Practise online│Whakaakoako tuihono

Explore our carefully chosen selection of free, online resources.

Check out the links for specific languages in the menu.

Setting goals and time management

To frame the trimester in chunks of proactive study, pin a year planner on your wall to mark exam dates, assignment deadlines, tasks to do and personal commitments. Here are some ideas to help you get organised:

How to set SMART goals for language learning
Guidance on how to make your language learning goals specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic and time-bound.

Time Management for Language Learners
Suggestions for fitting language study into a busy routine. It includes ideas for what to do in 30 seconds to 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour and more than 1 hour.

10 Language Learning Activities That Take 5 Minutes or Less
More ideas for fitting language learning into your busy schedule.

Student Learning at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Online language courses

Duolingo [M] or Busuu [M]
You can use these complete and interactive courses to learn many new languages. These don't suit everybody, but you could try one and see if it works for you.

Mango Languages
Online courses for learning around 80 languages. Free for those with a Wellington City Library card. To get to the website, click on Mango Languages in the 'Select a database' combo box.

The Live Lingua Project
Free resources in 130 languages provided by the Live Lingua Online Language School. Browse by language and category.

Gloss
Brought to you by the US Defense Language Institute, these lessons have been developed for independent learners to provide them with the learning/teaching tools for improving their foreign language skills.

Listening

Book2
Choose your native language and a language you want to learn in order to make an audiobook of useful phrases or vocabulary with sound for 50 languages.

PodBean
Download the app, then search for podcasts to help you listen to your target language on the go. Listen three or four times until you understand most of it.[M]

LingQ
Find listening material for many languages graded to your level and with transcripts.[M]

TuneIn
Listen to online radio stations from around the world to practise extensive listening. This is best for more advanced students as this is designed for native speakers.[M]

eTV
Students can use this service to gain access to various foreign and local television channels. Instructions to help you get started are available here.

Asian Boss
South Korean based media company that produces interviews on a range of topical issues across Asia. Covers a range of issues in Cantonese, Hindi, Mandarin, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Tagalog. Subtitled into English and could be used for advanced listening practice.

Speaking

Audacity
Use this free software to record yourself reading some text you also have a recording for such as a graded reader. Then listen to the CD and compare it to your own recording. Try again a number of times, trying to improve each time. Compare your original and final recordings. Listen to how much you've improved.

Italki
Search for native speakers to practice chatting with online by language and country. You can then chat by writing or speaking using Skype for example.[M]

Reading

Readlang
Immersion is the most effective way to learn a language. Readlang will translate webpages you don't understand, and create flashcards and word lists for you.

Writing

HiNative
Ask native speakers questions about their language such as ‘Does this sound natural?’ or ‘What is the difference between?’ In return, you need to help someone else learning your language.

Something To Write About
A 'fillable' online book containing dozens of writing prompts from dreams to childhood memories that can be used by all language learners, not just learners of English.

How to type special and foreign characters

Vocabulary

Memrise [M] and Anki [M]
These both use an SRS (Spaced Repetition System) to help you review flashcards you have created. When creating flashcards it's best to add new words in a whole sentence as this not only helps you remember it but also how to use the word in question.

Quizlet
Another system for creating flashcards. The strength of Quizlet is that it can generate exercises using sentences you add to help you engage with and therefore remember new words and sentences. [M]

Language Guide
Word lists with pictures organised by category and available for many languages.

Linguee
Search for words to see how they are used in a variety of sample sentences. You can also see the translations for these in your native language. The sentences tend to come from official documents and websites and so are often very formal. [M]

Tatoeba
Much like Linguee above, this website provides sample sentences for many languages, and so is great for sentence mining. It differs in that the sentences are user-generated and simpler, and thus more useful in the earlier stages of language learning.

Clozemaster
Gamified language learning through mass exposure to vocabulary in context for many languages. Users can set the difficulty of the vocabulary by frequency i.e. you can focus on the top 500 or 1,000 common words in each language etc. Free to sign up and play.