Best Ways Couples Learn a Foreign Language

When you live in a different country for a while during your youth, you have a good chance of developing fluency in a language other than your native tongue. The best ways couples learn a foreign language can involve one or more of the following methods.

In high school, I was a little jealous of a classmate, Kathy, who lived in Spain for a number of years in elementary school. Her father was a manager for General Motors and was assigned to a facility they had there.

As a result, she aced the state exams for Spanish her Freshman year and went on to focus on learning another language. I have no idea what became of her, but having fluency in a language or three probably gave her a leg up when it came time to look for a job after school.

Because none of us can turn back the clock, thinking about the best ways couples learn a foreign language can help us to organize our life and get it done!

Try Being a Digital Nomad

As adults, most of us have jobs and responsibilities and life gets in the way of picking up and moving to another country. That is unless you arrange your life to make this possible. I’m not saying it’s easy or even all that common, but it is a great way to learn a foreign language when you’re immersed in it every day.

Along those lines, I listen to a podcast, the Expat Money Show that talks about the virtues of living abroad and how to make it work. We’re considering our options about trying this out and what it might look like. As it progresses, we’ll keep you posted.

The last couple of years has taught us that remote work is a lot more feasible than many previously thought and the idea of getting set up in a cool new country with your laptop and reliable wifi is not that crazy of an idea.

Maybe it’s just a week or two for starters or a month to get acclimated but lots of folks have embraced the digital nomad lifestyle and found it agrees with them a lot.

Immersion Training

Similarly, academic immersion in a language is also a great route to fluency. Short of moving to a new country, taking a full immersion program like the summer session ones offered at Middlebury College in Vermont provides a ‘sink or swim’ atmosphere that makes it much more likely you’ll have a high degree of fluency in your target language.

This type of program requires job flexibility, drive, and resources to make it work for you. If you and your better half have the sort of job that operates on a school calendar, this might be a route for you.

Community Groups

Other routes to investigate include language classes through local community organizations. These might be through a church or cultural society tasked with maintaining a connection with a cultural heritage.

For instance, in our area, a local Lutheran church offers adult German lessons and the Ukrainian Cultural Center has occasional classes or intros to the Ukrainian language. The advantages to these types of programs are that you’re typically interacting with native speakers and learning conversational fluency in your target language. Sign up for a class or intro with your partner and see if this might be for you.

Tech and App Based Learning

Modern tech can provide a great introduction to a new language provided you couple it with a desire to work on it a little bit each day. You’ll be surprised at how much of a new language you can pick up after a few months of daily practice. Duolingo in particular is ‘gamified’ so you earn points, stars, and positive feedback for completing your daily lessons. Heck, if you and your significant other are the least bit competitive, this can be a fun way to learn while trying to ‘one up’ each other on points. This injects a bit of fun and competition into the process, so it will feel less like drudgery.

Duolingo

Duolingo is an app-based language tool that allows you to study 20+ different languages. It’s ad-supported and free for their basic service, but they also have some paid options that are useful if you want to remove the ads or take advantage of their deeper offerings. You can learn popular languages like Spanish, French, German, or something more obscure like Gaelic, the native Irish language.

I would characterize Duolingo as a great way to take some first steps into your target language and build a pretty sizable bank in your brain of vocabulary words which can be useful if you decide to progress with your language study or navigate in a rudimentary way in a new country. Where Duolingo falls short, is with practice ‘in the wild’ with a teacher or native speaker. After a couple of years of studying German, I still have a “deer in the headlights” feeling when someone is speaking to me but I am also light-years from where I started with that language, which was zero.

You won’t be ready to work as a diplomatic interpreter at the United Nations, but you will likely be able to order breakfast, understand street signs and maybe carry on a simple conversation with the vendor in that funky open-air market you stumbled across.

Rosetta Stone

Similarly, Rosetta Stone is app-based and allows you to learn 30+ languages (or variations). It’s a paid service, although they regularly offer free trials to give you a feel for the structure of the lessons and whether it’s something that makes sense for you. Lessons are divided up into logical categories like meeting people or dining out that will give you the language skills you need in various situations. As you advance, you can enroll in live coaching to further practice and develop your language skills. Critiques of Rosetta Stone are that it sometimes teaches a more formal version of a language than is necessarily used in day-to-day life. Again though, getting a foundation in a target language will allow you to more fully experience culture on a trip and if you need to fine-tune your diction as time goes on, so be it.

Babbel

Finally, Babbel which is available on the web or app-based, Germany-based Babbel offers 14 languages. Fewer than their competitors, but in some ways provides more “pro-level instruction” and a more direct way to becoming fluent for conversations with real people in your target language.

Here is a list of languages currently available on each platform. I’ve also excluded Klingon and High Valerian from the list since they are fictional literary languages, but they may be useful if you’re into cosplay or planning a trip to a fan convention somewhere.

Streaming Services/Online Viewing

Change up your evening couch routine by watching shows in your target language. For instance, Netflix has episodes of Babylon Berlin in German with English subtitles. Many cable and satellite systems allow you to subscribe to additional channels, many of which are broadcast in languages other than English. This doesn’t exactly work when you’re starting from zero with a new language, but once you’ve learned a bit of vocabulary and grammar structure, it can be a fun way to focus on building your language skills while watching a drama or police procedural.

Video Based Tutoring

Next on our list is video-based tutoring. There are a few of these but Verbling is one that comes to mind. Basically for a flat hourly fee, you connect over video chat and talk with native speakers in your target language. You can schedule at times that work for you (subject to time zones) and really practice and develop fluency at your own pace.

Bottom Line

To sum up, once you’ve figured out how to afford the travel you want to take, decide what countries you want to head to and put a plan in place to learn the language.

Traveling to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language can be a little intimidating. The reality is that most people are friendly and as a tourist, they’re willing to help you out. However, if you can learn some of the basics, it can help you meet someone halfway and show a certain courtesy to your hosts in a country you are traveling to. It can help get you out of a jam when you’re lost or otherwise find yourself in a situation where nobody is speaking English.

On a positive note, it also gives you a deeper connection to a country when you can figure out what is being written in newspapers, on signs, or the magazine sitting on the windowsill of the coffee shop.

Please follow and like us: