Recs.
Updated
WordBrewery teaches high-frequency vocabulary and grammar in context using real sentences from the news.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Read sentences about specific interests
You can focus on your areas of interest by choosing to read sentences about specific topics. This makes it easier and more fun to read and study the sentences. If you select Business, for example, all of the sentences you see in WordBrewery's Explore Mode will be taken from the business and finance sections of news sites.
Pro Native-speaker audio and many different text-to-speech voices
WordBrewery has native audio for most Spanish sentences. It also uses text-to-speech voices from several sources including IBM Watson. You can, for example, set the text-to-speech voice to a Spanish speaker from either Spain or Mexico.
Pro Create automatic lists of example sentences containing any word
Whenever you find a word you want to study, you can use WordBrewery's Automatic List Generator to create a list of real example sentences containing that word. You can then print these sentences (with translations) to a PDF, create an audio file reading them aloud, export them to a flash card program, or study them on the website.
Pro Great for intermediate and advanced learners
Many language apps are too easy and useful only for beginners, but WordBrewery is useful for learners at all levels. It constantly finds new sentences to teach so you can never run out of content to study. Also, its Master level teaches you the 30,000 most common words in the language, which is about the vocabulary level of a university-educated native speaker.
Pro Personalized courses that adapt to your current knowledge
WordBrewery's Course Mode uses spaced-repetition and selects different sentences for you based on your current word knowledge and which words you need to review. The courses are different for everyone. They introduce up to one new word per sentence and take you from your current vocabulary knowledge to mastery of all the target vocabulary in the course.
Pro Focuses on high-frequency vocabulary
WordBrewery focuses on high-frequency vocabulary to help you learn as efficiently as possible. Its sentences are selected because they contain many high-frequency words within a particular level.
Beginner | 500 most common words (75% comprehension)95% comprehension)
Intermediate | 3000 most common words (
Advanced | 10,000 most common words (~98% comprehension)
Master | 30,000 most common words (99.9% comprehension)
Pro Uses real sentences from the news
WordBrewery uses authentic example sentences from recent news articles written by native speakers for other native speakers. This means you study interesting, relevant, and accurate content. Some other apps, by contrast, teach computer-generated, dumbed-down, artificial, crowdsourced, or inaccurate content.