Livemocha: A Social Language Learning Experience

Last month, I had published on Profy an article about an online language instruction service, dubbed Mango Languages. I thought it thoroughly enjoyable, and basically said as much in the Oct 18 piece.

About a week after the write-up went live, I received an email from Wendy Laxton, a community manager for another Web-based entity, also language-centric, called Livemocha. Wendy asked for my thoughts on the website of which she is a part.

And after giving Livemocha a brief look, and mulling it over for a few days, I decided to put a little mention together for the service here. I don’t typically oblige such queries, but in this case, I’ve chosen to do so. Why? As far as Livemocha is concerned, I like what I see.

Livemocha, like Mango Language, is a place on the Web which provides language instruction to, well, anyone interesting. Very basically, they’re quite alike. But there’s a difference between the two. Mango is of a sort of Rosetta Stone-like construct that offers website-to-user communication – and only that. Livemocha, however, is an intrinsically social experiment.

Does that makes the latter better than the former – or vice versa? No, I don’t believe so. Mango does offer the option of a fixed learning system, in which professionally-assembled, “enterprise-level” courses are presented to users. And a lot of people do enjoy that very much. Rightly so. In many cases, those are most certainly very good assets to have.

But Livemocha has, I think, an equally powerful toolset. Using Livemocha, you can interact with individual people – tutors, as the site’s operators refer them. You’re able connect with a range of proficient minds - some of which are, naturally, native speakers from around the world - in many cases enabling you to pick up certain things like grammatical anomalies and useful tips that would otherwise likely to be absent a typical instruction process.

What’s more, if you happen to be a gifted individual who just so happens to know quite a few other tongues other than your primary, you can provide help to those looking to learn. Such “help” can be in the form of basic tips, providing encouragement alongside someone’s basic instruction, and other aid.

Think of it as a sort of give-some-get-some arrangement with the rest of the Livemocha community.

Livemocha, all in all, is really as powerful as you wish it to be. Its multi-faceted framework provides people with everything they could possibly get from such a Web-based venue, and for that, it gets my recommendation. If you’re looking for lessons made by native speakers with the bonus of being affording the opportunity to get some very valuable one-on-one training, this place is definitely up your alley.

Let us know what you think about Livemocha in the comments below!