busuu.com | the language learning community

Happy Birthday busuuuuu!

We’re celebrating our 4th birthday! More than 16 million users worldwide learn up to 12 different languages on busuu.com and we want to celebrate our big day with all of you!

So we’ve prepared two special surprises! Until 20 May 2012, you can:

1. try out our Premium Membership for free
2. get a 10% discount on our Premium Membership when you upgrade!

4 years of online language learning on busuu.com have added up to many experiences and we’re very happy to have come so far in such a short time. Only in the last year, we:

• made our popular mobile app also available for Android. In total, the mobile apps have already been downloaded over 8 million times
• were selected the best mobile vocabulary trainer by “Stiftung Warentest”, a renowned German foundation on product testing.
• won the category ‘Best Education, Recruitment, Media StartUp’ at The Europas, the annual European Tech Startup Awards.
• developed new writing exercises based on daily updated pictures from National Geographic and new review exercises for our tests.
• launched the busuu.com level test, so you can determine with which of our courses you should begin your studies.
• included new language courses for Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese, so that you can now learn up to 12 languages on busuu.com!
• created new specialised courses: Business Spanish and Business English!

And much more! Try out our Premium functions for yourself for free until 20 May 2012 to test all the new features we have added to the Premium experience!

As a Premium Member, you will be able to:

• get a busuu.com certificate
• access grammar units
• listen to key phrases and dialogues
• access all of our mobile app content
• and much, much more!

Have a look at the full list of Premium functions. But be quick, because the 10% discount will end on 20 May 2012.

Thanks for being part of the global busuu.com community; we look forward to celebrating many more birthdays and other special occasions with you!

Join us singing Happy Birthday in Busuu:

What’s your favourite Happy Birthday Song?

A new design for your course area!

Your learning experience is important to us! This is why we have taken a closer look at your course area to make it even more straightforward.

1. You now have a full overview of your course:

Having an overview of the complete course, will allow you to know exactly where you are. This gives you a feeling of how you’re advancing in your language learning. The units are grouped in different lines and each line ends with a test to review the learned vocabulary.

At the end of the course, Premium Members can print a certificate that states the total hours and the skills that they have achieved throughout the course. Once completed, the learning units and the final course test will turn green and you can click on the black graduation hat to generate your personal certificate.

2. You clearly see which units you have completed

Upon completing all the mandatory tasks of a unit (vocabulary, dialogue, writing exercise, busuu talk, review), the learning unit will turn green. When hovering with the mouse over the individual units, you will see the picture and title of the completed units.

That allows you to quickly see which units of the course are completed and which ones you still have to do. So no more losing track of your learning progress! Of course you can enter your completed units at any time to do the exercises again.

3. Your current unit is marked

The course overview highlights the next unit you have to do by marking it with a blue frame. The course follows a specific structure that teaches you relevant vocabulary according to your position in the course.

We’re sure that this new course overview will make your learning even more effective and enjoyable! Try it out now and let us know what you think, we’re always happy to have your feedback!

Track your learning progress with My Goal!

Want to learn Spanish before your summer holidays? No problem! With My Goal, our improved learning progress tracker, you can find out how many hours you should study per week to finish your course by a certain date. This way you’ll be sure to complete your Spanish Course before you board that plane!

This is normally a Premium function, but we want you all to have a go of the new My Goal! So you can try it out for free until 20 May 2012. If you want to continue tracking your learning progress, become a Premium Member! Until May 20 2012 we are also offering you a 10% discount on our Premium Membership!

Your goal can be set from your course area. Simply click “Set a goal”, which you will see at the top of your course overview. Depending on how much time you want to study per week, My Goal calculates your course finish date. Just move the cursor along the carrot to set your study hours. At the top right you will see that the finish date changes according to your learning intensity. This gives you a real idea of the course duration, try it out now!

Why does goal setting help boost your language learning?

Sometimes, if you lose focus of what you want to achieve, you can lose track of time and feel like you are falling behind with your learning. This makes your learning objectives seem further away and can affect your motivation.

You won’t have this problem if you use My Goal! It will help you to stay motivated and focus on your studies since you will have a concrete date to work towards and you will always know whether you are keeping up with it. My Goal recognises your personal study needs and tells you whether you are on track with your learning progress or whether you need to pick up the pace to reach your objective.

And of course we give you something extra to aim for! Finish your goal on time and get 500 juicy busuu-berries and our official busuu.com certificate for your efforts.

So set your goal now to track your learning progress. Remember, you can try it out for free until May 20 2012. And if you want to keep tracking your learning progress and become a Premium Member before the 20^th, we will give you 10% discount on our Premium Membership!

Post your goal date here and tell us your reasons for wanting to achieve your objective! Good luck with your language learning!

Interact with native speakers – wherever you are!

We’ve updated our Android, iPhone and iPad apps so that you can now interact with native speakers wherever you are – busuu.com is the first language learning community to offer this feature in an app!

Our updated apps include our popular writing exercises. So even on the move, you can:

• complete writing exercises
• ask native speakers to correct your exercises
• correct their writing exercises too

Simply go to ‘My Corrections‘ in the menu and either choose an exercise to correct, see the exercises you have written or check the latest corrections of your writing exercises, done by native speakers of our community. Imagine getting a correction of your writing exercise from a native speaker while you’re on the bus! Download and try our free apps now!

The apps include 20 free learning units each. You can purchase the complete courses (A1-B2 and the Travel Course) from inside the app and get access to further vocabulary and grammar material. Learn languages on the go with our audiovisual learning content.

If you’re a Premium Member, the whole app content is activated for you automatically! Not a Premium Member yet? Check out the full list of our Premium functions or upgrade now!

The apps can be used without an internet connection and can be synchronised with your online profile on busuu.com.

So, whether you’re waiting for the bus or just relaxing in the sun, connect with over 15 million members from the busuu.com community, by sending writing exercises to native speakers for correction via our mobile app. With these apps language learning is becoming even more communicative and entertaining! Download your free app now!

Have fun with our updated mobile apps and enjoy learning languages with busuu.com, even on the go!

Refresh your vocabulary with new, fun review exercises!

New Improved Review!

It’s time for spring cleaning and a fresh start! So get back into learning a language by brushing up on your vocabulary. Give our new review exercises a try – they make testing your language skills even more fun!

More fun and effective exercises

Our new review exercises will make your tests even more fun and effective. We have made some of them a little more challenging to improve your learning progress!

Increasing the number of possible answers in the vocabulary exercises:

Showing the answers one at a time in the drag and drop exercises:

Building several phrases in one exercise, to practise your sentence structure:

The new formats are designed to improve your vocabulary, spelling and sentence structure. What’s more, we have introduced more varied exercises as well as improved sounds. To help you remember the correct answer, it is now repeated automatically in certain exercise types after you have chosen your answer.

Improved Review Summary and My Mistakes

We have also redesigned our Review Summary page so that, once you finish a test, you will be able to clearly see the vocabulary you know, as well as those phrases you are more rusty on.

And Premium Members get even more benefits! Correct your mistakes right away to stop the bugs from eating your language garden and choose which skills you want to practise in your Customised Review! Now you have the choice to specify whether your review is based on Vocabulary, Spelling, Sentence Structure, or any combination of the 3!

Upgrade to Premium now, from only 4.99 EUR per month!

Now there’s no excuse not to study, try out the new review exercises and boost your language skills!