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The busuu.com Language Barometer 2012

What do you think will be the most important language in the future? Which languages should children learn? And how important are language skills for your career?

Help us to identify future key trends in language learning by sharing your opinion! Please take 5 minutes to answer these and other important questions in the busuu.com Language Barometer Survey 2012.

We are running the Language Barometer Survey in partnership with Madrid’s IE Business School, one of the world’s leading postgraduate education institutions. This is the second year that we are doing the Language Barometer and we’re very curious to see how estimations about language learning and views on future key trends have changed over the past year.

We want to find out which are the most effective technologies and learning methods for you, so that we can meet your needs even better than before and prepare busuu.com for the future.

That’s why your opinion matters to us – start the survey now in your language:

Language Barometer in English

Language Barometer in Spanish

Language Barometer in Portuguese

Language Barometer in Italian

Language Barometer in German

Language Barometer in French

Language Barometer in Russian

Thank you in advance for taking part in the busuu.com Language Barometer Survey 2012.

Of course we will share the survey results with you on this blog within a few weeks!

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busuu.com launches new design!

We at busuu.com want to make your language learning experience as comfortable as possible. With our new design, you will learn languages in an even more intuitive way!

Of course, our popular language garden and the busuu berrieswill stay the same. The most important changes have been made in the home area, the language area and the user profile. You will now be able to easily switch between different learning resources and to manage your exercises and corrections directly in your home area.

Your home area now not only shows your learning progress in all the languages you are learning, but also lets you go straight to an individual task, such as: vocabulary, dialogue and writing exercises, the busuu-talk and review test as well as premium materials such as pdfs, mp3s and voice recording. In addition to this, you can access further resources like our dictionary, games and live units. Just click on the corresponding icon or link.

At the bottom of your home area, we now offer you the possibility to manage your exercises and corrections. Here you can choose to view: ‘Others’ exercises’, ‘your exercises’ or ‘your corrections’. On the top right-hand corner of the table, you have the option to filter by language and choose whether you want to see uncorrected exercises of all our members or just of your friends.

Below this ‘Exercises’ box you will now be able to see all your different groups. Again, the filter on the top right-hand corner allows you to arrange your groups according to language.

The new design of the language area gives you an improved overview of your learning activities. The learning unit you are currently working on is highlighted (see picture below). To access the tasks and materials of the highlighted unit, simply click on the icons below, just as you would do in your home area. On the left-hand side of your language area you will also see a menu giving you access to the different courses and resources of your selected language.

As before, you access your user profile by clicking on your profile picture. On the left-hand side of your profile you will see your badges, friends and groups. In the middle part you will see your current learning units and the exercises box.

But enough of the theoretical explanations. The best way to experience our intuitive new design is to see it for yourself! We’re sure you’ll enjoy it as much as we do!

Try out our video units on busuu.com!

We have made some improvements to our language courses to make your learning experience even more fun and diverse. If you are a Premium member, you can now comment on videos in our intermediate courses on busuu.com. Our community’s native speakers can then correct your comments. Of course, you will be rewarded with busuu-berries for your efforts!

Simply click on the new icon in your course structure for direct access to the Live Units, which contain videos from well-known sources such as CNN, France 24 and Europa Aktuell. If you are learning English, you can also comment on news articles from The Guardian newspaper. As always, you can send your writing exercise to your friends or other native speakers of our community.

The video-based learning tool is designed to strengthen your listening comprehension and to provide you with interesting videos on a wide range of topics like news, sports, travelling, etc.

For English learners, we also offer our fantastic The Guardian news articles which will help you improve your reading comprehension. If you stumble across an unknown word, just look it up in the integrated dictionary provided by Macmillan.

The videos and news articles are updated automatically, so you can enjoy topical learning material every day! Just select the video or article you are most interested in!

If you do not have a Premium account , upgrade your account now and improve your listening, reading and writing comprehension with our Live Units.

More exciting features are coming soon so stay tuned!

busuu.com won the iPhone App test of “Stiftung Warentest”

We proudly announce that the busuu.com mobile App for learning English has outstripped all its competitors and received by far the highest mark in the Stiftung Warentest review for the best mobile vocabulary trainer.

Stiftung Warentest is a renown German foundation which tests different products and services on the market in order to offer customers an impartial opinion. Their reviews have become an accredited seal of quality in Germany. We are honored to be the best out of 11 tested mobile vocabulary trainers, and the only App that received an overall mark of “good” with 2.0 points.

The App was tested on its functional and didactical design, its technical design and its product information. Our mobile App for learning English received the marks 2.3, 1.6 and 2.5 respectively, all of which are classified as “good”.

The App was especially recommended for its variety of exercises and its ease of use, making language learning a fun and complete experience for users. The audio and visual functions in addition to the reading and writing exercises available in our mobile Apps help you memorize words. Stiftung Warentest also pointed out that classifying the vocabulary into different themes and language levels, following the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, gives users a reference of their learning progress.

According to Stiftung Warentest, the vocabulary provided by any language learning tool should include at least 1000 words. busuu.com offers a combined pool of words and key phrases three times this size to prepare users for typical conversation topics.

Being test winner of the best mobile English vocabulary trainer motivates us to further expand our mobile offers and shows that we are on the right track. We want to thank all our users for helping us continuously improving our platform and its corresponding Apps!

Remember that the iPhone App is available in the seven languages offered on busuu.com! So, keep improving your language skills and earning busuu-berries while on the bus, on the metro or wherever you are by downloading our iPhone application now!

You can also click on the pictures or follow the links below to download each iPhone application from the iTunes store:

Stay tuned because we will launch more exciting updates very soon!

Happy Birthday busuu – 3 years of worldwide language learning!

It’s time for celebration: busuu.com is celebrating its 3rd birthday! In three years we have grown impressively – over 2,500,000 users from all over the world have registered to learn up to 9 different languages online with busuu.com.

Check out our main achievements in the last year:

busuu.com was the Red Herring 100 European Winner. This competition honors the most innovative companies in Europe.
The first busuu language game was born: Users can challenge each other on their language skills to win juicy busuu berries!
Our interactive Russian course was implemented, followed by Turkish and Polish courses bringing our total offering to 9 different languages.
busuu.com went mobile with our 7 new iPhone applications, which include our full content and are available for free download from the iTunes App Store.
busuu.com received a “highly recommended” distinction at the TechCrunch Awards, in the Best Learning Start-Up category!
A strategic partnership with leading publisher Collins was finalized, allowing us to offer detailed grammar explanations in 4 languages to our native English speakers.
A successful campaign to save the nearly extinct Busuu language, including our funny YouTube music video (now seen by 200,000+ people), and our Save Busuu Facebook fanpage (with nearly 6,000 fans worldwide), was launched.
A cooperation with The Guardian and Macmillan offers the possibility to read The Guardian on busuu.com and look up definitions in the integrated Macmillan dictionary.
A voice recording feature was added to our list of functionalities. You can now record your voice and have your pronunciation corrected by a native speaker!
The busuu.com Language Barometer 2011, the worldwide largest online survey about the future of language learning, was created in collaboration with the IE Business School.
Martin Varsavsky, a great fan of busuu.com and well respected serial entrepreneur, decided to invest in our start-up to help us grow our language learning platform to the next level.

To celebrate our birthday we would like to give you a special present: During the next 7 days you can try out our Premium Membership completely for free! Try it out now!

At the same time, you can take advantage of a 10% discount on all our Premium Memberships. Hurry up, this offer will end by May 25th. Become Premium now!

Thanks to all of you for your active participation that makes busuu.com such a great community for language learning! We hope you’ll enjoy our special gift and we are looking forward to celebrating many more birthdays and other special occasions with you!

Sing Happy Birthday in Busuu with us now!