Google announced their ‘Phrasebook’ in 2013 > Official Release Statement 

I was very excited by this because I am not only a language teacher, but also a language learner.  I am at a very beginner level, slowly and steadily learning Greek.  Taking my own advice that I give to my students, “you must have English in your life everyday if you want to improve…”  I’ve decided to start a journal writing very simple phrases in Greek.  Using my active vocabulary, each day I’ll write a few things down.

I wanted to check a few words using Google Translate (I know, I know, it’s not always correct, but for simple basic words, usually it is ok- and I am at that simple basic level!) and I remembered about phrasebook.  Happy times!  It is so simple to use and I think VERY useful for helping language learners review vocabulary.

First you just type in the word or phrase in your language using Google Translate

Here I actually searched for the phrase first in English-> Greek and then switched it because I want my phrasebook to have the Greek words first, but either way works.

Next you just click on the little star below the phrase or word and you will see a little notification pop up in the upper left-hand corner showing that a word has been added.  That is your phrasebook icon!

Click on that little star-book icon and you will see all of the words/phrases that you have previously saved.

As I mentioned earlier, I have mine with the Greek phrase first, but you can sort by language and by the date you added it.

You can even export it to a spreadsheet by clicking on that icon under the search tool.

There are so many great tools out there to help us with language learning.  I hope that you will try it out and let me know how it works!

Please share some of the tools you use to improve your vocabulary in the comments section below and perhaps be featured in a future blog….