Innovative Language Review: Everything You Need to Know
Kelsey Wetherbee
Published on June 15, 2022
Excellent resource for a wide variety of languages
The Innovative Language courses are a helpful way to start your language learning journey, or continue to improve your skills. The audio and video lessons tackle the difficulties of languages in a way that other apps don’t. The different subscription levels let you pay for the plan that is right for you. This app is best for beginners and lower-intermediate learners. Advanced learners might not find much benefit in this course.
PROS
- Access to a lot of content
- Video/audio/written lessons good for many learning styles
- Discusses how culture affects the language
CONS
- No defined course structure
- Not a lot of speaking practice
- Lots of self-motivation needed to continue
Languages Available
Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese (Mandarin), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese
Table of Contents
Innovative Language Overview Innovative Language Price Innovative Language Alternatives and Competitors Innovative Language Review FAQInnovative Language Overview
Innovative Language is an online platform and app that offers 34 different language courses. They teach the language with a variety of audio/video lessons that feature native speakers. The podcast-style lessons are very detailed and offer helpful insights. The goal is to become conversational, so the lessons focus on topics you would encounter in everyday life such as travel, business, and health. In this Innovative Language review, I’ll tell you all the details you need to know.
Each language has a unique course, it’s not just the same course translated into different languages. Because of this, the teachers can focus on the challenging aspects of their language. The platform also does a fantastic job of bringing in cultural aspects that affect the language. For example, JapanesePod101 frequently notes the difference between informal and formal Japanese, and SpanishPod101 talks about how Spanish differs between Spain and Latin American countries.
The lessons are bite-sized and easy to follow. Each lesson mixes different learning techniques, such as audio and reading/writing. I liked the structure of the course. It follows a logical progression and shows you what lesson you should do next. But it is also good for learners who like to mix and match. There are many different activities, and all content is available so you can skip around if you prefer.
However, to learn a language with this program, you need to be an active learner. If you just listen to the lessons, you will pick up some things, but to attain a higher level, you will need to go through all the activities, like the quizzes, and repeating the vocabulary words.
As with any app, some areas could be improved. One of the major cons is that there isn’t a lot of speaking practice. During the lessons, you repeat after the speaker, but this isn’t very effective, and there is no real feedback or conversation practice.
As with most language apps, the content is better for beginner or intermediate levels. Once you are trying to reach the advanced level, you will probably need to find another resource to continue improving.
In general, the Innovative Language courses are an interesting and effective way to learn a language. Although the quality varies between the courses, the more popular languages such as Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese have highly developed courses with tons of content. Even though the less-spoken languages are still a work in progress, they are still one of the best resources available.