Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Slovoed - mobile language learning

Language learning in real-life situations is both important and effective.

But when I'm on holidays, I'm not into carrying bulky phrase books or dictionaries around all day. And I hate not having audio files for pronunciation. The solution? An audio and text dictionary on my mobile.

slovoed.com are a Russian software team who provide great mobile dictionaries in over 130 languages. I've been using Slovoed's French-English dictionary to:

1 pick a word and listen to an audio file for pronunciation guidance
2 read example phrases of the word being used in different contexts
3 create flash cards
4 review flash cards with a quiz
5 personalise the dictionary with your own vocab
6 explore hot links in every entry, so you can easily jump from word to word

That's just a list of the features I find useful - you can see a full list of OS-specific features here.

With slovoed mobile dictionaries, you can get a dictionary on your mobile from just $15 (price for the Simbian OS English-French dictionary - different language partners have different prices - the Spanish-Catalan dictionary is about $60).

I've been using various ipod packages for language learning, but haven't found anything that works. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has found an effective way of learning a language on the go?

PS...My favourite French phrase on my slovoed dictionary is under Drink/Boire:

"Elle l'a fait boire pour qu'il avoue."

Translation

"She got him drunk so that he'd confess."

A useful phrase for a very specific situation...

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2 Comments:

Blogger Jon Bischke said...

We have something in the works at eduFire that I think you'll like. It's not ready yet but in the meantime feel free to check out the site for some videos and tutors who will teach you anytime using video chat (drop me a line and I'll set you up with a free session if you'd like).

February 27, 2008 5:08 AM  
Blogger Michelle Gallen said...

Hey Jon,

Sounds interesting! I've a bit of a 'backblog' of content at the moment, so what I'll do is contact you when I've caught up on myself!

Had a quick look at the site - I've signed up for your French blog, and think your idea's really interesting!

If you've a mailing list, I'd appreciate being added to it.

Thanks,
Michelle

February 27, 2008 11:24 AM  

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