The first step is to learn pronunciation and common, easy vocabulary. Good pronunciation will help people understand you, even if you only know a little. Bad pronunciation is hard to fix later. Numbers are the best first topic, since they are short and easy to memorize without distracting explanations. After a few repetitions you will learn all the numbers and start building the sounds of the language into your mouth muscles and brain. You will use them the rest of your life. 
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For English, this website has a range of audio lessons, on numbers, comparisons, time, metric system, countries, alphabet, simple business questions, which you can download and practice. 
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For the following languages, you can start with numbers on LanguageGuide.org. They teach the numbers 0-102 or 0-21, depending on language. 

For 30 other languages, start with numbers 1-9 on Book2.de. (Recommendations here are honest. I do not take commissions or fees from any program reviewed.)
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If you want a language not on Book2, check the List of Languages to find reviews of self-teaching courses in hundreds of languages. The List rates self-teaching courses from 1 to 5 stars; more stars are given for programs which teach beginners good pronunciation and a lot of material quickly and well. If you want to analyze the list, you can download it as a spreadsheet in the free format of Open Office (.ods).

Many courses start with social conversation, but the Foreign Service Institute reports that social conversation is the hardest topic, with many rules to memorize. Therefore this site suggests you start with numbers, which are an easier route to good pronunciation and wide understanding.
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Then choose any other topics which interest you from Language Guide or Book2, Both are free. Language Guide is very good since it is visual, so you learn new words from native speakers with no distractions from your own language. They show pictures of food, technology, office items, government, geography, parts of the body, clothing, etc. You mouse over the pictures to hear each word, as often as you need to. Book2 has more words in more languages.
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If you can afford $25-40, try Transparent (in 76 languages), or at least a  month of Pronunciator (in 60 languages). These listen when you speak into a headset or microphone, so they can score your pronunciation. Transparent has the best graphs of your pronunciation. Pronunciator lets beginners learn from pictures, with no distractions in your own language, and they have more vocabulary, Pronunciator conjugates 100 verbs, and it lets you choose topics which interest you. Transparent has some grammar, and you can keep using it without a monthly subscription.

If you want to learn through headphones without a computer, borrow a computer to download MP3 files from Book2. Then you can use them when you want.
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Many websites have free introductory examples. Use them to hear different voices and speeds, and see which give you the best help at each stage in your learning. Try all the free sites and the free samples available from paid sites.
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You can start quickly with the best of these courses. Expect to study 600-2200 hours before you reach full fluency. If you studied 4 years of language at school, you had 400-480 hours of language class, only a start. Or in an hour per day for a month before a trip, you will spend 30 hours, enough to learn some friendly words for various situations before switching to English. You will still have a noticeable accent, but after 30 hours you can be understandable.
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The reviews here cover sites which teach numerous languages. See "All Languages" for links to other sites which teach only one or a few languages. Separate articles discuss common omissions from the courses, and the optimum time needed to learn different languages.
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Scoring Your Pronunciation
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Several sites have computer analysis to score your pronunciation. This is a very valuable tool to improve your accent, giving feedback more patiently than any human.
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Talk to Native Speakers
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Several sites help you find people who want to learn your language, and are native speakers of the language you want to learn. Talk to them regularly in each language, so you both practice.
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MP3 Learning away from a Computer
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If you want to learn away from a computer (while driving, walking, etc.), this site's List of Language Courses shows which sites have downloadable MP3 or audio CDs in the language you want. Most cars since 2005 have plugs to connect an MP3 player or thumb drive to the car's stereo, or you can get adapters to connect to older cars. (A computer person can also convert MP3 files to an audio CD, and play it in a CD player.)
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Most audio files have pauses for you to repeat the words. Language Guide, Book2 and some others (shown in the List) lack pauses. Arguelles says it is better to use these recordings without pauses. He recommends speaking along with the native speaker, at about the same volume, so you can compare your voice to the native speaker (shadowing). People learn songs this way, so try it for languages. He says to walk with good posture while speaking so your voice is clear. At first you can only speak sporadically, until you hear phrases enough to say them with the native speaker. 

Some lessons use a "backward build-up" as described by the US State Department: "learn the longer sentence by repeating small parts of the sentence, starting from the end and working toward the beginning."
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Intermediate Learners
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While this site is focused on beginners, the List of Language Courses identifies which language programs may be helpful to intermediate learners. Some programs are good for both beginners and intermediate: starting at the beginning and covering a lot of ground. Others are primarily for beginners, not covering enough to help intermediate learners. Some are too hard for beginners, but good once you learn the basics elsewhere. Linguistadores shows videos of songs in English, with words next to the video for practice.

Next: Omissions

You can use use Skype, Kakao, Voip on Android or iPhone, etc. to practice talking online with native speakers. The following sites help you find someone who (A) speaks the language you want and (B) wants to learn your language, so you can talk together first in one language, then the other. You will both practice at no cost:

• My Language Exchange free, many people
  
• LingoGlobe free, can select skill level, common interests, writing or talking
• Mixxer free
  
• Italki free or paid
  
• SpeakSurfing free or paid, 3-way trade may help if you speak an uncommon language.
• Conversation Exchange free
  
• Fluent Future free or paid
  
• Tongue Out free
  
• Exchange a Language free, few people
  
• Open Language Exchange €2/month
  
• Shared Talk free, written, but can arrange voice sessions 
  
• Easy Language Exchange free, no indication whether written or voice
  
• Teach Speech free, speak with other learners, not native speakers
  

After you find someone, you email to decide if you can both use Skype, Kakao or other free connection, set a time and start talking. As with any Internet contact, do not trust they are who they say they are. Do not tell them private information, such as when you will be away from home. Take your birth date and other personal information out of your Skype or Kakao profile. Another site has a good discussion of privacy for language learners and teachers.

Besides these well-organized sites, there are forums with long lists of people, not sorted by language, which are not as useful, though if you need a common language, you may find someone who just posted a request: ESL Teachers, Skype community, or Babelan.

_None of the courses reviewed here seems ideal. Click the Better Language Teaching tab in the top menu to see ideas about better possible approaches for the future.
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Comparative Results
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It would be ideal if someone measured and compared the results of many programs. Apparently no one does.

Hundreds of state and local governments, thousands of universities, all teach foreign languages to millions of beginners every year, and any one of them would benefit from randomized comparisons of different teaching programs. On the other hand research by language teachers could appear biased by their experience with live teaching. Librarians might be a more neutral source of research in online courses, since many libraries offer these courses, and have an interest in what works best.

If you know any such comparisons of results, please send links.

A few small studies have confirmed that learning Esperanto before an Asian or European language is faster than learning the target language by itself, on average. They give no guidance on which courses are best in either language.

The US government language teachers cited in the section on "Obstacles to Learning Languages" call for research on:

• "Why is a class size of more than four too inefficient when we try to teach learners at really high levels of proficiency?
• Why is an early grammatical overview so helpful to adult learners of languages like Russian or German?
• Why is, for example, Estonian so much harder for English speakers to learn well than, say, Swahili, even though neither of them is related to English?
• Why is it really so hard for an adult English reader to learn to read another writing system fluently?
• There are many more questions like these." (p.84).

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Advertised Courses
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The heavily advertised Rosetta Stone mostly teaches listening and reading. Reviewers say its computer scoring of speech does not work well, so the main feedback on speaking seems to be a 50-minute online session after each lesson. In these sessions you talk with a "coach" and "2 other learners with a maximum of 4."   Pimsleur has limited vocabulary and no feedback on pronunciation.
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Phonetics
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Phonetics teaches how your mouth forms sounds, how sounds differ between languages, and how to change the habits of your mouth muscles to form new sounds. Phonetics is rarely taught to language learners, and you may find it helpful in creating a good accent in any new language. Arguelles mentions the example that T is formed by the tongue touching the top of the mouth; different languages have the tongue in slightly different places, and Hindi has 2 different T's, in 2 different places. Learning the principle may help you listen for and create the right T. He has an introductory video on phonetics principles.
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News
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A large gap is the lack of teaching for news. Most courses are aimed at tourism, so they do not help people who want to understand foreign news broadcasts or read foreign papers.
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Dunwoody is the best for learning news vocabulary in 60 less common languages, with excerpts of news articles, vocabulary for those articles, and full translations.
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Pronunciator teaches words for numbers, time, cities, countries, geography, government, etc., which are useful for news. The purely audio proposal on this site at Wordlist recommends words in the same topics which can be taught by sound effects, with no explanations needed in another language.
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Business
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An even more important gap is the lack of teaching for business. Most courses are aimed at tourism, so they do not help people who need basic business vocabulary for phone or VOIP.

This website has an English lesson for receptionists who want to help foreign callers reach the right person in their companies, and bosses who want to reach someone speaking their language: "Please let me talk to Dr. Annan," "Does someone speak Arabic or French?"  and "The person who speaks French will return tomorrow."  No other course or website offers those lessons for beginners.

This website also has lessons for basic English needed in hotels, restaurants, and retail sales. It also has a comparison of 35 other courses for hotel English

As noted above, Pronunciator teaches words for numbers, time, cities, countries, geography, government, etc., which are useful for business and news; and the purely audio proposal on this site at Wordlist recommends words in the same topics which can be taught orally.
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Eurotalk has intermediate lessons for business in many languages.  FSI teaches a few words for phone calls in a few languages, fairly late in the course. Busuu and Teach Yourself Business serve the need in English, French, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish for people who already know the language well.

Scales and standard tests for language reinforce a bias for social, rather than business vocabulary.
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Multiple Voices
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Each course uses one or two native speakers. Learning would be much richer with more variety of speakers to learn from. Beginners can still expose themselves to a variety of voices by listening to several courses, especially the free sites and free samples available from paid sites (listed in the Overview).
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English Dialects
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Courses do not show regional dialects for different parts of England or the US, which would help people traveling to particular regions, or wanting to understand the widest range of English-speakers. Scots is available from Kauderwelsch, and Celtic languages are available, but not Southern, Cockney, etc. By contrast there are books and CDs for regional French, German, Italian and Spanish.
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Slang
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Every movie and most conversations, even among professionals, includes slang and mild oaths, yet even the mildest are rarely taught in courses. Beginners understand they have to ask for explanations in a conversation, but both sides can be embarrassed after the beginner asks the meaning of or misuses: "bloody,"  "vachement," "gay," "un truc," etc.
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Kauderwelsch has specific books teaching slang for Australia, Britain, Canada, Cuba, France, Germany (East and West), Hindi, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Quebec, Russia, Spain, Spanglish, Turkey, United States.

Next: Pronunciation Scores

Several websites record you saying a word or sentence. Then they analyze it and give feedback in a score, and often a graph. The approach allows you to practice repeatedly and improve your accent. The programs work by comparing your recording to the model recording in the program, after adjusting for any basic difference in pitch.The programs vary widely in what they offer. Items 1-3 are excellent and worth getting.

1. Transparent gives the most detailed graphs to show how well you pronounce. Each time you say a word or phrase, you can see an overall score, and graphs on how the vowels, consonants, pitch, etc. sounded in 76 languages.
   
2. Passport to Languages / Learn to Speak has a simple pronunciation score in 6 languages, without detailed graphs, but they have more vocabulary than Transparent. Any of these first programs costs $20-$40 for permanent ownership of courses and scoring.
3. Pronunciator is $30 per month, has good scoring in 72 languages, and is easier to use than Transparent, though its graphs are not as detailed as Transparent's. It has at least as much vocabulary as Learn to Speak. It offers free samples of the pronunciation scoring, which most do not. 
4. Two more are expensive and hard to use, according to reviews: Tellmemore and Rosettastone. Tellmemore scores pronunciation generously. I got undeservedly high scores in Spanish. A graph shows volume and an extra line for pitch to help you learn intonation. This would be especially good for Mandarin, which is one of the languages they teach. Reviewers say that in sentences, you must speak each word separately to get a good score.
5. Babbel gives you too little feedback about pronunciation and then moves on to reading and writing. It scores good pronunciation on a scale 50-100, but gives you no score or feedback on poor pronunciation and goes on to the next screen before you get the pronunciation right. They let you say each word just once each time through a lesson.
   
6. Two others are free, but only teach intermediate English: EnglishCentral and GoEnglishMe.
7. Berlitzonline is expensive, and no samples or reviews are available.

Next: Time Needed to Learn Languages

Review of Deutsche Welle language teaching, DW.de
Web+MP3, No pronunciation scores, free, ★
Their website has over 100 German lessons with explanations in 30 languages ("Deutsch - warum nicht?"). The audio of some lessons calls them a "Radio Language Course" However they do not say that the lessons are broadcast.

The goal seems more to understand German than to practice pronunciation. Each lesson has large amounts of explanation, interspersed with a few minutes of German scenes. In the last few minutes they repeat the German dialog with few interruptions. There are no pauses for you to repeat, and the pace is uneven, so it would be hard to learn by speaking along with the German speakers.

You can also download pdf files to read in German and your own language.

The vocabulary appendix shows 400 words, and a few not shown there are also used in the lessons, such as numbers.

Their teaching series "Radio D" is similar, and it uses sound effects to help show the situation, along with spoken explanations (not all 30 languages).

Their vocabulary series "Deutsch Interaktiv" gives vocabulary in your language (not all 30), then twice in German, by a man and woman, then a single pause before giving the next word or phrase. Lesson 7 includes numbers 1-9.

Their series "Mission Europe" has fast-paced scenes of international intrigue in German, French or Polish, with partial explanations in your language. It seems designed more for practice than learning a new language, similar to listening to German, French or Polish programs on the radio.

Review of LearnOasis.com  Stella
Web+Apps, No pronunciation scores, Free, ★
A UK company was paid by the European Union to develop courses. They cover greetings in 5 languages, with text in the target language and the teaching language. A few words are presented individually, and you can repeatedly listen to phrases. They do not provide slow recordings, grammar, or MP3 downloads. Screens load slowly.

They teach Danish, Hungarian and Spanish to English speakers. They teach English to Czech, German, Hungarian and Italian speakers. In these languages they teach greetings, shopping, numbers 1-20, and time. They do not provide explanations of pronunciation, nor the ability to record yourself in these languages.

They teach Arabic to English speakers. Some explanations are available in German, Italian, Lithuanian, and Portuguese. Some explanations are in English only. You can record yourself in Arabic and compare to the speakers, but there are no scores or graphs. Arabic is the only language for which they have an app.

They present greetings and introductions  in Arabic between native English-speakers and native Arabic speakers (no particular country is specified). Lessons cover the following:

1. Long phrases spoken in Arabic and printed in Arabic, with Roman letters too. English text is optional. You can repeatedly listen to phrases, but not individual words.
2. Arabic script for the phrases, but not broken down into letters.
3. This lesson breaks words into letters.
4. How to pronounce some letters not found in English.
5. Literal meaning of the greetings.
6. Claims to offer pronunciation in Egyptian, Iraqi, Gulf, Moroccan, and Omani Arabic, and none of them had sound.

They say the main myth about Arabic is that the language is "uniquely difficult." I have never seen that myth. The US Foreign Service Institute does say it is one of the 4 hardest languages for English-speakers, along with Chinese, Japanese and Korean, based on their 50 years of teaching it.

Review of Alison.com
Web, No pronunciation scores, Free,
Alison has different approaches for the 6 languages it teaches. All instructions are in English. All lessons need to be watched online; you cannot download to practice away from a computer. Courses are free. Completion certificates cost €15 or more

For Arabic ★★★ they have 13 video lessons from Dalarna University in Sweden. They teach the alphabet better than I have seen elsewhere, though the letters shown on the slides are small and fuzzy. Each lesson is a lecture with slides, but it gives few repetitions of the Arabic sounds and no time for the learner to speak. They include numbers 1-10; simple grammar, short sentences and pronunciation rules.

For teaching English ★ they have many intermediate lessons, most from the British Council, most without practice in speaking English. Click the loudspeaker to listen, without pauses. For listening and writing these give extensive free practice. Be aware some of the speakers (such as the Japanese woman in the first lesson) have foreign accents, so learn from the native speakers. Also the spoken and on-screen text differ by a few words in each lesson. This will not confuse intermediate learners.

For French ★★★★★ they have many video lessons from Joella Andriantsivohony. Even more lessons are at youlearnfrench.blogspot.com. She says each word or phrase twice, followed by long pauses, with French and English spelling on the screen, which you do not have to look at if you want to concentrate on the sound. She has an excellent accent, though she does not say if she is a native speaker. She gives several lessons on numbers, from 0 to 999 billion (milliards), prepositions, telling time, adjectives, adverbs, and many more. It is great that she has a lesson on the alphabet, though she picks very hard sample words for the letters (lots of r sounds).

For German ★ they have 11 lessons on colors, numbers, letters, times, verbs, clothes, and likes. The native speaker from Berlin has many more at DeutschMitJulia.wordpress.com. Phrases are repeated with brief pauses, not quite long enough to say the phrase. The lessons are for intermediate learners, though beginners can start with the lessons on colors and the alphabet. In other lessons the phrases are too long and full of new words to be good for beginners.

For Irish ★ they have 15 lessons on basic vocabulary, including numbers 1-1000, which are also on youtube.com/user/Dioluin. They do teach simple words, but very quickly, with no repetitions, interspersed with English translations. Perhaps you could memorize them by watching repeatedly.

For Swedish ★ they have 10 lessons on verbs, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives from Lund University. The male narrator says he is from Sweden; the woman says she is from Russia, though I cannot tell if she really is or is a native Swedish speaker. Each lesson is a lecture with slides, but few repetitions of the Swedish sounds and no time for the learner to speak.

Alison courses are not accredited. They do issue their own certificates in some fields: "The main standards we adhere to – which apply to over half our courses - are those instituted by the ECDL Foundation / Microsoft Corporation, (IT Literacy), the British Council (English Learning), and the Australian High School standards (maths courses, science courses, etc.).  To keep the courses freely accessible online, we do not issue, and cannot issue, certifications directly from these particular institutions (as they would all involve fees which would have to be passed on to the learner). However, we do provide a Certificate of Completion to state that the individual has learned the same required knowledge/skill-set.  Where ALISON has a distinct advantage on all institutional certification is that an ALISON graduate can be challenged to sit an ALISON test at anytime online to prove that they retain the standard of knowledge certified by the Certification of Completion." Anyone can also check for forged certificates.

Certificates, even for the simplest courses, can be €15 or more. The price is shown after you finish the course. Free certificates are not available for languages. Certificates from Alison are free for the following Microsoft and Irish Health and Safety Authority courses.

• Microsoft Digital Literacy - IT Basics, Internet & Productivity Programs

• Microsoft Office 2010 Training
• Updating Your Spreadsheet Skills with Microsoft Excel 2010
• Updating Your Word Processing Skills with Microsoft Word 2010
• Updating Your Database Processing Skills with Microsoft Access 2010
• Updating Your Presentation Skills with Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
• Improving Productivity Using Microsoft Outlook 2010
• Cloud Document Collaboration Using Microsoft SharePoint 2010

• Safety and Health in Construction

• An Introduction to Managing Safety and Health in Schools
• Safety and Health in the Science Laboratory for Teachers
• Get Safe - Work Safe - Safety and Health for Senior Cycle Students
• Safety and Health in the Technology Classroom for Teachers

• U.S. Citizenship Test Preparation

Alison displays advertising, which can be reduced for €15 per year and eliminated for €50 per year.

Review of Passport, Just Enough, Listen 'n Learn, Practice & Improve, Let's Learn, Look'n'Learn, Drive-in, Ticket to
Books+CDs, No Pronunciation Scores, Cheap, ★
They publish several series for major languages.

• Let's Learn has pictures marked with words in the target language (multiple alphabets where applicable).
• Just Enough is a good phrasebook.
• Listen 'n Learn is a cassette or CD of dialog with accompanying text.
• Practice & Improve is a longer audio melodrama to draw intermediate learners into practice with listening.
• Drive-in has songs and games for children to listen to, sing and play with.

Amazon reviews are generally positive. (Click for Arguelles' review of Listen 'n Learn and Practice & Improve)

Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota keeps a list of many schools and universities in Canada and the USA which teach languages. It is a starting point if you want a class in person instead of a self-study course. Also you can find the books a class uses, and try those books.

On their website, type the name of the language and leave the other boxes blank, to see how many places teach the language you want. Or choose a state or province and see what languages are taught there.

There is no review here, since every class will be different. Please tell me if you know lists of courses in other parts of the world.

Review of Duolingo.com
Web+Apps, No pronunciation scores, free, ★
They teach a little speaking, a lot of dictation, text, pictures, and translation.

They show a lot of text and spelling variations before having you speak. Then you speak just once before they go on to more text, so there is no chance to practice pronunciation. When you speak, they mark you correct even with very poor pronunciation. All the text they show can mislead you into pronouncing letters as they would be said in your own language, rather than in the language you are learning.

Therefore it does not help beginners learn good pronunciation. It also starts slowly, teaching 7 words in 10 minutes.

Its focus is on translation, to get free translations of web pages from more advanced learners. There is also dictation, where you type what you hear, and they check it. Dictation can be helpful to intermediate students, helping them learn what the language sounds like at full speed, There is also a turtle button to slow it down a little.

All the languages they teach are available in better programs, which are also free and which teach more, such as Book2, BBC, and FSI.

Other than those free programs, if you can spend $25-$30, try Transparent, or at least a  month of Pronunciator. These listen when you speak into a headset or microphone, so they can score your pronunciation. Transparent has the best graphs of your pronunciation. Pronunciator lets beginners learn from pictures, with no distractions in your own language, and they have more vocabulary. Pronunciator conjugates 100 verbs, and it lets you choose topics which interest you. Transparent has some grammar, and you can keep using it without a monthly subscription.

Duolingo sponsored a study by Vesselinov and Grego of 196 Duolingo students learning Spanish. They tried to test students 2 months apart, using a written test (no listening or speaking) developed for college placement at Brigham Young university (WebCAPE).

• 108 students did not take the 2nd test, perhaps because they had dropped the course,
• 16 of the 88 students who took both tests were complete beginners, scoring zero on the first test. These were too few to study separately.
  

• The 88 who took both tests saw their test scores rise an average of 8 points per hour of study (on a scale of 0 to 956), though some students' scores fell.
• Based on the learning rate of all 88 students, the authors conclude a complete beginner would need 34 hours to learn as much written material as taught in the first semester of college study.

• Most actual beginners did not spend enough time to cover a semester. Indeed most lower level students dropped out of the study. Among the 157 initially scoring less than first semester competence, 57% did not take the second test.
  
• About half of higher level students dropped out.

• Most students who stayed with the project studied less than 20 hours during the 2 months.
• The average student was 34 years old. 69% had already graduated from college. More than a quarter already knew at least one foreign language.

Review of Passport to Languages, from eLanguage.com
Words+pictures, Pronunciation scored, Cheap, ★★★★

They teach 35 languages in a combined package ($20). All languages let you record and compare yourself to their native speaker. They earn 4 stars for scoring your pronunciation in US English, French, German, Italian, and Latin American Spanish. They earn 3 stars for other languages. Their scoring of your pronunciation can be set from generous to strict.

They lose a star because their software seems to need Windows 95/98, ME, 2000 or XP. They told me they have a version compatible with Windows 7 and Vista, but when I bought it, directly from their website, it did not work on Windows 7. I tested it with an old laptop running XP. It is an excellent 5-star program if you have access to one of the older operating systems.

They explain lessons in Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish, though a few buttons and the installation instructions remain in English.

The pronunciation scoring is under "Learn by Subject," not "Pronunciation."  They say each word, and show spelling and a picture, You choose whether they provide a translation into your own language. They say the word as often as you wish, and you can get scoring of your pronunciation as often as you wish. Sound quality varies but is reasonable.

They cover a lot of vocabulary. In health terms, they have detailed words for different bones, blood and breathing systems, major organs, parts of the head, mouth, eyes, arm, hand and foot, as well as a modest range of health office terms. They teach a charming sequence of 14 emotions with pictures of a mime. They have different health words from Pronunciator, and more than Transparent, though Transparent has helpful detailed pronunciation  graphs besides the summary score.

They explain grammar, but offer no drills or practice.

ELanguage also has more detailed packages in English, French, German, and Spanish, reviewed separately.

Review of CriticalLanguageSeries.org (online+MP3), CLS.Arizona.edu (CD/DVD)
Web+MP3 or CD/DVD, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, ★
They have courses which you can subscribe to online ($80 for 6 months) or buy and use offline ($80), with slightly different features. They show text written in the target language, and you can choose to hear individual words or sentences in the target language or in English. The audio and video are fairly deadpan. The courses include brief notes on grammar and word use.

They offer no slowing down of the audio to learn it, no breakdown into syllables, no explanation of intonation nor how to pronounce individual sounds. Reviewers of the Portuguese course note that speakers drop syllables,

• "characters make some of the typical reductions used by natives. Regrettably, their inconsistency throughout the 20 lessons confused students." (Calico 2003, 20:371-9)
  

With DVDs you can record your pronunciation, and hear back your voice next to the actor's voice, but no scoring to help you judge how well you did. The web version does not record you at all.

Their websites show samples of each online course, and some of the DVD courses. They do not show a table of contents to indicate the topics they cover. In particular there is no way to know if they cover business needs, such as telephone contacts, or just social interactions. They say they have, "Up to 12,000 pronunciations and translations" without saying how many of each per language.

The courses are too hard for complete beginners. They may help intermediate students, especially since the website helpfully shows all the reviews they know of for their courses, up through June 2011. Most reviewers are skilled speakers of the languages, so they point out issues in pronunciation or word usage which are important for intermediate learners. These reviews are worth reading before an intermediate student buys a course; a corollary of expertise is that reviewers usually do not see how hard the courses are for beginners.

They offer Cantonese, Mandarin (CD only), Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish, Portuguese (Brazil), Turkish, and Ukrainian. Their choice of languages results from their funding by the US National Security Education Program, "Born out of post-mortem analysis from Desert Storm, NSEP was designed to represent a post-Cold War investment in vital expertise in languages and cultures critical to U.S. national security."

_Review of FirstVoices.com (Canada)
Web+MP3+Apps, No pronunciation scores, Free, ★
They offer text and sound in each of 30 languages spoken by First Nations (Native Americans) in Canada. They have multiple regional variations for many of the languages. The content varies widely from about 50 words and phrases in some languages to over 2,000 in a few. On their site you can find languages by map or name of the group. Some languages are available in apps.

Each word or phrase is on a separate page and sound file, so you spend more time navigating the pages than learning. It looks as if the goal is more to honor the words than learn them, yet learning is possible. For some languages the words are spoken once in English and twice in the target language. Other languages speak them only in the target language. The web page always shows the word in English and the target language. Most explanations are in English, with a little in French. There is no option to slow the sound, and no grammar.

The site is sponsored by First Peoples' Cultural Council

Review of Schaum's Outlines, McGraw Hill
Books, No Pronunciation scores, Cheap, ★
These are supplementary material in 6 languages ($10). There is no audio. They explain grammar clearly and offer learning advice, with useful exercises.

Review of Langues + Mondes, Asiatheque.com
Books+CDs, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, in French, ★★★
Each book covers grammar, exercises, dialog, vocabulary, and culture. Most have 2 audio CDs or 2 CDs of MP3 files. Some languages have multiple levels, or books on special aspects of the language, such as Chinese syntax. Prices range from $50-75 per book, with CDs included.

These are thorough courses, though they do not have much audio. Most are written by teachers from the French Institute of Oriental Languages (INALCO), which teaches 90 languages. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

Review of Parlons, published by L'Harmattan (site in English)
Book+PDF+CD+Cassette, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, in French, ★
Many of these books ($20) can be downloaded. Many have a CD or cassette for another $20, with a mix of French and the target language.

They cover 170 languages, briefly. Each book explains grammar, with some exercises and vocabulary, and also devotes substantial space to describing the culture and history of the people who speak the language. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

Review of Kauderwelsch, Reise-Know-How Verlag (or site translated to: English)
Books+CDs, No Pronunciation scores, Cheap, Most are in German, ★★★
Each short book ($10) teaches basic grammar as well as travel phrases. The audio CDs ($10) are mostly travel phrases. (Kauderwelsch can mean "gibberish," but also can mean "words from different languages.")

They cover 120 languages, and many regional variations of Arabic, English, German, and Spanish, so they will be your best course in some languages, and useful extra practice in others.

They have specific books teaching slang in many languages, a topic which is hard to find elsewhere, though important for understanding movies and ordinary conversation. They teach slang for Australia, Britain, Canada, Cuba, France, Germany (East and West), Hindi, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Quebec, Russia, Spain, Spanglish, Turkey, United States.

All are explained in German, except there are courses in English for speakers of other languages. CDs have a sentence or phrase in German, then in the target language, then a pause, but no breakdown of words or repetitions. Pauses are omitted in the CDs devoted to slang and to German dialects. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

Review of Made Simple, Broadway Books
Books, No Pronunciation scores, Cheap, ★
These books ($10) lack audio and start fast, so they are not helpful to beginners.

Intermediate readers find the explanations well-organized, though each has only about 900 words of vocabulary. They cover 5 languages. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

Review of Langenscheidt (site translated to English)
Book+CD+MP3+online, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, in German, ★★★
They use German to teach 15 languages, and they use English to teach German and possibly other languages. They offer several levels, with beginner courses (100 pages and 200-300 minutes of MP3) for $20, more advanced for $80. They also offer bilingual dictionaries in many languages. (Click for Arguelles' review, mostly of older versions.)

Review of IdiotsGuides.com
Books+CDs, No Pronunciation scores, Cheap, ★
They cover several major languages ($25). You can download the text, but not the audio, which is needed too and is only available on the CDs. The books include pronunciation guides, but you will need CDs to hear how it really sounds. CDs do not include much of the text. Books are not standardized, so vary from one language to another.

Review of Central Institute of Indian Languages, Ciil.org
Books+Cassettes+CDs+Videos+Online, No Pronunciation Scores, Cheap, ★★★
They have thorough books (in English) on 40 Indian languages, briefer looks at others, and audio, video, online material for some of the major ones.

The major books have 600-900 pages. Each lesson has dialog, drills, exercises, vocabulary and grammar. They explain some of the culture. The cultural explanations are written for Indians who may already know some aspects of these other cultures in their country. These are a major resource for all the languages they cover. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

Review of [Language] for Dummies
Books+CDs+Apps, No pronunciation scores, Cheap, ★
They cover major languages in varying ways, by different authors. In general they seem to cover a little grammar and vocabulary, with good CDs for listening, but apparently too hard for beginners and too incomplete for intermediate learners.

Time Needed to Learn Languages

Some languages are easier than others. The Foreign Service Institute has taught languages to US diplomats for 50 years, and finds that English-speakers need at least the following time to learn these languages. They teach intensively, with classes of 4 to 6 students learning from native teachers 5 days per week, with 4 or more hours of class and 3 hours of homework per day (p.76), plus periodic immersion in a country where the language is spoken:

• 600 class hours:  French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, Afrikaans (6 months half time / 24 weeks)
  
• 850 class hours:  Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili (8 months / 34 weeks)
• 1100 class hours:  Albanian, Amharic, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Khmer, Latvian, Nepali, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Urdu, Vietnamese, Zulu (10 months / 44 weeks)
• More than 1100 class hours: Georgian, Mongolian (more than 10 months / 44 weeks)
  
• 2200 class hours:  Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean (21 months / 88 weeks; 2nd year is in the country)

Source: Table 2, page 78, and text page 77, of: Frederick Jackson and Marsha Kaplan (Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State), "Lessons learned from fifty years of theory and practice in government language teaching" pp.71-87 of Georgetown University Round Table On Languages And Linguistics, 1999.
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Esperanto is not included in their list. It takes less time to learn, and four studies have found that learning it first then another Asian or European language, is faster than starting with the target language. Inexpensive courses are available for Esperanto, like the other languages.
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The hours of required time above show why most traditional courses are not enough:

• 30-200 hours in typical self-study courses
• 300 hours of class and immersion in one-month class abroad (30 days x 10 hours/day)
• 480 hours of class in 4 years of high school (4 years x 180 days/year x 2/3 hour per day)
• 400 hours of class in 4 years of college (8 semesters x 50 contact hours/semester)
• 600-900 hours of class and immersion in 2-3 month Peace Corps training (60 to 90 days x 10 hours/day)
• 15-30,000 hours of immersion for a child growing up (4 to 8 years to fluency x 10 hours/day). Lightbown says children take 12-15,000 hours to learn a language (p. 179 of Applied Linguistics 1985 6(2): pp.173-189).
  

A course which claims to teach adults, in the same way children learn, would need full time study for many years to provide the 15,000 hours children need. Better class designs go much faster, but the Foreign Service Institute and Peace Corps have found that students do need more time than school courses give.
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Even with these learning times, you will still have a noticeable accent. Ways to reduce your accent are discussed in a separate article.

Conversation Is the Hardest Topic

Many courses slow students down and discourage many students by starting with the hardest topic, social conversation. The Foreign Service Institute authors note that social conversation is the hardest skill, not the easiest, "of all the tasks graduates carry out at post in the foreign language—articulating policy, conducting interviews, managing offices and local staff—ordinary conversation is the one area of language use in which they unanimously claim to experience the most difficulty. . . Participants in conversation must at once listen to what their interlocutor is saying, formulate their contribution, make their contribution relevant, and utter their contribution in a timely way, lest they lose the thread of the conversation." (p.83).

For example social conversation requires distinctions among: hi, hello, hiya, hey, how do you do?, how are you?, how are you doing? what's up? howdy, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, nice to meet you, good to see you again, glad to know you, etc. Correct words depend on time of day, whether the people have met before, and context; in many languages they depend on sex or age of the two speakers.

Examples in Spanish, considered easier, include hola, buenas, buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches, oye, ¿cómo se hace?, ¿qué tal?, ¿qué pasa?, ¿cómo estás?, ¿cómo está usted?, encantada/o, mucho gusto, gusto en conocerte/lo, me da gusto conocerte/lo, me alegro de verte de nuevo, igualmente, etc.
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Courses for Hard Languages

The Foreign Service Institute teaches learners early about features to listen and look for which will be different from their native language (p.81):

• "in highly inflected languages, such as Russian or Finnish, significant meaning is encoded at the ends of words and must be attended to. Students learning Russian must literally choose from 144 possible endings for each noun, adjective, demonstrative, and pronoun they wish to utter. . .  to say a noun in Russian requires attaching a case marker"
  
• "To utter any word in Thai entails giving it a tone"

Class Sizes

The Foreign Service Institute authors find classes larger than 4 students do not make rapid progress, except for beginners in the easiest languages, where 6 students are acceptable (p.76). Peace Corps teaches larger classes, depending on the number of volunteers going to an area, but each volunteer lives with a non-English-speaking family and learns there too.

Review of Spoken Language Series/Services
Books+cassettes, No pronunciation scores, Words, Cheap, ★★★
They offer 40 languages, recorded decades ago, so your accent may be old fashioned.

They speak each word or phrase only twice, with pauses for you to repeat. You can rewind, but this is not as easy with cassettes as with MP3, and the cassettes might break with intense use. They suggest listening to each lesson 30 times (probably wise for any program). Most languages are $90, with usually 6 cassettes; a few are up to $300 sometimes with more cassettes. Cassettes do not seem to be available from Amazon.

The books teach grammar fairly thoroughly, though not a large vocabulary. They are similar to the free FSI courses, but cover some different languages and have less drill, so you may like them more or less than FSI. (Click for Arguelles' review.)

They teach most languages in English. They teach English in 11 languages: Burmese, Chinese, Greek, Indonesian, Korean, Persian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.