Landscape Audit

As described in the first section, the landscape of language learning tools is vast and diverse. This section analyzes only a few language learning mobile applications, since LanguageBug belongs to this category.

This is also a broad category that includes a large group of services. They were chosen based on relevance and popularity, according to the number of downloads on Apple Store.

Disclaimer

These services are long, complex, and may include paid features that I was not able to access. Therefore, these are not exhaustive analyses of their functions, but personal takes on the features I have explored.

Product Analyses

Babbel

“Babbel is an online language learning software and e-learning platform available in various languages since January 2008. Thirteen languages are currently offered: Dutch, Danish, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Spanish and Turkish. According to babbel.com, it has over 20,000,000 users from more than 190 countries”

Duolingo

“Duolingo is a free language-learning platform that includes a language-learning website and app, as well as a digital language proficiency assessment exam. Duolingo is ad-free and offers all its language courses free of charge. As of February 2016, the language-learning website and app offer 54 different language courses across 23 languages; with 28 additional courses in development. The app is available on iOS, Android and Windows 8 and 10 platforms with over 120 million registered users across the world.”

Memrise

“Memrise is an online learning tool with courses created by its community. Its courses are mainly used to teach languages, but are also used for other academic and nonacademic subjects (such as trivia, video game trivia, and pop cultural). Memrise uses flashcards augmented with mnemonics—partly gathered through crowdsourcing—and the spacing effect to boost the speed and ease of learning.”

Rosetta-Stone

“Rosetta Stone Language Learning is proprietary computer-assisted language learning (CALL) software published by Rosetta Stone Inc. The software uses images, text, and sound to teach words and grammar by spaced repetition, without translation. Rosetta Stone calls its approach Dynamic Immersion (a term which has been trademarked).”