video, HiNative. All of the links to download

the app they're in the description box. I highly, highly recommend it. Don't forget

to download the free PDF that goes with this lesson. All you've got to do is click on the

link in the description box, enter your name, and your email address. The PDF will come

directly to your inbox and then every week afterwards you'll automatically receive my

lesson PDFs along with all of my news, course updates, and offers.

Don't forget to connect with me on all of my social media. I've got my Instagram @Lucy

and my website englishwithlucy.co.uk, where I've got an awesome pronunciation tool. Maybe

I should have included this in the list, but it seemed a bit too showy-offy. On this tool,

you can click on a phone name and hear me pronounce the phone name or a word that contains

that phone name. It's really cool. It's fun to use.

I, word, no.

I also have my personal channel where I've logged my life here in English countryside

and all of the blogs are fully subtitled. So you can use them for listening practise

and for learning more vocabulary. Thanks bye. I will see you soon for another lesson.