3 fun things you can do to improve your language skills

While learning a language, it is natural that your interest or motivation might suffer a dip. To keep on top of your learning and to get back into the swing of things, you can adopt some fun methods to help to expand your vocabulary, practise your listening skills and even broaden your cultural knowledge.

  1. Read the news in the language you are learning

This is really great to keep up to do what is happening in the country/countries where your target language is spoken. In addition, you can learn some really useful vocabulary that you might not otherwise come across.

Some useful French media sites with context, to help you make a choice that suits your interests;
lefigaro.fr - one of the most famous French newspapers and leaning more on the right side of the political compass.

france24.fr - takes a more international stance and is published in several languages.

lemonde.fr - another one of the most famous French newspapers. Aims to have a binary left-right approach and some consider it to be the most trusted paper.

libération.fr - a centre-left newspaper headquartered in Paris, that takes a more humorous, light-hearted approach in articles

Equally, here are some Spanish media sites, based in Spain:

lavanguardia.com - a left wing spanish language newspaper that is headquartered in Barcelona. Renowned for being supportive of the Catalan independency movement as a result.

elmundo.es - a centre-right newspaper.

elpais.com - the most sold newspaper in Spain, and is more liberal.

larazon.es - tends to be economically liberal and socially conservative.

  1. Listen to music in that language
    This is amazing if you want to expand your colloquial vocabulary and practise listening skills. If you are a fan of music anyway, this is a great choice and it makes language learning very fun. There is such a wide variety of artists out there; you are certain to find some that match your taste.

  2. Watch shows in that language
    This is amazing for your listening skills and cultural awareness. It allows you to pick up on sense of humour and colloquial or familiar use of language (which is often different to what you learn at school but equally as useful in the real world). Netflix is full of shows of all different languages.

Do you have any further tips to make language learning fun?

3 Likes

I used to watch a lot of korean tv shows and ended up learning so much korean :rofl: i really recommend watching movies/tv shows!

I agree, watching series is how I continue to practice French, it helps me understanding the language a little more each time

Watching shows helped me to better my english skills. So definitely a good approach :grin: