14 DAY TRIAL // People always think about learning a second language but barely ever get around to actually do it with lack of time and raised tiredness levels being the main factors for that happening. And in case you were asked at one point in your life "Sprichst du Deutsch" and you weren't even able to answer the saving "Ja, aber sehr schlecht" than this new social network is aimed at you.
It's based on the concept that old school looking up words in the dictionary is rather obsolete and that real life experience and continuous practice is the way to go about it. Being an Adobe Flex application, Babbel combines some social network features with a series of language learning tools for English, German, French, Italian and Spanish, but the level at which this is all done is pretty low, right next to basic.
You might have noticed my "some social network features" expression. It's there because despite being able to message others and set up lessons together, the messaging is only text based and apart from that there's no grammar learning rules available through any of the tools. The result of that will probably be having a vocab that will no longer be sloppy, but it will be set on your native language's grammar scaffolding. Not a good idea.
The other part, the learning the language one comes in the form of quizzes that test your vocabulary on words by matching a word's sounds and spelling with pictures. A nice and pretty useful feat is that it tracks your progress and reminds you to carry on with your training using increasingly more difficult sets.
Luckily for everybody, the lessons and vocabulary words will be depending on the users for further adding of new items. Freedom of all sorts will be given to them, adding phrases and tying them to an audio clip or a video being one of the mentioned features.
It's not a great way to learn a foreign language, especially not German (with their placing the verb at the end of the sentence, so you'll always be in suspense until you hear it), but in case your vocabulary needs some brushing up, it will do.