The Buzz Bin

Have you ever wanted to learn a new language? Or tried Rosetta Stone and decided you need interaction with a native speaker of the language? Enter Busuu, an innovative online community for learning languages.

Busuu, the name derived from a language spoken in Cameroon that supposedly only eight people in the world speak fluently, combines social network features with language learning. With over 150 learning units, Busuu connects you with native speakers of different countries, and offers all of this for either a basic (free) or premium plan (monthly memberships).

The language learning tool provides users a “Language Garden” filled with trees that grow as you learn your language(s) of choice. The top four languages offered are English, Spanish, German and French. The 150 learning units feature:

• Key vocabulary – simple words for visual learning and audio playback for pronunciation
• Reading comprehension – practice reading various paragraphs
• Writing – after learning phrases, write a short text and let your native speaker friends correct you
• Chat – directly talk with native speakers
• Exam – take a test to see what you learned
• Transcript-PDFs – download the learning unit transcript
• Podcast – download all the audio for the learning unit

Buzz Meter Ranking: 3 out of 4 Buzz Bees

Positive: Busuu has over 80,000 users and is unique in the sense that it offers an online community dedicated to learning. Most of the online communities are built for providing a basic service (i.e. Facebook provides you a profile then you do what you want with it). Busuu presents users with two great offerings: social networking and/while language learning.

Negative: Busuu offers a video tour of their “Language Garden” and how to use their social network features. I found this video confusing since it only provides music and images (I guess they didn’t want to add any languages to make the video tour user-friendly). Busuu only encompasses learning units for the top four languages: English, Spanish, German and French. The only way to learn other languages is to directly chat with other native speakers.

Conclusion: Busuu is an interesting product as it provides a gateway for people to learn new languages and culture from meeting new people. Once Busuu starts offering more learning units for other languages, I’m sure more and more people will want to learn a different language. Join now and let’s learn German together! My username is Marmones.