LibGuides: Foreign Language Learning: Resources for Language Learning

Resources for Language Learning
Contact Librarians in International and Area Studies

Librarians

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Contact:

234 Bostock

919.660.5984

Subjects: European Studies, French Studies, German Studies, Humanities, Italian Studies, Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Western European Studies

Types of Language Learning Resources

This guide is designed to help you think creatively about language learning resources. International and Area Studies Librarians are happy to help you explore a comprehensive set of resources by language. Be in touch!

Language Learning Platforms (free to Duke Users)

Transparent Language Online
After clicking the database title, you can enter as guest to browse, or you can create an account to keep track of your progress learning the selected language.

Pimsleur Online is available for many languages.
Search the Duke Libraries catalog for "Pimsleur and (word for the) language"
Example: "Pimsleur and Italian"
Pimsleur Online Italian
Available to Duke students and staff:
Durham County Library: (Get a Library Card)
Language Learning Resources

Duke Streaming Video (free to Duke Users)

Asian Film Online This link opens in a new window
Search for and watch Asian feature films, documentaries and shorts
AVON (Academic Video Online) This link opens in a new window
Find and watch streaming video titles across multiple Alexander Street/Proquest collections on diverse topics and formats that include feature films, newsreels, documentaries, field recordings, interviews and lectures. Producers include Sony Picture Classics, CNN, PBS, BBC Worldwide and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Some individual collections from Alexander Street/Proquest are also listed below, for example, Asian Film Online, Black Studies in Video, Dance in Video, etc.
Docuseek This link opens in a new window
Find and watch streaming video of documentary and social issues films
Films on Demand: World Cinema Video Collection This link opens in a new window
This unique collection includes the best of the silent era, groundbreaking international directors, masterpieces from the mid-20th century, and contemporary films from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North America. Titles in this collection can be searched through Films on Demand Master Academic portal.
Independent World Cinema: Classic and Contemporary Film This link opens in a new window
Watch films from around the world produced from the early 20th century to today that support the disciplines of cultural history, psychology, gender studies, anthropology, theatre, and African-American studies
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Find and view streaming video. Includes thousands of award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases across diverse subjects and disciplines
Latin America in Video This link opens in a new window
Search across 400 original-language documentaries from some of the most important producers and independent filmmakers in Latin America.
Projectr This link opens in a new window
Projectr presents a curated and ever-expanding collection of acclaimed movies, archival restorations, award-winning documentaries and artist-made works from around the world. Distributors include Grasshopper Film, Women Make Movies, Distrib Films, MTV Documentary Films, and Canyon Cinema.

Audiobooks

Start with the Ebooks search at Duke eBooks (free to Duke users):

Overdrive - use the advanced search to limit results to your desired language

Find free audiobooks for fiction in a foreign language; these are mostly novels in the public domain, published before 1924:

Librivix, Free public domain audiobooks (40,000 audiobooks, 650 in German)
Project Gutenberg Audiobooks: Languages with more than 50 books: Chinese Danish Dutch English Esperanto Finnish French German
Greek Hungarian Italian Latin Portuguese Spanish Swedish Tagalog
Internet Archive Audio Archive offfers a variety of audio resources

Contact an IAS Subject Librarian for resources in your language.

Online and Print Dictionaries

Many recognizable brands (Collins, Oxford, Duden, Grand Robert) have free Internet sites, including Apps – in addition to the subscriptions to online dictionaries we have at Duke Libraries. Duke Libraries subscribe to dictionaries for every purpose (current use, etymology, historical dictionary, etc.); contact an IAS librarian for more information.

Here are a few examples of popular, free online dictionaries

Linguee is the Dictionary behind DeepL translator
Wordreference in popular with students
A recommendation for a Japanese Dictionary on mobile: Example of a free Japanese Dictionary

Duke Libary guides are a good starting point for finding dictionaries, and the guides include contact information for specialist librarians:

African Dictionaries guide
Arabic Dictionaries guide; the Oxford’s Arabic Online dictionary is very popular
Chinese Dictionaries guide
East Asian Language Teaching guide
French Dictionaries guide
German Dictionaries guide
Italian Dictionaries guide
Japanese Dictionaries guide
Jewish Studies Languages guide
Korean LanguageLearning guide
Slavic Studies guide
South Asian Studies guide
Spanish Dictionaries guide
Turkish dictionaries guide

An effective search string in the Duke Catalog is (use the language you need with this pattern):

Italian language -- Dictionaries -- English
English language -- Dictionaries -- Italian

Language Learning Apps

Most Apps for language learning have a free component and a subscription component; personal subscriptions cost between 5 and 15 dollars a month. There are many language learning Apps, and the Libraries are not endorsing a specific App; we suggest you search for reviews of Apps in connection with the language you are learning.

DuoLingo: offers courses in over 40 languages.
Memrise: a British language learning platform with courses in 20 languages.
ScribeZone: instructional tool developed by NSA that teaches language through transcription for multi-language and civilian use; it improves listening and transcription skills, grammatical knowledge, and reading skills through exercises built around authentic materials from a range of media sources. Includes multiple modules (a total of 76 activities) for the following 13 languages: Bosnian, Chinese, Croatian, Kazakh, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, Uyghur, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.
AnkiApp: users can access community-built decks of flashcards. Anki can be used for anything, but it is very popular for the Japanese language-learning community. Example: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search=japanese

Find (free to Duke users) reviews of language learning Apps in the Duke All search.

Tranlators with Apps

DeepL offers machine translation for over 30 languages. The free version has a limit 1500 characters per translation.
Google Lens Search What You See: an App for your phone; point your phone at a sign, and get a translation!

Slow News and Podcasts

"Slow News" is a techinal term for a resource; when you combine that term with a language or a country (slow news Germany) in an Internet search, you will find relevant sites.

The sites let you pick your language level and offer current topics in culture and politics.

Examples

Get News in your language (BBC)
Deutsche Welle
Slow News in French
News in Slow Japanese
Easy Turkish https://www.easyturkish.fm/
Bilingual News: https://bilingualnews.libsyn.com/ Japanese
Japanese authors at the Book Lounge Academia: https://www.bookloungeacademia.com/page/2/
BBC Languages

International news aggregators like Nexis Uni and Factive provide foreign news in plain text; this allows you to copy/paste plain text into a translator like DeepL translator.

Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Search for news, business, legal, medical, and congressional information. Note: formerly named Lexis Nexis Academic.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Search for global news and information content, including Dow Jones, Reuters Newswires, and The Wall Street Journal. Text & data mining prohibited by license. See the "more" link for details.
Text and data mining (TDM) of Factiva content is prohibited by license. TDM includes mass downloading of content via scripts (aka scraping) *and* via Factiva's internal tools for downloading content. Please use ProQuest's TDM Studio for text mining.

TV and Radio Stations Abroad (with Open Content)

IAS librarians are avid consumers of TV and Radio in the countries and languages they work with. The media landscape is complex, but we will be happy to make recommendations. TV stations offer a mix of free content, and content only available in the country, still there is a significant amount of free content on every site.

Examples for French

RTBF (Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française): Public-service broadcaster delivering French-language radio and television to Belgium
French TV
RTL-TVI: Private French-language television station in Belgium
Belgian TV

Examples for German

ARD Mediathek
ZDF Filme
ATV.at: National private TV broadcaster
Austrian TV broadcasters: Streaming
ORF (Österreichischer Rundfunk): Austrian Broadcasting Corporation. National public radio and TV broadcaster
Puls4: National private TV broadcaster
ServusTV: Private TV broadcaster headquartered in Salzburg

Open or Creative Resources for Language Learning

International and Area Studies Librarians are experts in identifying Open Educational Resources and Open Access content from the regions and languages they specialize in. Here are some examples to illustrate. Contact us!

Russian Language and Culture Through Cartoons – clips, vocabulary, transcript, and comprehension questions for selected Soviet and Russian productions - essential viewing for all students hoping to fully understand Russian culture.
Russian Language and Culture Through Film: integrates film clips, full transcript, embedded dictionary, and live, online exercises to teach language and culture to advanced-level students.
Polish Culture and Language Through Film: multimedia Polish language and culture materials designed to test and expand intermediate and advanced students’ knowledge through famous Polish films. Each movie clip is accompanied by a transcript, extensive glossary, and computer-generated listening comprehension questions. The project includes clips and tasks from eight films spanning the Communist period and post-1989 cinema.
Learn Turkish via a Graphic Novel! — Ralph Jaeckel and Mehmet Süreyya Er:
Check out Modern Standard Arabic Readers
Check out Persian Grammar and Resources
Read Ganjoor, Persian Poetry

Search Open Educational Resources Portals for language learning resources, like easy readers:

Galileo
Center for Open Educational Resources and Language Learning (COERLL)
Open Textbook Library
MERLOT
OER Commons

Dual Language Books

Search the Duke Catalog with the following keywords, then look on the left hand menu for results by language

parallel text
dual language books
bilingual book

Duke Libraries does not collect dual language editions comprehensively, contact an IAS librarian for identifying and requesting dual language books.

Conversation Partner Platforms

Find platforms that connect you with a live tutor or conversation partner in the country/language you are studying.

Barbara Alvarez at the University of Michigan Library researches and evaluates Conversation Partner Platforms. Users should investigate reviews before signing up for these “for fee” tutoring services. Here are the names of a few platforms to help you find reviews: