MosaLingua Review: Much more than just a flashcard app

Join us in this Mosalingua Review, as we take a look at its customisable learning plans. We’ll show you how it works, what it includes, and more so that you can see if it's the right platform for you.

TL;DR MosaLingua Review

If you haven't got time to read the whole review, here are some quick pros and cons of MosaLingua.

What is MosaLingua?

MosaLingua is actually an umbrella name for a series of apps and online courses. Some are general language courses, while others focus on a specific skill to improve upon. 

The auxiliary courses offered by MosaLingua are MosaSeries for listening comprehension, MosaSpeak for conversational skills, and MosaTraining, which teaches you how to learn a language. For the purposes of this review, however, we’ll be focusing on the core programme, MosaLingua Premium.

What Can You do on MosaLingua?

At its heart, MosaLingua is a flashcard app. We’ll get into more detail on how exactly it works in just a moment. First, let’s take a look at the method behind MosaLingua’s success.

The MOSALearning Method 

If you’ve read any of our product reviews, you’ll likely see the phrase “spaced repetition” come up a lot. That’s because this method is used by a lot of programmes, to varying degrees of success. 

In short, this method works by getting you to review the information just before you’re likely to forget it. The spaces between each review grow longer and longer with each review, hence the name, spaced repetition.

Where MosaLingua differs from other programmes, is that it combines this tried-and-tested method with four other psychological principles. These are all combined with one purpose: to get you learning the language quickly, and efficiently. 

The other four principles are: 

• Active recall 
• Metacognition
• The Pareto Principle
• Learning motivation and psychology

Let’s break these down to make them a little easier to digest. 

Active Recall

Active Recall is the principle of using short-form answers (in the form of flashcards, in this instance) rather than multiple choice exercises. By using short-form answers, you’re actively learning, rather than passively relying on the multiple choice answers to trigger your memory. 

Metacognition

Metacognition is the evaluation of your own learning in order to reinforce your memory. MosaLingua will have you rate your memorisation on a scale of one to four every time you answer a question. Not only does this help the programme know what you need extra help with, your self-reflection helps really hammer things home!

The Pareto Principle

Probably the vaguest of the principles is the Pareto Principle. The idea is that 20 per cent of the effort you put in will get you 80 per cent of the desired results. In practice, MosaLingua teaches you only the words you’ll need to know on a short-term basis. Doing this saves time, rather than shoving words at you you won’t use and will likely forget anyway. 

Learning Motivation and Psychology

Lastly is the Learning motivation and psychological aspect. Do you know what the number one reason people fail at learning a language is? It’s quitting. People hit roadblocks, or lose their motivation, or just stop enjoying the process, and give up. 

That’s why MosaLingua provides free learning support via email! Everyone on MosaLingua’s support team are language teachers, and has learned or is learning at least one language.

All of these principles combined form the MOSALearning method. So while it’s true that, at its simplest, MosaLingua is a flashcard app, it’s one that takes this simple format and executes it really well. Quality over quantity matters!

Now, let’s take a look at what the actual programme offers. 

The Flashcards

Flashcards are the meat and potatoes of MosaLingua. You can either start right away from the very bottom, or change the level manually to where you feel your skill level best lies. MosaLingua also teaches you by topic, so it will ask you what your language goals are. 

One of the best features of MosaLingua is the high degree of customisation it offers. If you have a word in your flashcard deck that you don’t want or need to learn, you don’t have to! There’s an option to remove it from your deck and you won’t see it in your spaced repetition reviews either. If you decide later that you do want to learn it, you can easily add it back.

And that’s just for the standard deck! You can add flashcards to your deck at any time. By clicking “select flashcards” or by going to the “Explore” tab, you are given a tonne of topics to browse through. Or, if browsing isn’t your speed, you can use the search function to find specific words. 

Can’t find the word you’re looking for? No sweat. You can even create your own flashcards to add to your deck. 

As mentioned in the MOSALearning section, MosaLingua works by asking you to put in the least amount of effort for the best results possible. Once you learn a word or phrase, MosaLingua will remind you to review it right before you’re most likely to forget it and not a moment sooner. 

This is so you don’t waste any time reviewing words you don’t need to review. In the time between reviews, you’ll also be learning other words and phrases! Learning huge amounts of vocabulary with the least amount of effort put in possible sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? It’s not! It’s scientifically proven to work, and MosaLingua really executes this well. 

So How Does MosaLingua Work?

Flashcards

As we mentioned above, Flashcards are the bread and butter of MosaLingua, and what you'll use on a day-to-day basis to improve your language skills. Here's a breakdown of how they work:

Stage 1: Listen and Repeat

The flashcards work like this: you listen and repeat the word or phrase.

This will entail a short listening exercise, and, then, you record yourself repeating after the teacher. These are instructors speaking, not computerised recordings! This is fairly straightforward, so speak up and speak clearly!

Stage 2: Memorisation

Then it’s on to the memorisation stage.

You’ll be given no prompts other than the English word and an image. Once you click “turn the card over” you’ll be given the correct answer. You can either mark yourself correct or repeat the word until you get it right. Or until you feel comfortable—you can repeat this step as many times as you need. 

Stage 3: Writing

Then it’s on to writing. You’ll be given letters or words to click on to spell the word or phrase. Again, you can repeat this as much as you like, so take your time!

Stage 4: Evaluation 

The last step is the evaluation.

It’s one last repeat of the memorisation step, but with the added evaluation. You’ll rate yourself on a scale of one to four, “not good” being the worst and “perfect” being the best. Be honest—this is how MosaLingua determines when you’ll need to review this word or phrase. 

And that’s it! MosaLingua will let you know when it’s time to review those words, so you can either leave it at that and come back, or keep going onto the next set of cards. 

Dialogues

Another unique feature that MosaLingua offers is flashcards of whole dialogues. You can find these either under the “Dialogues” tab in the sidebar, or in the topics menu when you’re adding flashcards to your deck. 

These dialogues have four recommended steps:

1. Listen without subtitles
2. Try again with subtitles in the target language
3. Listen once more using English subtitles
4. Add flashcards to your deck

You can choose to skip straight to the flashcard step if you want.

However, listening to the dialogue really does wonders for improving your comprehension skills. The flashcards step works exactly the same as the standard deck, so don’t sweat too much if you don’t understand the dialogue straight away. 

MosaDiscovery

This is one of the best features of the programme, bar none. 

With MosaDiscovery, you can select any word anywhere on the internet and add it to your MosaLearning flashcard deck. On the MosaLearning website, you simply select the word or phrase you want to add, wait for the menu to pop up, and then click “Add to MosaLingua.”

Elsewhere on the internet, if you use Chrome or Brave web browsers, you can install a free extension plugin that will you allow you to do the same with any selected text. The first time you do this, it will ask you to enter in your MosaLingua access details for verification, but any time thereafter, it’s as simple as select and add.

You can do this on your mobile device, as well. Simply download the MosaDiscovery app on your iOS or Android device and then log in on the app. Then, on any app where you can select text, your phone’s share option will allow you to add to your MosaLingua deck. 

This function does use Google Translate to add the word’s translation to the deck initially, which could cause some problems. Google Translate may be the most popular computer-programmed translator, but it’s far from perfect. However, the good thing is that you can edit the flashcards once MosaDiscovery adds them to your deck. If you notice any strange translations, it’s as simple as double-checking it by your own means and then going in to fix it. 

Resources

Another place where MosaLingua shines is the extensive library of resources the programme offers. 

Within the website itself, you’ll notice at the top menu there are several tabs, one each for “reading,” “videos,” and “resources.” 

Within each of these tabs are further materials for you to make flashcards out of. The “Reading” and “Resources” tabs both offer more reading material; where they differ is that the “Reading” tab has short stories broken down by CEFR levels.

The “Resources” tab, on the other hand, has external links which lead to blogs, magazines, and articles by topic, and is meant for more advanced learners. 

The “Videos” tab offers tonnes of music and videos, again broken down by difficulty level. MosaLingua offers so much in this section, it’s really up to you to explore!

What Does MosaLingua Look Like?

Much of what MosaLingua has to offer is contained within its main app. When you log in, you’ll select the language you’re learning in the upper-righthand corner, then select your language under the “Apps” tab. That will bring you to your main dashboard.

From here, you can navigate to your lessons by clicking on “Learn” in the sidebar. You can either proceed with the suggested deck or create your own. The app will also prompt you to review any words that you’re about to forget, based on your self-evaluation. 

You can track your progress here, as well as create and tailor your decks by navigating to the correct tabs in the sidebar.

If you feel like your cards are too easy for you, but are unsure which level you’re supposed to be at, you can navigate to the “Settings” tab and take a level test. You can also adjust audio speed, font size, and other settings in this tab, too.

The mobile app is designed to operate similarly to the desktop web service. The interface is largely the same on both mobile and web services. 

The difference is that MosaWeb is only available on the mobile version, and it offers slightly different resources than those available on the web. Are audiobooks more your speed? MosaWeb hosts hundreds of books and their accompanying audiobooks in your target language. There are so many resources to explore, we can’t even begin to show you them all!

Something to note: the MosaLingua Premium courses are self-contained on one app if you have iOS or use the web service. But if you use an Android phone, you will need to download the individual app for your target language. This is really rather unfortunate, and we’d like to see them combine them all into one app in the future.

Who is MosaLingua Best For?

Everyone. Everyone and anyone. Whether you’re a beginner starting from scratch or an advanced learner looking to take their skills to the next level, MosaLingua has you covered. It’s as simple as that.

What Languages Does MosaLingua Offer?

Currently, MosaLingua offers full courses in eight languages:

• Spanish 
• French 
• Italian
• German
• Chinese
• Portuguese
• Russian
• English

These eight courses cover all skill levels, from A1 to C1 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, or CEFR. 

Additionally, there are five smaller courses, which cover slightly more specific aspects of a language: 

• Spanish for Business
• English for Business
• Medical English
• TOEIC Vocabulary
• TOEFL Vocabulary

The first three of these courses cover from A1 level to B2 level, while the last two cover from B1 to C1 level. 

Basically, no matter what your language needs are, if you see your language here, MosaLingua has you covered.

How Much Does MosaLingua Cost?

This is where MosaLingua falls a little short, at least in our opinion. MosaLingua Premium has two separate subscriptions, depending on which platform you subscribe through. 

The web service is only available by annual subscription and will cost you $59.90 for one year. The mobile app offers monthly and annual subscriptions; monthly will run you $9.49 per month, and annual will run you $57.99 for a year. 

As far as we can tell, both subscriptions allow you to switch between mobile and desktop freely. So why, then, are there two different subscription models? We couldn’t tell you! It’s incredibly confusing and we wish this were made a little more transparent.

One thing they are transparent about? Conversion costs! They provide a handy table converting the cost of their subscription to currencies of other English-majority nations.

Exclusive Actual Fluency Discount

Any link on this page or otherwise automatically includes a special discount of 20% for Mosalingua's subscription.

Free Trial

MosaLingua also offers a 15-day free trial, which is longer than the standard 7-day trial most programmes offer.

You will have to provide some kind of payment method, but won’t be charged until after the 15 days are up, and you can of course cancel at any time before that if you don't like it.

What are the Pros and Cons of MosaLingua?

Pros

• High degree of customisation
• MosaDiscovery allows you to make cards from any text on the internet
• Specialised spaced repetition system maximises your results with minimal effort
• Mind-boggling amount of extra resources

Cons

• Confusing subscription options
• MosaLingua apps are separated by language on Android

Are There Any MosaLingua Alternatives?

MosaLingua vs. Duolingo

You know it, you love it. Duolingo is one of the most popular programmes on the market, and it’s free. So why would we recommend MosaLingua over it? Because DuoLingo uses computerised narration and doesn’t offer nearly as many resources. Also, it teaches you useless vocabulary, and nobody has time for that.

Check out our Duolingo review to learn more.

MosaLingua vs. Babbel

In theory, MosaLingua and Babbel share a very similar learning structure. In practice, MosaLingua executes it better across the board. Babbel suffers from inconsistency when it comes to less popular languages. It’s also priced comparatively with MosaLingua but offers so much less by comparison. 

We go more in-depth on Babbel in our review.

Our Final Thoughts on MosaLingua 

At first glance, you might think MosaLingua is just another flashcard app. But you’d be so very, very wrong.

Mosalingua is a fantastic service, which offers a ton of variety in learning and extra resources, making the subscription great value for money. With over 11 million users, and a 4.7 average rating on the app store we highly recommend Mosalingua.

The only complaints we had were the confusing subscription system and the fact that each language has a different app for Android users. And, okay, selfishly, we wish they offered more languages because their system is that good. If those first two things were addressed, we would happily give MosaLingua a perfect score. 

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is MosaLingua?

Simply put, MosaLingua is the brand name for multiple language learning products. Its legendary programme, MosaLingua Premium, is a flashcard system that utilises the MOSALearning method to help you learn quickly and efficiently. Their other programs hone in on specific language-learning skills to get you to fluency even faster.

How Do You Use MosaLingua?

Much like Duolingo or Babbel, just a few minutes of review a day will help you learn your target language. Customisation is key—you can use the pre-formed decks or create your own. Browse decks by topic, not by lesson, to ensure you learn words you know you’re going to need and use.

Can MosaLingua Help you Reach CEFR Levels?

MosaLingua can help you progress towards the levels of the CEFR, or the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The level progression offered varies by course: 

• All levels (A1 – C1): Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian, and English
• “False” beginners and intermediate learners (A1 – B2): Spanish For Business, English for Business, Medical English
• Intermediate and advanced learners (B1 – C1): TOEIC Vocabulary and TOEFL Vocabulary

Does MosaLingua Offer Language Training for Businesses?

Yes! MosaLingua offers a couple of different corporate packages for businesses of all sizes. These courses include field-specific vocabulary or other content tailor-made for your business’s needs. Basic corporate packages start at $59 per employee per year, but if you have more specific needs, there is a custom pricing option, too.