With over 5 million registered users spread across 200 countries, LiveMocha is the world’s largest language learning community. And with sufficient venture capital and corporate partners behind them, the Seattle-based start-up firm has the resources to keep expanding their service offering long into the foreseeable future.

The site has been well received by most, and comes strongly recommended by many language bloggers, school teachers, and individual learners.

Steven J. Sacco, a Language Professor at San Diego State University, has this to say about LiveMocha:

“Livemocha is the best online language program I have seen and used—vastly superior to Rosetta Stone in terms of cost and the variety of language functions it offers.”

So how does this blogger feel about LiveMocha? Here’s a quick look at the good and bad as I see it.

The Good

• LiveMocha utilizes the best aspects of social networks: With so many registered users, LiveMocha provides a massive pool of potential tutors and language partners. The best part of this quid pro quo, reciprocity-based system are the corrections provided by native speakers. It’s win-win: they get some “Mocha Points” (exhangeable for otherwise pay-only features on the site) and you get free corrections. Not a bad deal. And you can of course correct the writing and speaking samples of people learning your native tongue. There will be frequent pop-ups asking you to do just that…
• Numerous languages to choose from: LiveMocha currently offers courses in 35 languages making the site quite the polyglot wonderland. The following languages are offered, though not all of them are equally fleshed out: Arabic, Brazilian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Castellano), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu. Phew, that’s a lot of “languaging”…
• Lots of free content: It is always a good idea to test drive new materials before opening your wallet or purse. LiveMocha offers 3 units for free, with 5 or so lesson per unit, each including a variety of activities. Which leads to the next good point…
• A wide range of listening, speaking, reading and writing activities: In each lesson, you will receive multiple exposures to target vocabulary and structures, with a good mix of listening and reading input. I especially like the “drag & drop” writing activity as it tests your understanding of basic structures and word order without requiring overt output before learners are ready for free writing exercises.
• Language Specific Pop-up Keyboards: Although most browsers allow you to insert special characters, using LiveMocha’s pop-up keyboards (which are specific to whatever language you are studying at the time) saves you a lot of time over looking for the right accent mark, upsidedown exclamation point, or funky squiggle within the sea of shapes in browser symbol directories.
• Correction by native speakers who are not necessarily trained teachers: Many people would consider this a disadvantage, but in my experience, untrained teachers are often better at identifying what doesn’t sound right and providing simple examples of more natural language. Teachers tend to miss the forest for the trees, and provide prescriptive advice on what one should say, not what real native speakers actually do say. Moreover, most teachers try to “teach” you the language, and as I reiterate time and time again, languages cannot be taught.
• Informal language is presented first: Opinions differ on this issue, but I personally recommend (and much prefer) learning informal language before focusing on more formal equivalents. Why? Because in nearly all cultures, we rarely use formal language. When you start out in a language, it is inefficient to spend your precious time learning infrequent, specialized vocabulary and phrases. “Pardon me, but could I trouble you for dab of Gray Poupon?” can come later… Also, informal language tends to be shorter and therefore easier to learn, and often does a better job of demonstrating the basic structures of the language, where as formal structures are often archaic, semantically opaque constructions. Besides, travelers and new foreign residents will almost always be forgiven for being a tad bit too informal.

The Bad

The good news is that all of the following problems can be overcome or side-stepped based on how you use LiveMocha. And in my opinion, the pros of the site still far outweigh these cons…

• Requires speaking and writing output too soon: When to begin producing output is a highly contested issue, and as of late, there have been some heated arguments on the topic between well-known language bloggers (many of you probably know to whom I refer). In my own experience as a language learner and teacher, I stand firmly in the “later but not too late” camp when it comes to output. Speaking and writing too soon is the single greatest cause of “fossilization” (see The Linguistionary for more on fossilized errors) and often leads learners to develop a fear of speaking the foreign language.
• Too much overt focus on grammar: Grammar study is an equally controversial topic among language teachers, linguists, and polyglots (see this debate between LingQ‘s Steve Kaufmann and Vincent of “Street-Smart Language Learning” for more on the topic). In my experience, a little grammar review from time to time can be useful, but should only take up a small percentage of your time with the language. Lots of input (and eventually,  lots of output) is the key to true fluency, not memorizing complex information about the language that you have virtually no chance of utilizing in real time.
• Reliance on (and a prevalence of) translation: Most language learners rely on—and expect their language products to provide—translations of everything they hear or read. While translation does make the learner feel more comfortable (and a little bit here and there can be helpful), knowing the equivalent of each word or phrase in your native language is certainly not necessary to learn a language. Remember: you learned your native language without translating to or from any language. The key is to create such highly contextualized situations that you don’t need to translate. LiveMocha does a fairly good job of this with their use of annotated pictures, but they could do more to contextualize lessons (especially those for absolute beginners) by adding sound effects and video clips.
• Some bad apples: With such a large community, you are bound to run into a few bad apples who abuse the system. The most common problem I encountered were users who just copied what I had written without adding any suggestions or corrections in an effort, I assume, to quickly earn “Mocha Points”. But as LiveMocha’s VP of Marketing and Product, Clint Schmidt, mentions during our interview (see below), the community will quickly vote down such users and they will be removed from the system if appropriate.

So there you have it. Overall, I think LiveMocha is an excellent language learning site and recommend it as a supplementary material to your other learning tools.

For more information, listen to my interview with LiveMocha VP of Marketing & Product, Clint Schmidt, and watch the following presentation by LiveMocha CEO, Shirish Nadkarni.

Foreign Language Mastery Interview

Click the following link to listen to and/or read my Interview with Clint Schmidt, LiveMocha’s VP of Marketing & Product:

Foreign Language Mastery Podcast: Episode 4 – Interview with LiveMocha VP of Marketing & Product, Clint Schmidt

Presentation by LiveMocha CEO Shirish Nadkarni

A quick look around the web reveals a healthy mix of positive and negative feedback about the product, but there is a big problem with objectivity: the positive reviews tend to be from affiliate sites hoping you click the “Buy” link.  Since I don’t sell Rosetta Stone, I figure I can provide an honest, objective review of the product.

Here are my impressions after sampling the free CD-ROM:

The Good

• Attractive & Intuitive: As you would expect from a company as large as Rosetta Stone, they offer a well-designed product with an attractive and intuitive interface.  High quality images and sound prompts make the product easy to use.

• No translation: The grammar-translation method favored by many traditional schools and textbooks is not an effective way to learn a language and I was glad to see Rosetta Stone avoid this common pitfall. Users infer the meaning of new words through matching images and sounds in highly contextualized groupings.

• No overt memorization: Although you will “memorize” new words and phrases, Rosetta Stone focuses on sub-conscious internalization of a language, much like the way a child learns their native tongue.  Their method mirrors what linguists call “The Natural Approach.”

• Spaced Repetition: As you go through a level, the same words are used multiple times in new sentences in progressively longer intervals. This helps speed up internalization and prolong retention.

The Bad

• Expensive: A complete set for one language (e.g. Rosetta Stone Spanish, including levels 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) has a list price of $700!!!  For that price, you could buy a plane ticket to the country where the language is spoken and get real immersion.  Or you could buy premium online subscriptions to dozens of languages instead.  (See my recommendations below)

• Repetitive: Although Spaced Repetition is effective, it can make the learning process a little boring.  My advice is to supplement formal Spaced Repetition with “Narrow Listening”  (i.e. listening to a variety of sources discussing the same topics.) This provides adequate repetition without boring you to tears.

• Requires sitting at a computer: The number one excuse for not studying a foreign language is “I don’t have the time.” My advice to busy people is learning on the go. Using an iPod or portable media player, you can listen to the target language while commuting, waiting in line, doing chores around the house, etc.  But since you must be sitting at a computer to use Rosetta Stone, most people will probably not get in the required amount of daily input using their system.

My Verdict

If you have the money and the time, Rosetta Stone is a good choice.  Many companies offer their employees subsidies to use Rosetta Stone, and even allow employees to study while at work.  Check with your HR or management team to see if they will do the same.

But if you are low on money and time (as most people are), I would instead recommend Praxis Language, the creator of ChinesePod, SpanishPod, FrenchPod, ItalianPod and EnglishPod.  The Praxis Pass provides access to premium features for all 5 languages at $39 a month.  There is a free 7-day trial to get your linguistic feet wet.