MONOLINGUAL DICTIONARY

As Czech is a minor world language, learners face even more obstacles than those of predominant world languages when seeking total immersion, one of the major ones being that there has not been, until now, any monolingual dictionary for foreigners who study Czech. Czech Language Online.eu (CLO) is proud to offer you the first and only one so far, which also features pronunciation, examples of sentences, conjugation and declension endings, synonyms, colloquial expressions and illustrations. The collection contains 1,000 most frequented words of the spoken local lingo, as well as all the words used in the 2 most popular Czech-for-foreigners textbooks, and even more words (approx. 6,500). The dictionary is growing fast. According to your interest, you can solicit new words to be added to the dictionary at earliest convenience. A monolingual dictionary, unlike the regular bilingual ones, gently guides a learner towards actually thinking in the target language and helps them to flex their tongue and mind in expressing themselves better.

FLEXIBLE PHRASEBOOK

Every text- or phrasebook is generally, to a greater or lesser degree, a merely approximate and fixed (closed) selection of generic "useful phrases and texts" which hardly fits or pleases everyone. This website aims to be an open textbook which you can adjust to your needs, interests and level. Upon registration you will be prompted to briefly indicate why you are interested in this language, which will further inform and orientate the tutor when tailoring the content for the greater benefit of the website users. You will also be asked to select, and later you can add, your own set of phrases, choosing from a list of them. The CLO phrases have been carefully chosen to enable you, as early as possible, to become a confident communicator who undauntingly engages in, leads and gets the most out of a conversation, article or book.

MEMORY-FRIENDLY REVISION

Czech Language Online.eu will remember which phrases you´ve ticked as important for you, and what new words you´ve requested from the tutor to be added in the dictionary, and automatically makes you revise each new item in a number of exercises on 3 different ocassions: following day (or earliest log-in), a week later (or earliest log-in after that), and finally a month later (or earliest log-in)..

SIMPLIFIED READING

The website will also bring you an excellent and unique opportunity to read in Czech even at an early stage. CLO offers its subscribers several simplified texts (levels 1, 2 and 3 with 250, 500-600 and 1,000 and more words respectively) based on the originals written by traditional and/or contemporary Czech authors. Also to be found are annotated song lyrics, magazine articles or unabridged excerpts of some Czech literary works. When reading your own texts, you can copy and paste or simply type an excerpt in our PŘEKLADAČ tool which will tell you straight away which words the CLO dictionary can or cannot generate. Those words the dictionary does not yet provide you can then very easily request to be added at earliest possible convenience.

LISTENING ACTIVITIES

On top of this, some of the reading materials are provided with audio recordings or videos to help you enhance your comprehension and listening skills.

ON-LINE STUDY , WRITING SKILLS

Throughout your quarterly subscription period you can also take advantage of 5 on-line study sessions (each 1 hour long, 10 students a cap) led by a native tutor. And you are most welcome to suggest the topics and grammar focus of these. Apart from this, you can send to your tutor up to 10 own written attempts in Czech (each up to 1-page long) for proof reading and tips during the 3-month period; and you will get tutor´s review comments within 2 days.

GRAMMAR

The GRAMATIKA icon in the main menu will present you the key elements of Czech grammar in a novel and integral way: e.g. how to understand the puzzling system of 7 different word endings (cases or pády) both in the singular and plural. In this section you will also find a comprehensive list of links to the already existing free online grammar exercises that your browser would not necessarily dig up for you.

LEARNING TIPS

The CLO doesn´t stop there. Foreign language aquisition depends hugely on the input and effort of the learners themselves. This surely comes as no surprise. Therefore being aware of a number of diverse learning strategies and knowing how and when to employ them to nurture fast learning can save one´s money, time and energy. The Czech Language Online will have some advice for you in this respect.

COMPETITION-FRIENDLY

We see our competition as a superb benchmarking gauge to see whether, at all times, we continue to offer more value and better service than other providers, enthusiasts or state agencies engaged in the field. We want you to be an active evaluator in this too: in the links section you will see a comprehensive and well-researched list of resources a learner of Czech would ever need to know about. We don´t ignore or belittle our competition, we endorse it rather. For a good reason. Please do have a look at what´s out there, compare the alternatives, price lists, and we will be delighted and proud, of course, if you come back to us.

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