Learning a new language is often considered a costly task and people spend tons of money on buying books, courses, taking daily German lessons or paying for audio tapes, video lessons and so forth. Now, there’s an alternative to all of this: free language lessons online.
Not all languages can be learnt online. It depends on what you’re trying to learn and what your mother tongue is or what other languages you’re already familiar with. For example, learning Chinese online won’t be as easy as learning German through the same methods. Chinese requires more careful assimilation of grammar rules, vocabulary and learning steps whereas German can be learn more “freely” (and I’m not talking just about the financial costs). If you’re reading this, you’re either at least moderately familiar with English, or English is your mother tongue and this is a good starting point to learn German online, since there are a lot of connections that can be made between the two languages.
With German becoming an increasingly important language on the international stage, more and more people leave their course books behind and seek out websites that can offer free language lessons online. They’re faster, more convenient, you can go through them from the comfort of your own home and most importantly, they are much easier to assimilate, since an online lesson, unlike a course book for example, can combine visual and audio elements to make your learning process faster. In the past, this was not possible as websites were pretty blunt back then, they were just “clones” of course books with text, text and more text.
With the increased interactivity offered by many language learning sites out there, you can take online quizzes, play language games on the Internet, or on some sites, take audio/video lessons like you would from an audio or video tape. Forget about wasting time going to your local store, buying the tape, buying a good stereo and a set of headphones – now you have all these bundled up for free on the Internet. Technology is a blast, isn’t it?
Many websites (such as Internet Polyglot for example) offer a wide variety of methods to learn German, ranging from standard basic-to-advanced lessons, to word memorization games, text-video quizzes (like the ones that have you attach a specific word to a specific image – sort of like an interactive flashcard game) and so forth. Using games to increase German vocabulary or strengthen your grammar rules is also a solid option. Although many consider these games “childish”, they’re actually quite important and efficient, since you’re learning while having fun and we all know that this is a major boost to assimilating new words naturally.
One good tip would be to try and find quizzes and games that don’t simply use words. Sure, you can easily memorize a few words each day, but they won’t be “printed” in your memory as strongly as if you would have something visual attached to them. Our brain holds visual images much longer in our memory than simple strings of characters and words, so it’s a good idea to associate a picture to each word. When learning German, it’s even easier to do this since German has a lot of cognates with English (words that look or sound alike in the two languages and that share a common meaning) so you can stamp the English word instead of a visual image to the new word.
However, watch out for false cognates as they can be quite misleading. False cognates are words that sound or look alike in both languages, but their meaning is completely different, so if you don’t learn to spot them, you could be using words in completely inappropriate contexts. Fortunately, the list of false cognates is not that high between English and German, but it’s still a good idea to learn these exceptions by hard.
I’ll leave it to you to find the right websites for learning German online, but know that you shouldn’t just settle for the first one you find. Try learning from two sources and go through several websites before settling in on these two. In most cases, this will offer you a more complete coverage of the German language.
Posts Tagged ‘Free Language Lessons’
Learning Spanish From Scratch
December 27th, 2009I was half shocked, half amused reading all the stuff on the Internet about how learning Spanish is “easy” and how some guides teach you how to speak Spanish in 21 days. I always wanted to ask the people writing this kind of guides, exactly who they think they’re fooling. Spanish, just like any other language, takes time to learn. You’ll need constant exercise, you’ll need to focus on several parts of the language, such as the Spanish vocabulary, Spanish grammar and so forth. Of course, each person has a particular level of informational absorption that can help them (or hinder them if it’s low) in learning Spanish from scratch.
Obviously, it depends whether you want to learn Spanish for your next-week trip to Madrid, or if you intend to learn it for that job offer waiting for you there in 4 months. You may be able to grasp the basic language notions in a week, if you use one of those free language lessons that you can find online, but if you want to learn it properly and in-depth, you’ll be better off taking things slowly and chewing on what you learn instead of swallowing it as soon as you learn it.
During your first 2 weeks, take a child’s approach to learning Spanish. Learn what you would teach a child to know in English first: the colors, 0 to 20 numbers, helloes and goodbyes, seasons, months of the year, days of the week and all sorts of easy things that will help you get a taste of learning a new language as well as getting you accustomed to pronunciation and writing.
Once you’re at this point, go for a few grammar rules. Use a Spanish course if needed, or look up a Spanish grammar online lesson and try to find out differences and common points between Spanish and English (or your mother tongue if it’s not English of course). You’ll also work on your pronunciation, writing and understanding while going through the grammar rules.
Next up, assuming you already know the basic grammar rules and have a solid grip of the basic Spanish words, you’ll need to work hard to improve your vocabulary. Learning Spanish is just like playing with a jigsaw puzzle. You know that you want to get the bigger picture out of the small pieces, but before sticking them together you’ll need to start with the corners to give you a base (the “child” vocabulary mentioned above). After that, you need to understand the rules involved in sticking the pieces together (Spanish grammar) and finally, you will have to start picking the small pieces one by one and attach them to the forming picture (improve vocabulary).
Improving vocabulary in Spanish can be done in a number of ways. Probably the most common one is “relating objects”. That means that if you learn a new word from a specific category (fruits for example), you should expand your vocabulary in that particular category first, then move on to another related context.
For example, you learn the word “apple”, you move on to words like “pears”, “strawberries” and “peaches” then after you’re done with that distinct group of words, move on to bigger contexts in which you can use them such as “kitchen”, “farms” or “marketplace”. This will allow you to learn new words from the new bigger contexts and at the same time, re-use the words you had learnt in the smaller categories, which “fixes” them better in your memory.
I’m not saying this is THE only way of learning Spanish from scratch, but trust me, if you manage to follow these easy steps, you’ll soon have a solid and correct grasp of the Spanish language. There might be faster methods of learning a new language out there, but this old fashion step-by-step one practically restrains you from taking any huge leaps in the learning process and skipping some important stuff.
If you want to add some spice to your language learning process, you can try playing some word games, watching some Spanish shows on TV and last but not least, you could search the internet for some free language lessons online or even better, those free online “learn Spanish” videos that you can find all over the world wide web.
Language Learning Tips And Tricks
October 10th, 2009There are two ways you can learn a language: the quick way, or the correct way. The following tips and tricks are not meant for someone that wants to learn French for example simply so he can handle himself in a basic conversation 3 weeks from now, or for someone that needs to learn basic German in 2 weeks to get a D on her term paper. They’re meant for people that want to learn a secondary language thoroughly, become fluent in it and learn it correctly.
Language Learning Tips and Tricks – Stepwise Progression
Always use a stepwise progression when learning a new language. Most language lessons will provide a step by step structure, but if you settle on learning it on your own, try to follow these basic steps:
1. Learn some basic words to get used to your new language and to have a starting vocabulary.
2. Learn the basic grammar rules in combination with the basic words you learnt at step 1.
3. Once you get a mediocre grip on that language’s grammar, work hard to improve vocabulary.
Language Learning Tips and Tricks – Consistency
Ok, learning a new language, despite what those “learn Chinese in 14 days” books and free language lessons online tell you, is not an easy process. When you were a kid, did you manage to learn English (or your mother tongue) in 14 days? Of course not. It takes months to start understanding a new language and years to “think” in it and speak it fluently.
That’s why you’ll need to be consistent in your language learning process. Don’t learn for 1 week, than take a 1 month break, only to come back to learn for two more weeks. Try learning for shorter periods, but daily. Half an hour spent learning Chinese each day will be far more effective than learning for two weeks and taking a break for one month before continuing your studies.
Language Learning Tips and Tricks – Patience
Like I said above, learning a new language takes a while and is definitely not an easy task, especially if you want to become fluent in it. When setting out to learn a new language, make sure that you understand this won’t be a 2-week ride and that you’ll have to invest a lot of time and work in it.
You’ll have moments when you’ll probably simply want to quit or give up because you don’t understand a particular concept that is different in the language you’re learning than in your mother tongue. If you can overcome these moments (which are more likely to appear during your first month) then you are well on your way to mastering the new language.
Language Learning Tips and Tricks – Learn Efficiently
You’ll find that a lot of the numerous language learning methods out there may prove extremely useful or almost worthless to you. Each person has his strengths and weaknesses so it’s only natural that some methods work best with some people. That’s why I don’t really trust people saying that THEIR method is “the best”. How do they know it’s the best for you? Anyway, you’ll have to figure out for yourself which of these methods suit you most and follow up on that road rather than settling for what someone else considers “the best”.
Some language learning methods include: playing vocabulary games, taking up some free language lessons online or offline, flashcards, taking up courses, using course books or simply improving your vocabulary naturally by watching TV shows or listening to audio tapes where people speak the language you’re trying to learn.
If you manage to combine these 4 factors, you’ll be assimilating the new language in no time. But remember, they all need to work together, if you’re missing one of them, the language learning card castle may crumble. For example, it doesn’t matter if you manage to learn efficiently, if you don’t learn consistently. Or it doesn’t matter if you follow a stepwise learning process, if you don’t have the patience to finish it. And obviously, no learning process can be perfected without a lot of practice, so after you mastered the above-mentioned four factors, practice hard, practice often and practice consistently.
By: Michael Gabrikow
