Language learning at home can be a frustrating and lonely business. Sure. you can buy course books or CD tutorials but, even so, keeping up the motivation can be hard work. I know. I’ve tried and failed far too often with far too many languages.
LiveMocha, therefore, strikes me as a very interesting idea. This is a community or ‘social network’ of language learners. As with established social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, you have to sign up to gain access and then you can (if you wish) make friends with other members who share the same interests. The one interest everyone on LiveMocha has is learning a language. In principle, this means that learners of a language may either make friends with other learners or with native speakers of that language.
I’ve enrolled on the Hindi course. Here the man on the left is informing the girl on the right - “You are not a man. You are a woman.” Which is perhaps not the best chat-up line I’ve ever heard...
Even if you are not the friend-making type, LiveMocha has a ton of good things to offer. Currently it has graded courses in German, French, English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi. Courses take the form of lessons and activities to help you build up vocabulary, grammar and confidence by reading, listening and speaking. As far as I can see there isn’t too much to help you with writing - which is a particular problem with languages such as Hindi and - even more so - Mandarin.
LiveMocha is in beta at the moment and is completely free to use. Apparently it will charge for some services later on. I’m not sure what impact this may have on its popularity. I hope they find some way of balancing the need to make an income against the reluctance of people to stump up cash for online content!
http://www.livemocha.com/
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