Saturday, December 28, 2013

HindiPod101 Review

For those of you who have been asking for some various language learning online resources one of the first ones that comes to mind is langauagePod101.

HindiPod101 was not my favorite but the LanguagePods overall are pretty good. There are a lot of options and ways to utilize this resource. I believe this post will help you learn from my mistakes more than anything .

I would rate my experience with HindiPod101 at a 2 out of 5 starts but I think that is because I didn't use it in the most efficient way.

I subscribed to the free Premium month long subscription of HindiPod101 early on. There is a great vocab list and there are some excellent listening practice sections but I was unable to get the most from them early on.

However, I would suggest waiting a while longer until you have a decent grasp on the language especially if you are just going to use it for the free trial month. To make the most out of your free month I would wait until you know the alternate alphabet (if there is one) and can use at least the intermediate to advanced lessons with success. This will also make the beginning ones more valuable as listening practice and review.

The beginner lessons are really good but I think they would have been more valuable as review and ways to ingrain words into my memory. You can learn the beginner sections on your own and from other resources such as Mango, Pimsleur, and I am assuming Rosetta Stone.

Pros
HindiPod Premium does have some great features such as 2000 core word lists, Pod Casts, great phone app, listening lessons (which are amazing and include a script in English and the language), cultural lessons, emails (though they come for free too), and more great and unique features. 

Cons
My criticism of the word list is that many seem very obscure even though they are said to be the top 2000 used words. Also many of the words are simply the English word pronounced a bit differently and in Hindi script. Though I am sure these are useful and more colloquial than their actual Hindi translation (and these words have tripped me up while trying to read I couldn't figure out kap was cup one time), I am not convinced the 2000 word list is the biggest strength of HindiPod. The premium subscription is also quite expensive at $24 per month.

The LanguagePods have great potential but I would say my experience was not so great. I would love to hear from someone who did use their perspective LangaugePod101 a few months into their language learning experience. I am at 6 months studying the language and am considering purchasing a month-long subscription in the near future. I will tell you how it goes if I do. I am also starting to use the app and will let you now how it is.

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