Good content, poor UI, ill-thought out learning tools
The app is worth it for having access to graded level appropriate texts with clear audio, but it suffers from poor design, and learning tools that don’t really help with learning. It is very hard to re-listen to the sentence you just heard. The flashcard system is very poorly designed. The quizzes don’t really test language skills, but memory for trivial detail details. And numerous other small issues. Still, so far I find it worth it for the core content, though I feel frustrated every time I use the app.
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4 Stars for a Good App that Could Be Great
The main purpose of this app receives 5 stars. It provides cultural stories and news stories for people to read. You can also have a story created for you based on your competency level, your desired length of story, and your preference for fiction or non fiction. You have the option to read it to yourself or have the app read it to you at your chosen speed in your target language. You can look up words you don’t know to get the definition and to save it to your glossary. You can also record yourself saying the word.
Now to the 3 star downsides of the app. The app doesn’t work completely. There are supposed to be a vocab matching game where you can practice matching words between languages for that story. It opens to a blank screen. It has never worked. There is also no mechanism for spaced repetition of vocabulary that they add or you add yourself. This app would be amazing if they implemented a vocabulary review section like on the Busuu language app where it lists all the vocabulary and has sections for strong and weak vocabulary that you can choose to review so that you don’t forget with time. There’s also a bug where sometimes when you had a word to
the glossary that it adds multiple cards of the same word. The app is also a little clunky for language learners who are studying more than one language, especially for the glossary. It doesn’t always keep the languages straight. Also, when you record yourself there is no feedback as to the accuracy of what you’re saying. Some of these are bugs and some are ways they could improve to make a good app great. The stories are already great. Just build up the app infrastructure around them to be just as great.
Now to the 3 star downsides of the app. The app doesn’t work completely. There are supposed to be a vocab matching game where you can practice matching words between languages for that story. It opens to a blank screen. It has never worked. There is also no mechanism for spaced repetition of vocabulary that they add or you add yourself. This app would be amazing if they implemented a vocabulary review section like on the Busuu language app where it lists all the vocabulary and has sections for strong and weak vocabulary that you can choose to review so that you don’t forget with time. There’s also a bug where sometimes when you had a word to
the glossary that it adds multiple cards of the same word. The app is also a little clunky for language learners who are studying more than one language, especially for the glossary. It doesn’t always keep the languages straight. Also, when you record yourself there is no feedback as to the accuracy of what you’re saying. Some of these are bugs and some are ways they could improve to make a good app great. The stories are already great. Just build up the app infrastructure around them to be just as great.
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Fantastic app
Great app for learning with lots of great content. Using the full premium version which was a bit of a pain to sort out, but all good now.
Inutile: manque le genre des mots.
Inutile car en allemand dans le lexique le genre des mots n'est pas indiqué. Comment peut-on concevoir une application d'apprentissage linguistique sans une fonction si basique et cruciale. Et les textes sont vraiment bébêtes.
Response from developer
Thank you for your feedback. We're sorry the app didn't meet your expectations. We understand the importance of indicating the gender of words in German and will consider this in future updates. We also appreciate your thoughts on the texts and will look into improving them. Your input is really valuable as we work to enhance Beelinguapp.
Free version is horrible
I have Duolingo and was looking for something to allow me to read. Didn’t want the full version because I’m already paying a lot of money to get then grammar. Just wanted to read Spanish books. Was told this app had a decent free version. Was planning to try it out and see if paying would be worth it but couldn’t open one book without being asked to pay premiums
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Response from developer
Hello! We have a catalog of free stories that rotates continuously, so there’s always something new to explore. You can find all our free content in the Library section, and free texts are marked as “FREE.”
