Can you learn Spanish with a smartphone?

With the ever advancing technology seen in smart phones many would be forgiven for thinking that there are few things they can’t help with. From losing weight to trying for a baby, it seems that the imaginations of app developers know no bounds. One important question however is whether smartphones can really help when learning a new language, such as Spanish. Well here we have the answer!

Learning a language through an app – how good is it really?

There are an amazing range of language apps on the market today. From the paid to free versions and from the basic to the advanced – at the less comprehensive end of the scale there are apps that simply display various words along with an audio of how the word sounds; at the top end of the scale there are apps that claim to be able to feedback on your own pronunciation (to greater or lesser success!) However, even the most robust of apps struggle to take into account your own dialect and how this is affecting the way in which you pronounce words.

As well as this they can only provide relatively basic feedback as to how well you’re doing and what you can do to improve.

That said however language apps are most definitely a great place to start when starting to learn a new language. If you live in a bustling city they allow you to learn language in London, New York or wherever, not matter how busy via app and headphones.

In particular, they can help a person in choosing a language to learn that they are suited to and can aid a person grapple with the basic rules of word construction and spelling. So whilst you can certainly grasp the basics of a language through a smartphone app, it is far from being able to learn the complexities of language rules

spanish in smartphone

Is Spanish any different?

Spanish is a language of passion and extremely particular sounds, tones and pronunciation. Given the unique way in which a person needs to conquer such factors smartphone apps are certainly limited; for example, they can’t feedback on your pronunciation and whilst it may sound to the novice that you are repeating words perfectly, to a Spaniard you may be making little sense!

All in all even language schools such as Lingos would suggest that smartphone apps can certainly help when you’re first starting out with Spanish. You can learn how words look, what general patterns they follow and how the tones of the language make it unique. But for moving forward with Spanish you need an expert to help!

If you find a Spanish tutor, they will be able to tailor their tutoring around you, taking into account your specific goals and what you intend to use the language for. For example, whilst one may be learning for business purposes another may be learning for an upcoming holiday; in these two instances the words to be learnt and the formality to be taught are drastically different.

Finally, we’d say find a language teacher as there is no substitute for human interactivity and, for the time being at least, there is no app that even comes close to one to one tuition interaction.