Have you ever experienced this: You’ve just returned from your vacation in Croatia, England, Denmark, Italy, or France. The trip was fantastic, but one thing became very clear – your foreign language skills could use some work. Whether you struggled to order in a restaurant, ask for directions, or have a simple conversation, you might be feeling motivated now more than ever to improve. Perhaps you’re thinking of booking a language course right away, while that vacation inspiration is still fresh in your mind.
That way you can learn at your own pace, whenever and wherever it suits you. The main points to take into consideration:
How much do you want to know before you arrive at your holiday destination? Don’t set your aims of learning too high – If you only have two weeks left to learn the most functional of phrases (‘greetings’-‘ordering in a restaurant’-‘going shopping’, etc) and time is short, take one step at a time.
"Have fun learning a new language online! Wishing you all the best for your next vacation.
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Listen, repeat (more than once:-) and record yourself (either with the online program or via your mobile phone) – that way, your mouth muscles can adapt more quickly to the different (and new) sounds:
Video-Audios:
Before going on to the next lesson or session, go through what you have learned so far – repetition is the basis of remembering. The more time you take at the beginning, the faster and more fluently you will be able to speak the target language afterwards.
When doing online exercises, there are usually tests at the end of the sessions – if you don’t achieve 100%, my advice is to do the test again, at once! This can improve your memory of what you have just learned.
It’s those words that are always missing when you need them right then and there.
Don’t learn long lists of vocabulary at once. The mind can actually only store 5-7(9) words per day for a longer period of time. Learning 100 words per day will only be the result in only retaining a small part.
Use vocabulary learned in other contexts: e.g. for going shopping in a supermarket, you have just learned the words for ‘fish’, ‘chicken’, ‘eggs’ ‘milk’, ‘butter’, ‘cheese’, ‘meat’. Now, write down a recipe, (or make one up:-) that contains all of these products and can be the ingredients of your new recipe. Now you have two ‘places’ where you can (re-)produce these new words. And, if you talk about what you have bought in the supermarket, or cooked for dinner in your target language, then you will have also gained practice in using it.
Online language learning videos:
Sometimes you can select a subtitle function – that way you can read in the target language along with the audio at the same time. Some learners who are an audio-reading learning mix type may find this useful.
In all languages, the grammar part is the one that learners detest most. The best way to combat:
Have fun learning it! Try out online crossword puzzles, gap fill exercises etc. In the end, when you see that your progress bar has grown and/or points achieved have increased, your motivation to continue learning may increase as well.
Usually there is a grammar rule discussed at the beginning of a lesson e.g. ‘adjectives‘ , ‘regular/irregular verbs’ etc., and how it is used in various contexts. Then just dive in into the exercises to practice. These can be multiple choice tasks, gap fills or even writing tasks etc.
As with learning vocabulary, don’t learn too much or concentrate on too many different grammar points at once – try to stick to a maximum of 2 topics per day.