Learn It Lists is a new vocabulary-learning application. You first register by saying what language you want to learn and listing your native language. You then go through a series of steps (learn, listen, speak, write) for vocabulary word lists that show the words in the language you want to learn and in your native language.
It’s all free except for what I see as the most important part, which is the teacher-generated audio pronunciations. Those you have to pay for. However, other native-speakers of the language you’re learning can record the words and you can listen to those sounds for free.
Unfortunately, the words are not provided in any context, which reduces the site’s value in second-language learning. If, though, the teacher audio examples were provided for free (and they just used an advertiser-supported economic model) then “Learn It Lists” would still have a chance to make it on one of my “The Best…” lists. But, with both of those negatives I’d have to say there are other places you’d probably want to look at for specific vocabulary-building and you can look on my website under Vocabulary for those links.
Hello,
Thanks for looking at the learnit widget.
We are building a database of common phrases, contribuded by users in the ‘write’ section of the widget – this will mean that we can provide a context for words soon.
I’m learning Czech, so I use a combination of 10 words a day on the widget, listening to as much Czech spoken word as I can (for example an online Czech news broadcaster) and studying from a text book when I have time. I can’t wait to see common phrases in Czech added to the widget as I agree this will help my learning experience. However… we need to pay for developer time… which is why we have some paid for functions (not enough people clicked through on adverts to cover development costs).
We have to pay each time the speaking teacher is played – so if millions of people suddenly turned up on the site we would have a problem if we didn’t charge for this feature!
It is possible to access the speaking teacher for free. – as well as the one week trial, anyone who contributes recordings can access the speaking teacher for free. The benefit is that we can then offer these native speaker recordings for free to all learners.
If you’d like a look at our new release, I’ll send you a link.
Many thanks!
Nicola