Babbel

Babbel is a specialized language learning tool that combines social network features with those of any learning platform, in a way that you can automatically begin to learn any language or improve your fluency when speaking.With more than a dozen languages available, from the most common languages to those less widely spoken like Indonesian, Norwegian, and Turkish, Babbel provides you with material designed so that you can adjust it to specific goals and learn at your own speed and level.The app focuses the learning in such a way that even after completing a lesson, you continue to strengthen the knowledge you've learned over time. This way, even if you pass a task with a specific topic and move on, the resources and exercises continue referring to past lessons through the methodology of constancy.The different stages of activities that you complete include a feature that lets you hear every word or phrase of the exercise, helping you to learn both vocabulary and pronunciation.Furthermore, as you can also synchronize your progress with the online version, you won't have any problem continuing your lessons without losing the progress that you've made in either of the two versions.

Features:

Podcasts

For some languages, Babbel offers podcasts to help you improve your listening skills. These podcasts are for beginner, intermediate, and advanced learners. Not all languages have podcasts available, and podcast choices are limited for the languages that do have them. The more common languages have a few options, like Spanish, German, and Italian. Less common languages like Swedish, Turkish, and Dutch don’t have any.

2-Minute Stories

Another feature available for some languages is 2-Minute Stories. These stories are short and their purpose is to teach you useful phrases. These are a bit of a missed opportunity in my opinion. The useful phrases are bolded, but the rest of the stories are in English. I think this feature would be much more useful if the stories were in the target language, not my native language.

Culture Bites

Babbel’s Culture Bites are designed to help you learn the cultural aspects of your target language. They’re quick descriptions of unique characteristics of your target language, like how people introduce themselves, different celebrations, and important artists and historical figures. Like the 2-Minute Stories, the Culture Bites are in English. They don’t offer that much value to a Babbel subscription, but they’re available if you’re interested in reading through them

Babbel Live

The most interesting and useful feature Babbel offers outside of its courses is Babbel Live. With Babbel Live, you can take 60-minute live classes with experienced language teachers. The classes cover a variety of topics and are available for all levels. Currently, Babbel Live is available for Spanish, French, and German. 

Advantages:

BITE-SIZE, INTERACTIVE LESSONS - Easily fit language learning into your busy schedule with lessons that take only 10-15 minutes to complete (some Spanish lessons are even shorter).

LANGUAGES FOR ANY SITUATION - Find language lessons for travel, work, everyday life and much, much more

LISTEN, SPEAK, READ, WRITE - Practice all the elements of language learning and start speaking real-life conversations

IMPROVE YOUR PRONUNCIATION - Babbel’s speech recognition technology helps you sound like a native speaker

REMEMBER WHAT YOU LEARN - Use the review feature so the previous lessons stick, and understand grammar (including Spanish conjugation)

LEARN LANGUAGES IN CONTEXT - Enhance your language learning with tips & tricks that guide you throughout lessons

OVER 6,000 LANGUAGE COURSES - Learn Spanish and 13 other languages with in-depth content, including more than 60,000 language lessons

FAQs:

What is Babbel for Business and how does it work?

Babbel for Business offers an e-learning platform for language learning designed for organizations and companies. Learning takes place via the web or through our app. Our blended learning content is created by a team of 150 linguistic experts and is constantly updated. All of our courses are designed for the learner’s native language and focus on grammar, vocabulary, listening, and reading comprehension. Each lesson takes about 15 minutes, which gives students a way to flexibly incorporate their learning into their daily routine. Learners have the ability to choose the topics and content based on their level of learning and professional area.

Babbel’s learning content is not generated by an algorithm, but by people, for people, and it’s continually developed with the linguistic expertise of our 150-person Didactics Team. All Babbel language courses are tailored to the learner’s native language. The courses train vocabulary, grammar, using the language in real conversations as well as reading and listening comprehension.

One lesson takes 15 minutes on average, which allows learning to be integrated flexibly into a daily routine. Learners can individually choose the content and topics for their level and professional area.

Why is language training for corporate teams essential for business?

It’s a necessity for companies to be strategic with their communication strategy, especially if they have multilingual staff. Clear communication creates strong teams, a healthy company culture, a safe work environment, and optimal results. With corporate language training, your multilingual team can focus on developing practical, real-life conversations that are directly linked to your business’s needs. 

Babbel for Business’s corporate language training solution offers tailored content for a range of industries and professional areas. We combine different learning techniques to make the process more effective and engaging for learners. Our lessons are unique in that they can be completed anytime, anywhere, making them a great option for busy teams.

Prepare themselves for the increasing requirements of the international business world.

Optimize work processes in multilingual teams
Encourage employee communication skills in a goal-oriented way.

Promote an integrative team culture where self-confidence and performance are increased.

Optimize their employer branding as appealing and internationally focused.
Focus on a pedagogically grounded language learning solution with minimal effort to set up or maintain and high ROI

How would Babbel for Business help with multilingual teams?

Babbel for Business’s digital language courses are specifically designed for companies’ complex requirements. Whether you’re looking to teach corporate English or Spanish for business professionals, employees will learn practical, job-related vocabulary that they can use in the workplace with multilingual teams. With Babbel for Business, you’ll strengthen cohesion within the team, maintain a safe work environment, and promote an inclusive and diverse company culture, where learning and development is the main focus.

Why is language training needed for business?

It’s imperative to keep your company ahead of the competition, especially with an increasingly international and multilingual workforce. When you incorporate a language learning strategy in your business, you’ll be making an investment toward a more collaborative and open team culture, which will be attractive to prospective employees and will set your business apart from the rest. If you have a multilingual team, corporate language classes can build community and strengthen communication across workforces. 

Conclusion:

Babbel, the world’s top-grossing language app, and Cambridge English, the global gold-standard in language assessment, launch the Babbel English Test powered by Cambridge English. This online language assessment allows adult learners of English to assess their listening and reading skills online from level A1 (beginner) up to and including B1 (intermediate). Test takers will earn a certificate of achievement, which can be downloaded and used to demonstrate English skills to potential employers, for self-assessment, when warming up for an exam, or to enhance an online career profile.The Babbel English Test features a set of around 70 different questions per session, each testing a variety of listening and reading comprehension skills. Like Babbel’s lesson content, these tasks reflect authentic, real-life situations. These include, for example, images of posters and signs, listening tasks featuring recordings of speakers with different accents, as well as radio-broadcasts and real conversations. The exam itself has hundreds of potential variations and will never be the same twice, no matter how often it is taken.