Like many Americans, I studied Spanish in high school. For four years, I learned the obtuse conjugations of irregular verbs and practiced scripted fill-in-the-blank conversations with my other English-speaking classmates. Why then, could I not even so much as order a beer in my first trip south of the border? Well, I had never spoken to a native Spanish speaker before I set foot in that bar in Tijuana.
Enter, stage left, livemocha.com. Livemocha is a website that is harnessing social networking technology to give language learners real-time feedback and conversation practice with native speakers while sparing them the expense of immersion travel or one-on-one tutoring. In the process, livemocha.com is transforming the way we learn foreign languages from a blackboard exercise to a truly learner-driven experience.
How Livemocha Works
Train those language muscles
Livemocha begins with the premise that all language learners are also teachers of the language that is their mother tongue. A basic four course curriculum in over 30 languages is offered for free, teaching the learner basic vocabulary and sentence structure. There are also the traditional computer-scored multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and matching practice exercises one would expect from an on-line language course.
