Learning Spanish at Busuu.com

So my son started Spanish this week at his preschool and he's very interested in it.  My wife says he's the knowledge sponge because once he starts learning about something he's determined to wring every bit of information from everyone around him until he knows as much or more than they do.

Sitting at the dinner table today he looked up at me.

"Daddy, what's the Spanish word for 'eat'?"

"I don't know bubba.  Let's look it up."

"What about 'clean your plate'?"

I smiled.  "We'll look that one up too."

So I started to look around for an online resource to help me learn, and happened to see the link off LifeHacker for Busuu.com.  The site's in public beta and it's a web 2.0 way to learn languages.  While their offerings are limited at this point (English, French, German, and Spanish) the site seems to hold real promise and is a great way to learn.

You pick language units, which have a vocab section.  Then you need to pass a reading comprehension section and write a short paragraph using the vocabulary you just learned.  Native speakers of the language you're learning review what you've written and correct any mistakes you've made.  As you pick learn each unit, a little graphic tree in your "garden" grows.

The site's very well done.  The vocabulary units come with pictures and audio, and it's a very busy site.  Best of all, it's in public beta right now, so it's free.  All public beta testers get a free basic membership when the beta is over.  I like the site enough that I'm going to pay for a membership (provided it's not too expensive) after the beta ends.

I also hope that they add more languages as time goes on.  While it will be good to stay one step ahead of my son (and I'll need all the help I can get to do that) I'd love to branch out and keep practising my Hindi, refresh my German, and pick up some Portuguese.

Check out the site!  If you're looking to learn a language, this is the place to go.  And they didn't even pay me to say that!