In their own words, Busuu.com is "an innovative online community for learning languages." The website takes its name from a dying Cameroon language. As of 2005, Busuu had only 3 speakers left and according to Busuu.com the current number is 8. This peculiar choice of name shines some information on the the co-founders' approach to languages.
If nothing else, they're passionate about languages to the point of launching a campaign to save Busuu and sending a filming crew to a remote village in Cameroon, Africa to record the last speakers of Busuu language singing a song about the language. You can find more information about the campaign at savebusuu.com
The Busuu
Busuu.com offers free and premium lessons in 7 languages, and according to their blog post Busuu.com reached 1.000.000 users. There isn't any available information regarding the number of active users, but the sheer number itself should provide enough active members.
Busuu opens up with a fancy language garden animation, providing an easy access to the languages you learn and speak, and their activity. This is the "Home" page of the website where you can also access your last lesson, friends, and submissions.
The rest of the interface is pretty straight-forward, including links to your friends list, Inbox, courses and groups. With the group feature, you can find community created groups regarding the language you’re learning or create your own. Groups help organizing discussions on certain issues of a language. Also it somewhat expands the content of the website through the groups created by native speakers of languages outside of the 7 provided by Busuu.com
The languages and the lesson
The languages offered in Busuu.com are English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Portuguese (Brazilian) and Italian. Classes are organized under 2 levels: Beginner and Intermediate, the topic covered and the difficulty changing gradually.
Each unit has 7 sections: Vocabulary, Dialogue, Writing, Busuu Talk, Review, Transcript and Podcast, the last two being available for only to the premium members.
The vocabulary section aims to teach necessary vocabularies and sometimes phrases, while the Dialogue section puts you through a short test of reading comprehension. Again there are additional features for premium users here and you can get access to additional phrases in the Vocabulary section and listen to the dialogue in the next.
Writing is the community feature of Busuu.com, very similar to Livemocha. You have an option for notifying your friends to let them know that you need their help, but unlike Livemocha, this is only available to your friends and you won’t be able to send reminders to the other members of the community. By submitting and providing comments to other members’ exercises. And that is mechanism used by Busuu.com to encourage participation to this community feature.
Talking provides a list of online members speaking your target language. In this section you can select a member and initiate a conversation.
And finally the Review level tests your knowledge of the unit with a mixed style of questions.
Free vs premium features
Busuu.com offers additional contents for their premium users. These include more phrases, listening comprehension tests, access to grammar units, audio podcasts and others. You can find more information on their premium features and the pricing here.
Portability
Busuu.com also offers an application for iPhone users. With this application you can get easy access to your lessons. But unlike the website version only three sections (Vocabulary, Dialogue and Review) available for each unit in the application.
Also, while the application itself is free you only get access to the first 5 lessons of each category. At the moment, each category is priced at 3.99$. Considering that the website itself and the learning sections aren’t developed in flash, it’s quite possible to simply log in to your account through the web browser of your Smartphone.
In the end, it’s a personal choice. While the application isn’t truly free, no internet connection is necessary and it provides a true portability.
Last words
The community features in Busuu.com while very efficient, could be improved. But for a beginner language learner this website is certainly a good start, providing enjoyable lessons and an active community, away from the usual distraction and confusion of the first few months of learning a new language.
And if you have a solid base in your target Busuu.com is also a good tool to learn new phrases and vocabularies, providing the unique features of language exchange website.
* You might want to visit Language Learning Websites - Livemocha for information on a similar website, and Free Language Resources for language learning resources.
S. M. Ongan - S. M. Ongan
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