Review of Peace Corps courses at LiveLingua.com and Yojik.eu
Text, MP3 in many languages, No pronunciation scores, Free, ★
These introductory courses for 100 languages were written by Peace Corps trainers and volunteers. Most courses are no longer on the Peace Corps website, but they are on the two private sites. For Kenyan and Zambian Sign Language, there remain only posters. The most complete is the LiveLingua site, with text (and audio where available). Yojik is a backup source for text but not audio. Peace Corps itself has audio for three languages, and text for a dozen languages, including three which are not yet at LiveLingua or Yojik: Rwanda-Rundi (Kinyarwanda), Tongan and Zulu.
For some languages, these are the only courses available, or the only ones in English. For other languages, there are better courses available; see "Best Courses" above. These Peace Corps courses were designed to be used when a volunteer is immersed with a host family, and can be hard for others to use.
They list English courses, but these are manuals to advise English teachers, not courses which learners can use.
The audio files have very few repetitions, so expect to rewind a lot. For example in Arabic they give English, then the Arabic word twice, quickly, then a pause, then go on to the next word. In Mandarin they give English, then Chinese from a native speaker, Chinese from an American, no pauses. In Bambara, French, and Thai they give the target language once, then English, with never much pause at all. In Ukrainian they give English, Ukrainian, pause, Ukrainian. In Russian they give English and Russian from an American, then English and Russian from a Kazakh, no pauses.
Text, MP3 in many languages, No pronunciation scores, Free, ★
These introductory courses for 100 languages were written by Peace Corps trainers and volunteers. Most courses are no longer on the Peace Corps website, but they are on the two private sites. For Kenyan and Zambian Sign Language, there remain only posters. The most complete is the LiveLingua site, with text (and audio where available). Yojik is a backup source for text but not audio. Peace Corps itself has audio for three languages, and text for a dozen languages, including three which are not yet at LiveLingua or Yojik: Rwanda-Rundi (Kinyarwanda), Tongan and Zulu.
For some languages, these are the only courses available, or the only ones in English. For other languages, there are better courses available; see "Best Courses" above. These Peace Corps courses were designed to be used when a volunteer is immersed with a host family, and can be hard for others to use.
They list English courses, but these are manuals to advise English teachers, not courses which learners can use.
The audio files have very few repetitions, so expect to rewind a lot. For example in Arabic they give English, then the Arabic word twice, quickly, then a pause, then go on to the next word. In Mandarin they give English, then Chinese from a native speaker, Chinese from an American, no pauses. In Bambara, French, and Thai they give the target language once, then English, with never much pause at all. In Ukrainian they give English, Ukrainian, pause, Ukrainian. In Russian they give English and Russian from an American, then English and Russian from a Kazakh, no pauses.
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