The First eduFire Group Blog Post!

Hey all. I’m writing an article for our blog entitled “10 Simple (and Free) Steps to Learn a Language”. I’m hoping to post it Wednesday morning. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what should or shouldn’t be included. Here’s what I have for a starting point. Anyone who contributes a suggestion that makes it into the post will get a credit in the post. Thanks in advance for any help. This will be fun! :)

1 – Download all the podcasts for the language you’re interested in learning.
2 – Find a partner who you can practice with online or in-person.
3 – Get a bunch of DVDs of TV shows or movies with the language track that you want to learn.
4 – Make plans to travel to a country where the language is spoken.
5 – Find a program or two on the Web to help you build your vocabulary.
6 – Figure out “hacks” to get to fluency more quickly (e.g., this)

Also, in case you guys are wondering I’m definitely going to mention eduFire tutoring as a Step #11 (since it’s technically not free).

Would love to hear any additional thoughts any of you might have. We’re going to promote this article heavily on Digg/StumbleUpon, etc. so in all likelihood thousands of people will end up reading it!

Thx!!!

Books, reading is important to improve vocbulary, sometimes you can find the same book in your own language and the one you are learning. That’s helpful.

Sue

1.Since immersion is hard and can be costly…one must move to another country I have founf a smaller scale immersion project; surround myself with native speakers at work and have them only communicate with me in their native language…in my case Spanish.

2. Find books with illustrations or pictures to learn from. Starting with the youth books was been best for me.

3. Music is also another great way to become familiar with a language

And if you can’t surround yourself with people who speak that language fluently, try to use one of those programs that test your speech at repeating word played by the program itself in that specific language. (x eg.: B.Y.K.I.)

Sue

Fantastic suggestions. Thanks Susan and Stephanie. :) Please keep them coming!

You have the choice :
The Bible or Harry Potter
The Quran or Harry Potter

:→

Websites for newspapers and magazines from the country and language you’re interested in. They’re not only free, but you can choose the subject you’re interested in, e.g. sport, entertainment etc.

To go along with these, you need a great (and free!) dictionary to help you look up words you don’t know. Great for expanding your vocab! Something like WordReference.com is a great online dictionary for English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Russian!

To add to Marco’s idea – find blogs too! You can even strike up a conversation if you’re brave enough!

1.The library is a great resource and is FREE. You may find movies in another language, books to help teach you another language as well as cd’s.
2.Start a local club/group to practice/study with.