Beelinguapp: Language Learning Reviews

by Very Unsatisfied One

Well the concept is wonderful. Yet the functionality of app is horrible. I wouId not buy it if bugs persisted. I have tested it in Russian. 1. Downloading a story - it just stuck at 0% forever. Nothing helps. Switching between Wifi and 4G, opening and closing app etc. Not even single thing like going back to library etc not working. 2. Some stories won’t even open. 3. When I successfully opened one story, it is glitching on a reading mode (Not text mode) unless it is been read. Sometimes, I just want to read it without listening and that glitching makes it tiring for eyes. 4. Entering into text mode is horrendous task. It always takes several attempts. Still I had not figured it out how to switch between reading mode vs. text mode. When I try to switch to text mode it starts to read it and its very annoying. 5. Glossary... where to begin... I really wish that it could have been possible to delete some words added for me. 6. I don’t understand the concept here. How this app expects one would want to go over and over again the same words. 7. Even some words are in English with English translations.

In summary, Beelinguapp is barely usable. A lot of supposed to be great functions are not working and I really wonder how it got those five stars. By the way, I have checked the update And mine was the latest version.

by Meh1551

There are some serious problems to Beelinguapp’s functionality. 1. Setting the speed is delayed. 2. There’s a “read-a-long” feature where the words are highlighted along with the audio. But this is off if the speed isn’t 1/1. 3. The “rate Beelinguapp” page pops up on the last page of a story and pressing cancel does not make it go away. Thus, finishing the last page of any story is actually impossible. 4. The glossary only allows you to select words in a single sitting. There is not option to continue selecting words to add to the glossary. So good luck learning words you don’t know.
I do like Beelinguapp, I haven’t deleted it (yet). However the large number of bugs in Beelinguapp ’s system is frustrating at best.

by Bookstanista.com

The concept is great but that’s where it falls short.

The audio is fast. It takes several tries before the audio slows down. There’s fast, medium, and EXTREMELY slow speed (think voice warping). The language and audio isn’t in sync.

I was listening to Turkish and it would speak one line and highlight another line in English (different than the translation).

Beelinguapp definitely needs some tweaking.

The devs offer a discount for premium but you have 30 minutes to test Beelinguapp .

I can’t justify paying for Beelinguapp. There are too many things that need to be adjusted.

There are no vocabulary words for the stories, most of them are unappealing or boring, the beginner stories are all children stories, however, it doesn’t seem “beginner” to me.

I’ve watched the full 76 episodes of my favorite Turkish show with subtitles and learned more in a day from that than in the 10 minutes I tested Beelinguapp.

You can only “sign up” via Google or Facebook.

What’s up with apps forcing social media sign up?

by RWHegwood

It’s a great concept of graduated reading and listening…but if you know nothing about the language, especially reading in an alphabet system one doesn’t know well your goose is cooked before you start. It assumes you already know a great deal about the language…even the lowest beginning level is like drinking from a fire hose. It’s beginning level is like upper elementary level reading. It is not start with knowing nothing and build from there. This is an app for those who already read and speak at a simple but functional level…not for those trying to learn from the basement preschool level.

by George McFly Jr.

Great potential. I have a few suggestions.

1) There are a jack load of words in the glossary already added for me that I didn’t add. And I can’t figure out how to reset the list and get rid of all those words. I don’t want Beelinguapp to add words for me! Please add the ability to reset that list and get rid of the words Beelinguapp added without asking me.

2) Now that I’ve chosen two or three fairy tales to listen to, I have no option to choose other categories like Mystery or many others I saw when I first started. Where did all those categories go? I choose “categories” at the top of the library, but there are only 2-3 options.

3) In 3/4 mode for some stories, the highlighting is way ahead of the actual story.

4) Some stories have speakers that are very hard to understand with raspy voices. Please take them down and re-record these.

by Best Soccer Player 77

It’s got a good selection from what I see. There are lots of languages, though I have yet to change between them. My main problem is that the story, as the narrator is reading it, scrolls repeatedly to the bottom so that you cannot see the text being read.

Then, there’re some minor things, like how it’s annoying that you can add words to a glossary but you can’t translate it. Yes, that’s just a premium feature, but I bet if you asked a lot around, people would prefer to have a translation on the spot and they can revisit the story later to get the words. It interrupts the flow of the story when you have to constantly check back and forth and just translate everything later. Let me select a word, get its meaning, and move on.

Other than that, it’s good. Take this with a grain of salt. I haven’t wandered very far within Beelinguapp .

by Alexa.14.4.5.18

I like Beelinguapp . It’s great. New and interesting content is added at an acceptable rate. It is (or was) worth a subscription.

With the new update I’m annoyed by the pop-ups to get $10 to refer Beelinguapp to a friend (at the end of every read), and I’m increasingly annoyed by the pop up to add a story to favorites. I’ve recommended Beelinguapp to others, but I certainly will refuse to do so as a result of a pop-up. The inability to turn this pop-up stuff off might actually lead to the eventual loss of a paying customer. A request please to turn off the pop-ups?

Not a deal-breaker, but another request: the images used for stories are cartoonish and childlike, even for serious and solid and meaningful content dealing with biographies, science, culture. Every story seems aimed at a 7-year old. I’d like something other than a cartoon to identify a story worth reading.

There is good stuff here in Beelinguapp, and kudos to Beelinguapp people for development. I’ll be even more satisfied as a paying customer, and more likely to continue my subscription, with a few design changes.

by Bruins3035

I really like the idea of Beelinguapp and got a lifetime membership but the majority of the time it crashes on me when I’m downloading a story and I haven’t been able to get much functionality out of it due to this problem. But the few times it worked, I really enjoyed it! There is a good selection of books, and I feel like reading along has helped me with conversational skills. There is a good variety, like classic books and then situational ones, like going to a restaurant or a date. I use this and another program focused on writing/grammar and feel good about my Spanish progress. I would recommend if Beelinguapp can be fixed.

by Meghan03816

Beelinguapp glitches on certain stores, so you cannot complete them. When you’re looking looking at a list of stories, they’re not filterable by level and you can’t see what’s premium until you try it. When you return to a list after a story, you return to the homepage, not where you were. I submitted all this as feedback through Beelinguapp but got no response whatsoever. I want to buy premium, but with the bugs and UI issues, I’ll hold off. This could be so great! But it’s not there yet.

by Overlander847

Beelinguapp is helping me with several things at the same time. I get to practice reading and listening in my target language while having English translations right below, and I can pause to repeat phrases and play them back again for speaking practice. All this while learning about or brushing up on various topics and current events. It's an awesome concept! The search bar seems to be a bit buggy though, and sometimes the lofing screen is too. The bugs don't bother me too much, as Beelinguapp is still very useful to me. The one thing that I would really really like to see more of is classics! I am an avid reader of classic literature and it would make me very happy to see more of this. I see a lot of potential for that area specifically because most classics are public domain! Anyway, Beelinguapp is exactly what I have been looking for. It is mostly well done but could use some improvements.

by Sixblueirises

So far I am enjoying Beelinguapp . The interface works well and I can easily get definitions of words I don’t understand.

The German library seems somewhat limited. For instance, it seems to have the first part of The Secret Garden and no others?

The flash card function is nice, however German is a gendered language and so a student must memorize nouns with the correct form of “the.” The flash cards don’t note the gender, making them of somewhat limited use for the German student.

by Ara Avedian

Beelinguapp has it almost all. Very interesting stories, well organized and easy to follow along in the translated part. I just wish it had the one feature Beelinguapp LingQ has , which is to keep track of new words and being able to see and separate the ones you’ve already learned from the ones that you haven’t. I find that element crucial in motivating me to keep learning. I will probably end my subscription and go to LingQ just for this feature.

by Jsjdjdjkfkfkfkkf

Beelinguapp is great for language learning and over all does an amazing job helping with comprehension and building a better vocabulary in your target language, however it would be better with more language options as there is only a select few available. Because if this I never used Beelinguapp much because it never had the language I was learning at the time. Nonetheless if you are at a beginner or intermediate Beelinguapp is amazing for you.

by Erraor

I love the concept of Beelinguapp! I’ve always learned language best by reading and this is a perfect way to do that while still hearing the language. The audio is especially useful for learning a language like Russian where the stress isn’t regular and easily guessed.

Right now, it does seem like the visual place tracker has a tendency to fall behind what’s actually being read. It gets worse if I stop and start the audio and it would be nice if either that got fixed or I could turn off the tracking altogether. As it is, it’s just a visual distraction most of the time.

by Spanishlearner14839

I love the idea of Beelinguapp. Reading with a voice-over as well as a direct translation to help decode new phrases and vocabulary makes something so intimidating much more accessible! It’s one of a few apps that is for intermediate learners rather than just beginners.

However, it seems that the comprehension questions either don’t have enough room to finish the question or don’t have the correct answers marked as such. There were a few that I KNEW I chose the right answer but it still says I’m wrong.

Overall, Beelinguapp is incredible and could be very useful for many learners. Some of these fixes could make it much better!

by Willow_Wisp114

I think that Beelinguapp is good at what it does but I have a major issue with it, you can’t change the language you want to learn or the language you speak after the first 30 minutes of Beelinguapp without the premium version. This isn’t even solved by logging out and then logging in under a different account. Obviously it’s an incentive to get the premium but I wish I were able to change it for free because I’m learning two languages at the same time and I like to look at other languages too to see what they’re like.

by Muffintop Mike

I admire a platform where I can read the news in two languages. I feel a connection to the lifestyle of that culture and my ability to empathize increases. The news part is my favorite, as an avid reader of the Wall Street Journal, I appreciate the efforts that this app takes to enhance its media capabilities, Beelinguapp is worth every penny and I recommend the lifetime subscription to anyone that truly wants to change their life.

by Dyerseve30

Beelinguapp seems much less glitchy on my iPad. It appears the vocabulary flash card section has been improved with breakdown of flashcards from the sets at the top of the menu, which I really like and is WAY better than the “here is 1500 words, go learn” from before. Much more organized.

Please allow to to “favorite” reading challenge sets so if I want to go back to return to a reading challenge set I can do so in my favorites.

Thank you for your continued hard work.

by 333Tz

I’ve only been using this one day, but it is exactly what I wanted, and I think my Spanish will improve as I continue to listen and read. There weren’t many stories on the free version, but I liked what I saw so I paid for the full version. I like how the Spanish words are highlighted as different readers read the stories. I like how there is an English version at the bottom that I can glance at if needed, instead of taking time to use my dictionary. I like that I can pause the story. I like the variety of stories and that they are marked by level.

by Cashvanblaricom

Beelinguapp is honestly a good place to practice your reading, listening, and comprehension in your target language. I went on Beelinguapp store to find some language learning apps to practice my german, and this one was great. It wasn’t slow to start, and it wasn’t overly complicated. I’m going to be using this for a long while.

by Ktappe

Beelinguapp does not run very well. I use my iPad in landscape mode, and Beelinguapp did not force it into portrait mode even though Beelinguapp only works in portrait mode. I could not tap any of the buttons to use Beelinguapp until I manually turned off landscape lock and then rotated the iPad.
Once I got it working, I started a reading exercise. The text kept turning off and on and off and on. Almost flickering.
Don’t pay the developer any money until he fixes these most basic bugs in his software.

by Jordangeorge19

While reading a story in Spanish it Beelinguapp will flicker. So I can’t really use Beelinguapp until that is fixed. I just started using it a few minutes ago.

Edit: the problem seems to have gone away and I’m liking Beelinguapp more but there is another problem where the line tracing slows down after the first line of a page.

Edit: found another story where audio doesn’t work and another where translation was wrong.

by CHlillis

I subscribed for a year and think that’s worth it. I like the format of the two languages highlighting at the same time. I’m learning Italian, I speak English. The quizzes in night before Christmas, At the doctor’s office pt 1, and others don’t seem to be working. It gives me a link to take the test. I can select the first answer, but then can’t submit it or get anywhere. I’m on an iPhone X. I still think it’s worth it, but I have to close Beelinguapp and reopen when I get stuck and that is sub-optimal.

by Xanthrick J.

Beelinguapp has great potential, but limited content. You have to pay premium to switch between languages, but when you do you have to switch to settings, and your filters aren’t saved per language.

The recordings are of ok quality. You’ll often hear room echo and artifacts like breathing/speaking too close to the microphone.

The content is rather limited, and poorly organized. The fact Beelinguapp is about three years old I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

by Me223312

Duolingo? No! Reading and immersion? Yes! One thing I wish Beelinguapp contained was a spaced repetition system and flashcards. This would really help the learner immerse themselves and study easily. I recommend Beelinguapp to language learners on their iPad. I know how hard it is to read some boring books in the language you are learning, the language learning as a game doesn’t really motivate me, motivates the user to keep earning gems from lessons, BUT, they aren’t truly learning anything much. I prefer these kind of apps much more.

by Melziemelzie

Im learning German through Beelinguapp, I’m having a lot of fun and have already completed many stories. However, on the quiz portion it’s telling me that the majority of my answers are wrong when I know that they’re definitely correct. Hopefully the developers can fix this, because outside of this I truly believe that this app is a fantastic concept and a fun and effective way to learn a language!

by Marg1278

I am a strong believer in learning through comprehensible input (reading, writing, listening, speaking) so Beelinguapp is right on time. However it’s a bit glitchy. The quizzes are wrong and seem to count all of my answers as incorrect which is super weird. Stories with a female main character are read by men. I also think the Spanish is Mexico focused in terms of vocabulary. Would be nice to have a mixture.