I was wandering around looking for some language things and found a website called “Yabla” that has some very good-looking materials (from what I’ve seen so far). I’ve looked specifically at the Chinese, but it offers a few others — Spanish, French, German, Italian, and English (yeah, no Korean or Russian or Japanese).
One of the first things I noticed was that it’s incredibly clean. There aren’t any ads spewed across the site (other than for the site itself). You’re not distracted trying to figure out the difference between what they’re trying to teach you and what they’re trying to sell you.
The font is clean too — easy to read, easy to understand. They have an interactive dictionary that allows you to explore the characters within a word (not uncommon, but like I said, clean). You can really go down a rabbit hole with what they give you.
And the videos and learning tools within them are also excellent. You can watch the language being used, loop it, and slow it down a bit. With a paid subscription you can also get transcripts and play games with what you’re learning.
And the subscription could be worth it. Sure, $100 might seem a lot, but for a whole year? It could even serve as a motivator. If you make a plan and stick to it, who knows what will happen?
You can get 15 days for free to try it out. If you do, let me know what you think. This is not a paid advertisement, by the way.
So cool! But I wish they had Korean 🙁