What are the best ways for advanced language learners to retain their skills?

Monday, 2nd November 2009

What are the best ways for advanced language learners to retain their skills?

If you have learnt foreign languages to an advanced level but don’t use it regularly, you’re likely to forget some aspects of it.

It will become increasingly difficult to recall the vocabulary, and your ability to put together sentences and to apply the grammar is likely to diminish. It is a great shame if all the time and effort you’ve put into learning the language goes to waste, so how can you avoid this?

The key to maintaining language skills is practise – to use your language as often as possible, to immerse yourself in it whenever you can.

Listening to foreign radio stations online, via shortwave or satellite is a great way to keep your ears tuned to the language, and to maintain and increase your vocabulary. You could have the radio babbling away in the background while doing other things, or listen to specific programmes that really interest you in more detail. Watching foreign TV channels and foreign films can also be useful, though they require more of your attention.

To keep your reading skills up to scratch you could read foreign novels, magazines, newspapers, blogs and another material you can get hold of. If you read some of them aloud you can practise your speaking as well. If you want to brush up your vocabulary on a particular topic you could read material related to that topic. Academic journals, instruction manuals, textbooks, and communications from local and national governments are good sources of specialised vocabulary, for example.

There may be opportunities to practise your speaking with people in your area – foreign students, immigrants or other advanced learners. If there’s a local college or university you may be able to find native speakers of the foreign language willing to help you, in return for helping them with your native language. Or they may be a conversation group for learners.

Keeping a diary or blog is a good way to practise your writing skills in your language(s), and on a blog you could ask your readers to correct your mistakes. You could find a penpal and write to them regularly, or try writing comments on other people’s blogs, letters to newspapers, short stories, songs, poems or even novels.

Language lessons and courses will not always be suitable for you as they are often aimed at beginners and intermediate learners. If you find that no advanced courses are available in your area, an alternative might be to take classes in subjects taught through the foreign language. These may be in a subject that you’re already familiar with, in a completely new subject, or even another language. For example, you could learn Italian cooking through Italian or Flamenco through Spanish.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Comments

There are currently no comments for this article. Be the first!

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Please enter the word you see in the image below:


French Highlights