First Year Student Living In Halls?
Learning a Foreign Language: How to do it without spending a fortune.
Having a second language can open so many doors after you finish university. Besides being an attractive skill for UK employers, it also opens up opportunities in other countries. Be warned: Learning a new language is never going to be easy and don't expect to be fluent overnight, however, if you’re determined and resourceful, it’s relatively easy to advance your skills in a language quite quickly.
Most of us use phrases and expressions all the time to communicate our ideas and new ones come in all the time. There’s no way you’re going to pick these up from a textbook or dictionary, so making friend’s with a native speaker or finding some way to have conversations with someone fluent is important in learning the language. In, practically, every city there are 100s (if not 1000s) of international students who are eager to improve their English so getting involved in a language exchange program is a great way to get practising for free.
Whether you go over there for a short break, to travel around the country or on a placement year to work or study abroad, there’s no better way to advance your language skills than to throw yourself in the deep end and get talking to native speakers in their home country. Surrounded by signposts, taking directions, seeing the culture will have you picking up new words in no time.
There are a number of cheap or even free language training apps out there, one of the good ones is Duolingo. Which offer a mix of activities and games to engage you with learning a new language. Though most of them are only suitable for total beginners, there are apps out there that offer more advanced language teaching (example, example)
Whenever you go abroad it's important to make sure you have the right insurance
in place. If you're going on a holiday, see our single trip page.
Or if you're going abroad to study or on a placement year, take a look
at our study abroad page.
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