One app for learners with determination—FluentU

One app for learners with determination—FluentU

Source: https://www.fluentu.com/

'So powerful but expensive'

This app is one of the best self-learning apps for learners. It has a vast amount of resources. For self-learner with motivation, it surely can improve your language skills.

1. Introduction

For learners who bothered by the remote distance or other issues that can not have an actual teacher in their life, here is a perfect app for them. This app, fluentU, uses videos from Youtube or other channels to help learners learn languages with real-life videos. The content of videos is overlaid with interactive captions and translation to help learners with language (see in Pic 1). Also, you need a subscription to unlock all the features and content.

Picture 1
Source: https://www.fluentu.com/english/learning/?session=466688

2. Advantages

After using the fluentU for a period of time, there are several advantages that I have to mention.
⭐The connection between videos and language is very strong because this app uses all real-life videos.
⭐It's quite friendly for different levels of learners. This app divide learners into 6 levels. It's very precise for learners to find their suitable level (see in Pic 2).
⭐A feature called 'flashcard' is very helpful in memorizing words (see in Pic 3). It combines both words and pictures together and uses the proper mechanism of arrangement. It's very helpful in learning words.
⭐The videos library is designed to be clear. It's very easy to browse and search.

Picture 2
Source: https://www.fluentu.com/english/videos/#difficulty

Picture 3
Source:https://www.fluentu.com/english/learning/?session=466944

3. Disadvantages 

Also, there are several disadvantages of fluentU.

⭐The quality of videos requires a more strict selection. Most of the videos I used are not longer than 2 minutes. And some of the videos can be really boring.

⭐The beginner level 1 is kind of wasting time. They design the difficulty of this level too low and users can easily get bored.

⭐With the relatively high price for a subscription, it does need users to be autonomy enough to use this app.

4. Comments

FluentU has done well in the variety of content, methods of learning and design of the IU. These are all important to attract learners. However, this app also requires learners to be intrinsic motivated. Because in details, there are several parts of this app are not that interesting. So, think twice before you pay for this app.

This is the seventh Episode for Simon's ICT blog.

Hope to give you some useful information for teaching English with technology.

See you next episode!!!

01/03/2019