Shutterstock
Learning a new language in college is no easy feat. You’re expected to grasp the language from vocabulary and grammar fundamentals, as well as plenty of readings. But this is unfortunately no substitute for conversation. Many people leave college having completed a course in a language that they have no idea how to actually speak.
This is why it is important to supplement your language courses if you want to get something out of them. The fundamentals you learn in college will set you up for a good understanding of the language, but you will need to put in the legwork yourself to grasp the subtleties.
Fortunately, there are some great ways available to supplement your language courses online. Try the following.
Watch TV (with Lingopie)
Ask a fluent English Second Language (ESL) speaker about how they learned to speak the language so well and they will probably cite TV as one of the factors. Many ESL speakers had access to American TV series growing up, and following English-speaking characters gave them insight into how to actually converse in English.
Lingopie has taken this fact and used it as the basis of a language-learning app. They offer thousands of episodes of TV in Spanish, French, and Russian (with more languages to come) which you can binge-watch. Unlike watching these series on streaming services, Lingopie makes the experience interactive. You can slow the episode down when you want to learn more, and click on the subtitles for more information and to save a word or term to your personal dictionary.
Read these Lingopie reviews to find out more about just how easy it is to learn languages this way. It brings a realness and enjoyment through supplementing your learning in an organic way that millions of ESL speakers have used before.
Use Duolingo
Duolingo is in no ways perfect. Although it is incredibly popular, it does not serve as a good foundation on its own. However, when used to supplement your learning of a language, it is exactly what you need.
The benefit of Duolingo is that it encourages you to revise what you know every single day, even in ten minute increments. Instead of leaving your learning to certain days of the week, you get to continually reinforce your experience with the language.
There’s a reason the threatening Duolingo owl became a meme – it is one of the factors that keep people on their language journey.
Join Forums
There is no substitute to speaking a language. You cannot learn to speak a language without actually doing it. Aside from visiting a city where the language you’re learning is the vernacular, finding people to speak to is difficult.
However, the internet is the great connector. You can find people on forums who speak the language you are trying to learn and they may be willing to converse with you either through text or voice and video call.
Of course, they may well want the relationship to go two ways. They will speak with you in their language if you are willing to speak with them in English. This is actually quite worthwhile, as you will learn to appreciate what you’re asking of them.
Learning a language in college is great, but you need to supplement it. Fortunately, there are many options to do so online.
