7 Best apps to learn English for free on Android and iPhone

Have you always wanted to travel around the world but language is your huge limit? Are you often precluded job opportunities, reading or watching books, songs or interesting videos because they required knowledge of English? If the time has come for you to eliminate all language barriers and to speak and understand the most important language in the world, you are in the right place. To learn English in its grammar that in the conversation at least decent are no longer necessary expensive English courses, at least for the basics. There are in fact free apps for Android and iPhone smartphones that allow you to learn to write and speak English, and teach the understanding of sentences, both adults and children.

The best apps for learning English give the user the ability to listen and learn in a fun way, both online and offline. Just download an application like this from the internet and do what they say: many of them are also smart and able with tests to calculate your basic English level (for example A2 or B2) taking you to the point where you should start to learn alone and without the help of professors. Between lessons, quizzes, exercises and games, through many applications you can learn English quickly and effortlessly, with tangible progress even in just one month of activity.

To help you we have therefore made a selection of the 7 best apps to learn English for free on Android and iPhone. These are real apps that serve as a course to teach the language with pronunciation and grammar, just like a virtual school, but for free. Some, also allow you to obtain certifications that can serve in the world of work. While for a simple literal translation of words, books or phrases or the dictionary you have to rely on other applications such as Google Translate.

Kids Academy: Talented & Gifted

Talented & Gifted offers a lot of English language practice for children — mainly for those with English as their mother tongue; however many games and lessons will still be of help to ESL learners. There are over 1,300 English learning materials for children in the age group 2–10, including videos, games, worksheets and quizzes. The activities are organized as chapters and lessons that move children through a logical progression of language topics and content. Although it’s a subscription-based app, you can enjoy a 3- or 7-day free trial period depending on the length of the subscription.

Duolingo

We found Duolingo the app to learn the most equipped, fun and long-lived English. It has a teaching method based on fun games and exercises, and also triggers the user a certain level of competition that leads to never getting tired of using it. The application is able to understand your level of knowledge of the language and let you start from the bases or from a more advanced level depending on the situation in which you are. With statistics, you always show the progress you’ve made, and the learning units are unlocked as you grow to be able to complete them. With this app to learn English, you can also take part in online challenges with a lot of rankings to test you, comparing you with other real people. Competing with other real people, your desire to learn while having fun will grow further and learning English will never be heavy. It’s free and there is a paid option to take an exam and receive a certification if you can complete the course.

Download: Android | iOS

Babbel

Unfortunately Babbel is an app to learn English for a fee and only the first lesson is offered for free, but we still recommend it because it is one of the most professional. It is suitable both for beginners and for users who already know the language and want to increase their knowledge. There are many courses to do based on the area that you want to empower and in which situations you want to know how to speak better. It is possible to concentrate on pronunciation, grammar or writing, or on discovering the meaning of individual words. You can choose to learn English only in the topics that we need more or converse with your smartphone thanks to artificial intelligence. There is also the voice recognition that gives the phone how to understand and improve our pronunciation. The lessons present in the app have been created by experts in the language and the exercises are very effective, so much so that you can significantly improve in 2 months of use.

Download: Android | iOS

Memrise

The approach of this app is to let people learn English through games and exercises that really create a lot of engagement and fun. It is therefore an excellent application for children and young people who are not so compatible with the tedious school approach. You can set daily goals to motivate yourself further in learning English, and you can interact with a community that counts millions of people to compare with others. This includes both reading and listening exercises, and there are also chatbots with whom to converse without waiting to meet a person. You can also use this application offline, and you can view videos of native speakers who speak to learn flawlessly spoken English. This is a multi-award-winning app just for the fun way you approach the user, so beware: it could be addictive!

Download: Android | iOS

Tandem

Many people say it, to learn English really well you have to live in England or in other countries where you speak this language every day, interfacing with people. Well, Tandem is an app created with the intent to solve this problem, because it is a language exchange community. Using Tandem, which has a community of millions of users, you can interface with real and native people who will allow you to converse in English and learn the language simply by talking to us. You can learn languages from others, or you can enter the app to exchange your language with foreigners. You can decide to communicate with people in the community through messages, audio or video calls, depending on what you are best with. An experience in close contact with many native speakers that you can not find even in the most prestigious courses.

Download: Android | iOS

Fun Easy Learn (Android only)

The word Fun in the name of this application should already have made you realize that this is another app to learn English having fun, then with games and exercises that point to fun as much as possible. In reality the developer of Fun Easy Learn has created 2 applications : one named 5000 words and the other named 5000 sentences. The first focuses on learning many words in English, categorized according to the scope of belonging. So, if you are interested in knowing the language in full to discuss, for example, cooking, you will be able to learn the words usually used in this area. Great for those who have little time and only need the indispensable. With the app of the sentences instead you will be able to learn them phrases commonly used knowing that you can communicate with anyone who is understood even if you do not know the language at 360 degrees. You can practice the teachings even in conversations with these apps.

Download: Android

British Council

The British Council is a British non-profit organization present all over the world, which has created several applications to learn English, very reliable and precise in teaching. Depending on the application, you can learn grammar, phonetics or conversation. There is an application entirely dedicated to podcasts to learn English by listening to podcasts for free in mother tongue. There’s one for the kids, one dedicated to grammar, and one that contains video. There is also an application dedicated to phonetics that allows you to learn English by capillary understanding the sounds of letters and words. And there is also one to specifically teach children the language. The applications are available for both UK English and American English, which, as we know, differ slightly from one another.

Download: Android | iOS

busuu

Similarly to Tandem, this is also an application focused on the community of real users, but here there are also many other features. There is an entry test to understand our level of difficulty and there are over 150 learning units in the course present on the application. Even without internet it is possible to learn English. In addition, we can get help from native speakers by correcting the exercises, and we can use speech recognition to improve our pronunciation. Through this application, by completing the units available, you can also receive the McGraw-Hill Education certificate that certifies your knowledge. Not only English is available in the app, but also many other languages.

Download: Android | iOS

Alternative methods for learning English from smartphones

As well-equipped and well-researched, applications for learning English can never replace a complete English course or let you speak the language perfectly as a native speaker. To have an understanding, a lexicon and a writing at 360 degrees, we need to live among people who speak the language. But you can still get, using smartphones and PCs, to a point where if you go to a foreign country or talk to people who speak English you will be able to juggle well with the language. To enhance your knowledge, we suggest replacing the activities you do every day with your smartphone with the related “English versions” of these activities.

For example, you can read news on English or American websites instead of ones in your language. You can watch videos on YouTube in English with subtitles, or watch movies and TV series on Netflix (if you have) in the original language if they are English or American, with subtitles. You can also set the English language on your smartphone from Settings (going to Language and input, and selecting English under the language. You can also learn English by making video calls or video chats on services like Chatroulette (in which you will be combined with strangers without having to add their contacts), Skype or Messenger.