July, 2012 Language Learning Tricks

Using Free Resources For Language Learning

Should you pay for your language learning? Even to this day, both students and second-language speakers are divided on the answer. Some say you are better off paying for structured, pre-planned lessons, while others swear there’s enough free material out there for anyone who’s genuinely motivated. As with many questions that have competing valid arguments, the correct answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Free Language Learning

I can understand the argument for using free materials. The web really is filled with tons of useful resources that any language learner, whether you’re studying Chinese, French, or Spanish, can put to use right this minute to help achieve their language acquisition goals.

If you’re willing to take the time to find the right information and separate the wheat from the chaff, you can come up with enough quality material to last you from beginner to advanced stages. And all of it without having to pay a single cent for the actual information.

Right now, there are tons of websites dedicated to curating freely-available language resources. From free books to free videos to free lessons to free flashcards, there are literally places in the web where you can get them in bulk. Plus, there are tons of blogs by language learners that discuss strategies and approaches for successful language acquisition.

There are also a lot of forums where language learners congregate, sharing materials, ideas and experiences. Find a few forums whose general demographic you can relate with, join them and participate — more than the information, you can meet some online friends that can help you in your language learning efforts.

Even websites that aren’t strictly language-focused can be helpful. YouTube, for instance, is filled with videos aimed at language students, as well as foreign language videos with subtitles that you can use as secondary learning sources.

Problems With Free Language Learning

Basically, if you’re willing to spend the time digging through the vastness of the web, you’re going to turn up some very useful language resources. Of course, organizing them into a structure that you can actually use on a day-to-day basis is a whole other story.

And those things above are my main concerns. One, you’re going to have to go through a lot of crap to find the gold. Not everyone has the time, nor the patience, for that. Two, you have to be fully self-reliant in that you can figure out how to use all that material properly without having it overwhelm you completely. If you’ve ever tried collecting free research sources for study for any skill, you know just how hellish that whole process could be.

The Value Of Time

Both of these problems can end up costing you time — a lot of it. The money you spend today can be made back tomorrow. The time you lose, on the other hand, is gone forever. Are you really willing to waste hours, days and weeks just to save a couple hundred dollars?

Before you decide to go the free route, map out a plan. Try to get a rough estimate of how much time you’ll need to spend digging through information, identifying what’s usable, scanning through each material and creating lesson plans to give your lessons a little structure. Once you come to a realistic estimate of the time it will take, you’ll often realize just how much more work going free will require.

On Your Own

Using free language learning resources, you’re left to your own devices. If you enjoy the solitude (a lot of people do), that could be a positive. However, it also means you will lack valuable feedback, unless you manage getting that, too.

If you thought using a language software was solitary, doing things for free is even more so. Most language products come with private forums for customers, where both students and representatives of the company can interact to help learners who use the product make the most of it. While free products can have that, too, they’re rarely organized, if at all useful.

More Skills To Master

Doing things the free route usually means more than just brushing up on language skills. Instead, it requires a working level in a few more:

1. You’ll need to flex your research muscles to find good material.
2. You’ll need to study different approaches to language learning that you can pattern your own lessons from.
3. You need to go into teacher mode, designing your own learning plans and lesson structure.
4. You need to define your own measuring sticks as to your proficiency.
5. You need to create and manage a feedback system, whether this be people you talk with in real life or people you interact with over the internet.

Paid Language Resources

When you enroll in a language classroom, book time with a tutor or use a language software, the problems of doing things on your own go away. You don’t waste time scouring the internet for material and making sense of how to correctly organize it. Instead, you just follow the lesson plan and work hard through it — no time lost.

I’m not saying paid language lessons are the best route for everyone. There are, probably, people out there for whom using free resources will work better. However, I doubt they’re that common. I like using college courses as an analogy. Say, you want to learn discrete mathematics before the end of the year and you want to make sure that it really happens. Would you do it by enrolling in a class, get a textbook or going to Google? All three are valid, but only the first two can guarantee that you have the right resources to learn things.

Should You Or Should You Not?

Ultimately, the decision is up to you. If you value the couple of hundred dollars you’ll save, then use the free resources available to you. If you value the time you won’t waste dealing with the non-language stuff, then pay for lessons. Both are equally valid routes.

If you do go with the free route, always remember that paid lessons will always be available, in case that doesn’t work out. Usually, you’ll have an inkling early on anyway on whether things are working out. If it’s not, don’t force things. Cut your losses and invest in an affordable language software.

Do You Need To Travel To Learn A Language?

You’ve heard it said many times before: traveling and immersing yourself in a foreign country is the best way to learn its language. Is it true? There are arguments both ways and, to be honest, they each have their merits. As for being the best, I guess that depends from student to student. Some students will find high-pressure immersion situations just the stimulation they need. Others, however, might find it a little too much too soon.

What I can argue, though, are the very tangible benefits of travel to language learning. Experiencing both the language and culture first-hand makes a huge difference in your appreciation and understanding of the language. It must be noted, however, that hopping on a plane and settling down a couple months aren’t all you need to do in order to further your language training — you’ll have to actually take proactive steps to learn the language, as well. If all you do is sit at home and socialize with your expat buddies, we doubt you’ll develop much skill in the language.

The point I’m trying to make is, that while travel could help language learning, it’s what you use that travel experience for that will determine your results. For all I know, you can just lock yourself up in a room with a Spanish language software while vacationing in Spain, which no different from what you can do while staying at home.

Immersion Isn’t About Where You Are

When we talk about language immersion, we immediately think of someone flying over to the foreign country and living there with the locals for an extended period of time. Truth is, you can live for years in another country and not be immersed in the culture at all. Immersion, after all, isn’t about where you are — it’s about what you do while you’re there.

Attitude Matters

Your attitude will play a huge part in how travel shapes your language learning experience. Are you going to come to the country with a serious intent to learn the language? Or will you just wing it as you go along?

Your commitment to learning the language and your resolve to follow-through on all the necessary steps is what will, eventually, make or break the process for you. Only when you have the attitude of really wanting to learn will you do everything in your power to take advantage of the available opportunities all around you. And believe me, opportunities are everywhere for language learners when they’re in a country that speaks the target language natively.

Put In Work That Matters

While passive exposure can impart bits and pieces of the language to you, it’s the things you pursue actively that define how far you actually progress in your language learning journey. If you attend to everything as if you’re still at home, then being abroad won’t change anything.

Traveling for language learning means adjusting your activities so that you can take advantage of the authentic sources of learning available to you. For most people, this will mean putting in more time for practice, rather than sitting in front a computer and sifting through lessons. This can mean actively seeking out potential resource persons that you can practice the language with on a regular basis (many of them will be happy to oblige, provided you’ll also practice English with them on occasion — not a bad trade). This can mean spending more time out in the streets, soaking in the language and using what little you know to interact.

Learning With A Computer

If all you plan to do is learn in a computer, don’t bother traveling — it’s just an unnecessary expense. Whether you’re working with a language software, an online course or a language tutor over Skype, you might as well just do it from the comfort of your home. All you have to do is pair the lessons with a regular practice group (this, of course, is the challenging part — finding people) to put what you learn to good use.

Basically, language learning boils down to two things: absorbing information and using that information to interact with people. Both can be done with a computer, of course, not just the absorbing information part.

When I learned Spanish two years ago, for instance, I was living in Singapore, where Spanish speakers weren’t really that accessible. To compensate for the lack of in-person interactions in the vernacular, I went online and found a language group that practiced weekly.

The group consisted of eight Spanish as second-language learners, including me. I know what you’re thinking — the blind leading the blind, right? Fortunately for me, that group was actually run by a first-language speaker who facilitated our Skype meetings to give it structure, corrected mistakes and helped push the conversations along. Sure, it cost a little money, but it was a huge step up from what would have been my fate — being confined to learning with a language software and trying to work out erroneous conversations with students on the same level of incompetence as me.

Immersion Versus Regular Practice

How much better is immersion compared to just getting regular practice like I described above? Based on my own experiences, it’s not that not much better in terms of getting you ready to use the language.

There are times, in fact, when the teacher-run practice groups might have an advantage since the sessions usually run with a well-defined structure. As in, the teacher can ensure you guys go over the important elements of the language, rather than interacting about random things like you would in an immersion situation.

What immersion brings to the table, though, is an opportunity to experience the culture. Knowing how deeply tied language is to a country’s culture, immersion provides a way to appreciate the language at a level those who simply study in their own countries aren’t likely to experience. Ultimately, that appreciation leads to a deeper understanding of why a language works the way it does, making you a much better second language user in the long run.

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