Mobile technology opens up a lot of options that were never available before. One of the areas that this has been a huge boost for is mobile learning. Now, with the right app, your daily commute can be a chance for personal development. With that in mind, here are five apps that will help you gain a new skill, whether for business or pleasure.

Memrise

The topics covered by Memrise are vast with over 300,000 different courses, mostly thanks to users being able to create and upload their own to the site. Saying that, there is a review system in place to make sure you only use a good one. The ability to create courses also means you can put something together that will really benefit you. So not only can it work well on its own but, say you’re undertaking a course somewhere else, it can be great for revision.
Sign up is free and along with some excellent language courses, you can study physics, maths, history, the arts, pop culture, and pretty much anything else. The process for learning is very effective too, relying on memory science to ensure you pick up the facts quickly and properly.

Duolingo

Duolingo is a free app dedicated to learning new languages and is one of the best out there for this purpose. It’s simplistic, structured, and straight-forward, meaning with a bit of dedication you can progress very quickly in your chosen tongue. The courses on offer are pretty expansive with choices for speakers of languages including English, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, and more.
Thanks to their ‘incubation’ process, Duolingo works with volunteers to create new full courses, meaning they’re adding extra ones fairly often. There’s also a social aspect to the app where you can see your friend’s progress and try to top your own personal leader board. With the courses split up into sections, you can complete a satisfactory chunk every time you log on.

Babbel

This is another language learning app and could easily be described as a more adult version of Duolingo. First of all, it costs a bit of money although it won’t break the bank. Secondly, it all looks a bit more professional with no cartoon logo or shiny colours. The courses are set out in a more formal way, broken down not only into ‘beginner’ and ‘intermediate’, but also categories like ‘business’ and ‘regional dialects’. Although, some of the language courses are more extensive than others.
There’s also a very handy personal vocabulary section so you can go over all of the different words and phrases you’ve covered so far. You can even add in your own words in case you’ve got some prior knowledge or have found a phrase elsewhere you think is particularly important. In combination with this, they have a Review Manager which will test you on everything that’s been added to your vocabulary list.

Lynda

Lynda is a free education service that offers courses in creative, business, and tech skills. This means it’s particularly good if you’re looking to further your career or pick up something new that will make your current job a lot easier. The courses themselves are taught in a video format and run by industry experts themselves.

Lynda is a bit more intensive than the other apps on this list which allow you to jump in and out a bit easier. Despite this Lynda is very effective in what it does and it’s not exactly difficult to stick your headphones in and watch a lecture on your lunchbreak or on the train ride home.

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