Did you know that the most effective way to learn a language is by putting it into practice in real-life situations? Whether you’re ordering coffee, asking for directions, or chatting with a friend, language truly comes alive when you use it daily. Practical exercises in language learning apps that simulate real-world scenarios is the need of the hour.
A lot of language learning apps these days advertise themselves as providing exercises and lessons oriented towards quicker real-life use of the language, comparing themselves with competitors whom they claim make content which doesn’t prepare users for real-life conversation.
What sort of content do we want from our language learning apps, since we do want to use our time practically and we do want to speak the languages we’re learning in real life? In short, how can I practice learning a language? In this article, we’ll explore how these apps are bridging the gap between theory and practice, helping you confidently apply what you’ve learned to everyday conversations. Ready to make your language skills more practical? Let’s get started!
Table Of Contents
Can Learning Be Impractical?
At some level, everything we learn can help us later. Language learning apps offer us the chance to easily expand our vocabulary at our own pace, from almost anywhere. For instance, Duolingo is known for its quirky and sometimes humorous approach to language learning, but this can occasionally lead to exercises that aren’t immediately useful in real-life situations.
Sentences like El pingüino bebe leche (The penguin drinks milk) or Mi oso no está contento (My bear is not happy) are fun and memorable, but they don’t exactly prepare you for everyday conversations. These sentences certainly do not contribute directly to fluency in practical, real-world scenarios where you need to ask for directions, order food, or engage in small talk.
This is why it’s important to complement these exercises with more practical learning methods or focus on app features that simulate real-life conversations. If what we learn from a language app helps us speak more fluently in real-life situations, only then it’s more valuable. Our real-life experience with language is how we become actual speakers, and not remain mere students.
The Importance Of Apps In Strengthening Foundations
It’s important to have diverse tools in your toolbox when learning a language, and as the process of learning progresses, so do the tools we reach for diversify and how we use them together change. For a lot of learners, and certainly those concerned that their learning is still “impractical”, there is a tendency to feel “stuck” early in the process.
Whether working from books, making flash cards, or using an app, we are trying to build up a foundation in the target language that is sufficient to make use of in the real world. When many students go out and try to use their target language, they often find they freeze up, causing their confidence to take a nose dive and causes them to flee to the comfort of a language they already know, or just flee the situation!
Usually, when I talk to students about this frequent situation, they mention the freezing up focuses on reaching for a crucial word and not being able to find it, or on the other hand, having the words but not feeling capable of putting together a sentence with them.
There’s no way to guarantee this will never happen at all, and one of the hardest things for a language student is getting used to working around problems like this – to rephrase, to ask clarifying questions, to laugh off a moment of awkwardness without feeling one’s confidence too shot to continue. But part of building up confidence is minimizing the likelihood and frequency of such freezes. Just because falling down is part of riding a bicycle, doesn’t mean you don’t want to learn on a bicycle that’s in good repair, with tires full of air, and a comfortable seat!
Unlike riding a bicycle, learning a language is a social act. We don’t speak languages on our own, in our heads, but this is a difficult paradox for the beginning learner. Until they’re already speaking the language, many students feel anxious about their ability to do so, because the tools to speak with others, out in the world, have to be present in ourselves, in our heads.
But the fact that you’re reading this article shows that you want to change that. Fortunately, tools for teaching you what you need to know and getting you comfortable with with trying it out in front of real people are more accessible than ever. There are many language learning apps that adapt to your needs and help you achieve this goal.
Apps in general are especially good for building up vocabulary, as they can more or less guarantee the continual introduction of new vocabulary on demand, are built to make repetition until mastery easier, and their presentation is concise and appealing. For many students, especially beginner students, they are a huge help. What was at first an intimidating and totally foreign new language can become a normal part of your everyday routine, and your knowledge and confidence in the language will grow steadily as you go.
Practical Exercises In Language Learning Apps
We all would like to speak in a foreign language, right? Especially serious language learners. But words don’t just float out in the ether. People feel especially foolish trying to walk up to real people and point at things and say single words, it can be worse for one’s initiative in practicing a new language than not saying anything at all.
Many apps include not only sentences to put words in a natural and grammatically correct context, but go further with stories and even conversation-based exercises.
Such features are really helpful in giving you an initial push of confidence and mindset to move from just memorizing vocabulary to actually conversing in the target language, by building up a foundation in the structure of the language in a natural way.
When we learn our first language at home, we don’t memorize tables full of grammatical paradigms, or even lists of vocabulary items. We are bombarded with context-relevant, natural language by fluent speakers around us. There are people – myself included – who relish a dry and studious approach to learning a new language as an adult: but even they can’t do without, and also benefit substantially from the same sort of frequent, casual, and natural use of language that they used to learn their first language.
Obviously by the fact that we use apps to learn languages, we aren’t learning new languages by pure and constant immersion the way that we did with our first language. We need to have many kinds of additional support as a result, from study of formal lessons from a grammar book, to consuming media with subtitles in the target language, from flash cards to practicing writing short texts like messages or microblogging. The more that we can expose ourselves not only to a wealth of vocabulary but to that vocabulary being used in a natural, real life-approximating context, the better for our learning journey.
Learning With The Ling App
One app that you might consider for these and other reasons is Ling. The Ling app offers dozens of units with considerable diversity in topic, all of them covering essential vocabulary. These are lessons which offer you vocabulary that you can use in practice in real life, and with exercises including the usual matching puzzles, as well as translation of sentences, and even more importantly, full dialogues.
What Are Language Exercise Examples In Ling?
- Ling dialogues are presented both as end of the lesson reading exercises followed by a final fill-in-the-blank problem, but also as their own section of the unit where you can hold a unit-specific text conversation with the app.
- Ling also incorporates listening and pronunciation exercises, especially helpful for tonal languages like Thai, Vietnamese, or Chinese, and all audio are real people who are native speakers.
- Ling is structured in a series of units and lessons like many language learning apps, so, if you only have a little time in a day, it’s a great way to keep yourself moving forward on your language learning journey. Even with a little focused time on one lesson, you will learn new vocabulary, and have that vocabulary reinforced in sentences and dialogues which are of real-life practical use.
- You can not only review the dialogue and vocabulary from that lessons in a relevant section after each lesson, but engage in multiple choice dialogues on the lesson’s subject matter both to reinforce said vocabulary and sentence structure. It also solidifies the diversity of real-life dialogues one might encounter.
Stand Out Features Of Ling
- Provides real, usable vocabulary and phrases: Ling has dozens of units containing multiple lessons for every language it offers, providing you with real usable dialogue and vocabulary for diverse topics, from travel to daily chores, from hobbies to work, from interpersonal relationships to personal tastes.
- Fully developed courses for all languages: Some apps will pigeonhole certain languages, providing – for example – more professional topics for major western European languages and tourism and restaurant related vocabulary for East and Southeast Asian languages, if they offer them at all. Ling treats every language with the same seriousness, and you will find a full curriculum worth of lessons and vocabulary no matter which of Ling’s languages you’re learning, helping you build an all-around capacity to communicate with speakers of the language of your choice.
- Offers a wide array of diverse language courses: One of Ling’s unique advantages is the sheer diversity of languages it offers, some of them business applicable and media-prominent major languages which are sadly undertaught both in schools and with language learning software, such as Cantonese or Telugu. If you need to learn a language as big as Yoruba or as small as Sorbian and haven’t known where to turn, then Ling is definitely worth checking out today. You won’t find such a broad and deep selection of languages from any competitors.
- Provides cost efficiency: Subscribers to the app will get access to all units and lessons for all of the languages, so you can learn languages you can’t learn anywhere else, whenever you want, for a price that is less than a single semester in any one language.
To Roundoff: Give Ling A Try!
Ling is a growing app with a vision: Its team are themselves passionate language learners and educators who want to make language education available for more languages and to more students around the world. They are committed to creating great content through social media and the app for big languages as well as small ones, and are working all the time to ensure users’ needs are met.
Ling’s team aren’t just building a product, but a community. By joining the Ling channel on Discord you will also be linked into a community of like-minded learners from around the world, even if you aren’t subscribed to the app and Ling’s lessons yet!
But do give Ling a chance to see how easy it is to learn a new language! It is available on App store as well as Play Store!
