No matter how deep it may lay, each of us has a certain something within that we share, and that something is connected by the thread of communication: language. If the world were as romantic as history’s writers and artists have attempted to portray it, we would all speak the same language, mais il n’est pas vrai. I have found an iPhone app to help bridge the gap from ideal to reality through the baby steps of one language tutor: FREE French Tutor by 24/7 Tutor.

Unlike most apps I’ve come across, I can use this in a tunnel or a well as it is self-contained, which is great because I find myself in either one or the other daily.

Dedans this app, you will find a number of sections and quizzes that test a variety of learning styles. Visual and audio styles are addressed in Multiple Choice and Puzzle, as you choose from a variety of English translations to French in Multiple Choice, and you get a handful of tries in spelling the words in Puzzle. In either game you can request the word is spoken aloud to you. In Write In, you must rely upon what you’ve learned and use your memory. In this section you also have the audio option, which saved me more times than my high school French teacher would like to know.

I found the repetition quite helpful throughout the different themed sections, so by the end of running all of the exercises I was quite familiar with the chosen words. The Write In section gave me a little bit of trouble whenever an apostrophe was used. This was purely due to my laziness, but I wanted to just fill in the letters and skip the apostrophe. In this section you cannot skip ahead to the next word, but must work in order. I got over this, and actually worked through my problem phrases and words because of it.

The smartest feature of this app is the Priority Mode which enables optimized study. By letting you set Priority 1 for the most important words to study and Priority 5 for the least important, the app recognizes the priority level you have set and tests you accordingly as you progress. It would be pretty cool if it had the technology to determine the priority words for you, but that’s just my laziness talking and this is still good (I’m always in support of some introspection anyway).

Once you’ve learned all that is available within this app, you have the options to access a few more courses through additional iPhone apps. These additional courses are paid apps that are a bit on the higher end for an app, but extremely cheap end for a language course at $7.99 each. 24/7 Tutor also offers courses other languages as well. I’m still working through my Lite Edition though and il est bon.