On that note, we have a system at http://www.lingq.com. We have a system built around learning from matching audio and text files. We want our members to choose content of interest to them and identify the vocabulary they want to learn. They use our tools to do so.

In addition, we provide tutoring in the form of online discussions through Skype and writing correction. It’s a comprehensive program and we are adding in more and more social interaction. Right now our members are creating content for each other to learn from and in the future they will be tutoring each other using our tools.

Techcrunch, come see for yourself!

http://www.lernu.net

http://survivalspanish.libsyn.com/rss or search us in iTunes.

Thanks!

http://www.phrasebase.com

Anyone interested in investing?

http://www.jeffhock.com/blog/p.....estor.html

We have a live webcam tutoring site offering Spanish lessons with professional tutors in Latin America, which also creates better income and empowerment for the tutors. People love being able to connect with other people. It still surprises a lot of people that they can learn languages this way, but I think it will soon be commonplace.

I believe that these new tools and human connections will revolutionize not only language learning but the cultural perceptions of our generation and those to come.

I’m a sucker for any tool that teaches language. I guess it helps to know that there’s no silver bullet and that the only real way to learn a language (or anything) is immersion and practice.

Raza Imam
http://BoycottSoftwareSweatshops.com

Babbel looks promising. But technology is already revolutionising vocab learning. Lingro is great. Even simpler are any number of Firefox plugins (Dictionarysearch, Mycroft, Research Word etc) which make it entirely practical to look up the same word 5 times (by which time you definitely will have learned it!).

http://www.webepags.com

thanks a lot for this friendly review. As always, Techcrunch seems to
be on top of things.

The drawbacks you name are absolutely valid! Then again, it’s the first public version and we are still developing at a hight pace. Audio chat will be available in a future version and grammar lessons will be integrated nicely into the existing package structure.

Right now we are celebrating that people really seem to like Babbel.
Several hundred people already joined in the first few hours of the
public beta phase. We’ll do our best to make it worth their while.

Markus,
Managing Director at Babbel
http://www.babbel.com

In particular, the language learning space has had many entrants over the past year. Many of these are live and growing very quickly — notably livemocha.com (which just got $6 million in funding) and italki.com. There are also sites entering the tutoring space (like ziizoo.com) and many others offering everything from educational videos, podcasts, flash-based teaching materials, facebook applications, etc. Education 2.0 has been anything but moribund.

I think the only thing is this — none of these startups have gotten so big as to become household (or Techcrunch) names yet.

Kevin
http://www.italki.com

For another twist on language learning check out Lingro http://www.lingro.com - it’s a new site made by some smart local friends. Lingro’s twist is that you take the foreign-language text you encounter on the web and apply in-place translation to it - but at that point you have an option to selectively reveal translations of individual words.. it’s a nice tool if you’re trying to learn spanish, say, and would like to try reading it, you can just click on the words you don’t get.

The startup I’d personally like to see along with this bunch is one that sort of mingles dating, travelling, and language learning: I’ll teach you my language and in exchange maybe you have me as a guest to your country for a visit. If we hit it off, we work on the finer points of the language

Not very pratical. I do like the interface tho. Nice GUI design.

Fortunately now there are means to give online lessons as they’re given face-to-face. If interested, you could check out Myngle.com which helps students and teachers connect for live online lessons.