Pricing: $59.90 per year (15 day free trial) or $4.99 per month (mobile only)

Positives

Extensive library of vocab to learn
Vocabulary conveniently arranged by topic
Wide range of activities (flashcards, listening practice, learning with videos, etc.)
Good value for money (one subscription for all the languages)

Negatives

App at times feels slow and clunky
Limited to 9 popular languages
Lacks the gamification aspect of other platforms

Summary

MosaLingua started out as essentially a flashcard vocabulary trainer, but has grown into a full-featured resource for 9 major languages. It works well, categorizes vocab by topic and includes high quality audio for words and phrases.

Try MosaLingua

Alternatives

MosaLingua has been around for a long time now.

It’s a decent, full-featured resource and flashcard app with an emphasis on learning new vocabulary and phrases.

MosaLingua has nine languages (and apps) available: Spanish, French, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and English (Arabic and Korean are in the pipeline).

You can find information about each of these individually by selecting a language:

Of particular interest is the inclusion of vocabulary for very specific topics like business or medical terminology. The vocab is neatly arranged by topic like this, making it easy to search for relevant terms that you need.

The MosaLingua method

The MosaLingua method in their own words:

The MosaLingua method (called MOSALearning ®) is based on spaced repetition, which consists of revising learned content regularly in order to anchor it durably in the long-term memory. This method is very effective at memorizing vocabulary because it allows you to memorize words, expressions, and common phrases quickly (the same method is used by the popular app Anki).

When I downloaded the app, I was asked a series of questions. The questions were to identify my skill level and my desired use for the language. For me, I chose beginner for my skill level and travel as my desired use of the language.

The app is essentially just a flash card apps that begins with the spoken word. I then recorded myself repeating the words and then flipped the card to see the words.

In some ways it’s fairly unremarkable (just an alternative to Anki).

Without seeing the spelling first, I was not really comfortable with repeating the words I had just heard out loud. I knew immediately that I was off with my pronunciation, but this may have actually been beneficial in helping me to learn more effectively.

The app starts off with five flash cards but it also has the ability to add more flash cards if you like. It begins with the most commonly used words or phrases for your desired use.

The key to Mosalingua is your frequency of repetition.

One feature that I really liked was the control over the words and phrases I was learning. The paid version naturally offers more classes and video content, but I did find the apps’ user interface not that intuitive and a little difficult to use at first.

In addition to word memorization, MosaLingua includes:

Dialogues with real life situations
Hands-free mode that plays a loop of words in the mother tongue and the target language
Reading activities (“graded text” stories)
Grammar and pronunciation lessons
Video content in the original language
“MosaDiscovery” (a browser extension for integrating words and phrases found in the texts you read or in the subtitles of YouTube and Netflix videos).

How much does MosaLingua cost and is it worth it?

There’s a free trial of MosaLingua 15 days. After that, the subscription costs $59.90 per year.

If you prefer mobile, there’s also the option to choose the monthly subscription at $4.99 per month, but the annual option’s better value.

Overall, MosaLingua’s a solid resource for the 9 major languages it covers. You may get similar mileage out of Anki or Memrise, but MosaLingua’s a full-featured resource at low cost (comparatively speaking).

Have you used Mosalingua before?

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