Parlo's pay to learn online ESL site
Introduction
Some sites online will teach you English for a fee. Parlo.com's price is $69 for three months access. You can use the site as much as you need to in those three months. I find this to be an extremely troublesome idea to comprehend when thinking about how many free sites their are online that are very good learning tools for novice and intermediate English speakers. The site, www.parlo.com, does not only teach English, but also Spanish, French, Italian and German. I was able to get a fairly good comparison of its usefullness by looking at the other language exercises to see if I could use the site to learn a second language. Unfortunately, because there is a fee, I was only able to look at the samples provided by the site.
Content
Parlo has a section that tells you what they are fundamentally about. Parlo Inc. was founded to meet the immense but underserved global demand for language learning: over 1.2 billion people are studying foreign languages today. Parlo's co-founders, Varun Bedi and Anish Rajparia, each speak five languages and have lived on four continents. They recognized the growing need for language instruction and saw the emerging potential of the Internet and other technologies to meet it. Working with a team of top technologists and educators, Bedi and Rajparia developed Parlo's Virtual Immersion approach. Using the interactivity of the Internet, Virtual Immersion surrounds learners with realistic, practical and fun information about the language and culture they're studying, replicating the study abroad experience online. Customers and media around the world agree that Parlo's online courses and e-mail lessons are uniquely effective and flexible. At Parlo, real-world learning means real-life success.
Whether you are a beginner or have studied for a while, you'll want to take Parlo's diagnostic test. It's quick and fun, and at the end of the test, Parlo will recommend a customized program of study based on your results. The diagnostic test is a very basic fill in the blank section with four options for mutliple choice. It goes over verbs, nouns, pronouns and most other parts of speech. The problem with the test is that it not only expects you to be able to read and understand the sentence but to be able to understand the proper placement of the choice words. Also, if you were able to by chance guess several words correctly, you would never start out at a level that would help you learn. Your lessons would always be too advanced.
Navigation
With Parlo, there are two ways you can navigate around the site to learn a language: online courses or explore other areas of the site. The viewer would click on the links for an online course if they would like to: Listen to audio dialogs and practice pronunciation exercises,
Study multiple levels, from beginner to advanced,
Enjoy interactive exercises, interesting texts and in-depth grammar explanations, or to
get real-world learning for real-life success. Taken straight from the Web site, Parlo's mission is to be the world leader in language and cultural e-learning, serving consumers, corporations and institutions;
to help our customers enhance their lives through language and cultural learning, and
to assist our partners in achieving their objectives through Parlo's sponsorship and business development opportunities. Being able to effectively navigate through the site, they feel, is essential to upholding their mission.
Summary
Parlo bases its fee on the idea that business people will use their site. All of the lessons are based on a business approach and business lingo. The exercises are not as practical as those that talk about making friends and dating. It is well organized and has a strong business orientated approach, but I would not recommend to anyone to stop using the free sites to try Parlo. It demands the viewer to be of intermediate reading levels and has almost no interaction. It all and all is not very practical.
Rating
I give this site 2 out of 5 spinning plates.
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