As you know, I mostly work with advanced English language users. But being associated with the Foreign Service, I’m also around a lot of people who are constantly learning languages at a variety of levels. While there are tons of programs and products out there for beginning and intermediate language learners, when you reach higher fluency, the support seems to drop off.
Here are three tools I’d like to recommend to help you on your language learning journey if you’re a more advanced user who wants to increase your listening skills or broaden your vocabulary.
TED Talks
You’ve probably heard of TED Talks, which started in the mid-80s with a focus on technology, entertainment, and design. The website of these talks now hosts thousands of topics in hundreds of languages. What’s really great is that if you watch these fascinating talks on the main website (rather than on YouTube), you also have access to a lot of tools that can aid in expanding your vocabulary or increasing your listening and reading fluency.
First of all, you can choose to speed up or slow down the rate of speech via the Settings wheel. Second, you can add subtitles in 21 different languages. And third, if you prefer to read before, after, or even instead of listening to the talk, you can click the Transcripts tab and choose an interactive text in your target language.
YouGlish
Do you ever go to use a word and then realize that you don’t quite know how to pronounce it? Maybe it’s a word you’ve recently learned or a word you’ve known for years and never been too sure about. Check out YouGlish!
Search for the word, the accent you’d like to hear and then click Next to scroll through video after video of real-life examples of people using your word. You not only get to hear the pronunciation but also how the word is used in context.
You can search for examples in 17 languages, including Sign Languages.
Language Learning with Netflix
This awesome Chrome browser extension lets you add subtitles, change the playback speed, and view a pop-up dictionary on your favorite Netflix shows. The Pro version, which I haven’t used, will also let you save words to an online dictionary.
The LLN catalogue contains 500 titles that work best with this extension and include high-quality subtitles.