Learn foreign languages at your Desk

For all those who are interested in learning new technologies and languages in the net, this is the most promising of all ventures - LiveMocha. Their homepage described their venture as “an exciting e-learning Web 2.0 startup founded by a group of experienced and successful entrepreneurs based in the Seattle area. LiveMocha addresses a $20 billion worldwide language learning market fueled by rapid globalization, immigration and travel”. LiveMocha is a venture funded company backed by Maveron, a leading Seattle based venture firm with tremendous consumer and e-learning expertise. They offer a variety of courses in Chinese, Hindi, English, Spanish and German. These courses vary with your expertise and proficiency in each language.

The entire exercise has been divided into 3 groups – Learn, Practice and Share. Learn is the usual option of registering for any of the above mentioned course. In practice you select a partner (community user) who is also looking to practice the language. Using the share option you can help others with your proficiency in the language – by correcting others. I have already started my attempt to learn Spanish and the course structure looks quite good to me. There are four basic courses for each language labeled 101, 102, 103, and 104. The 101 course is aimed at the beginners and is a good place to start your endeavor. Once through with that you can graduate yourself to the other courses which are organized according to the difficulty. LiveMocha is right now in its Beta version and can be expected to add more languages down the path. From the look and feel of it, they are here to stay. I almost forget to mention this –All these come free of cost and without any installation also.