Those of us who’ve grown up speaking English tend to be a bit backward when it comes to talking in other languages. How many times have you heard that tired old excuse that ‘Well, foreigners all speak English anyway’? That may seem true if your globetrotting is limited to guided tours and holiday resorts. But if you want to get off the beaten track around the world, a smattering of Franglais isn’t going to take you far.

In the past, the would-be language learner had two options. Either you could enrol at a night school or you could go it alone with the help of a book and audio tapes. These days you also have a broad choice of computer-based multimedia courses and Internet sites. This month, I shall be exploring some of the options available on the Web.

First Choose Your Language…

This month I shall be looking at a broad range of Internet sites aimed at people studying languages in general and the major European languages in particular. Given the fact that Chinese is the most widely spoken language in the world, you might think that our concentration on European languages is a bit parochial. In an effort to even up the balance, we also have a separate feature this month devoted to learning Chinese online.

See our separate guide on learning Chinese

If you are interested in languages that we don’t cover specifically in these features, be sure to take a look at Languages On The Web. This has a vast range of links to online courses, grammars and texts in just about any language you could name and probably quite a few that you couldn’t.

It is also worth using Google to search for links to specific languages. After a bit of Googling you will probably be able to find some sites that maintain indices to Web resources in your chosen language. For example, Hindi Language Resources is the place to go for all things Hindi while the Hindi Script Tutor is an excellent guide to learning Hindi’s Devanagari script.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Learner

If you want to master a language thoroughly, a ‘distance taught’ course is a good option. In the UK, the Open University (OU) is the longest established provider of distance learning for adult students and their courses are open to overseas students. Having taken a three year OU diploma course in French, I can vouch for the quality.

The OU has recently started to experiment with Internet-based study groups using custom conferencing software. I tried this out a couple of years ago but found it frustrating (slow and jerky with indifferent audio). I imagine this will improve when ‘broadband Britain’ becomes a reality. At the time of writing, broadband is still not available in the part of England where I live. The OU currently has courses in French, German and Spanish. LaTrobe University in Melbourne runs various distance-taught courses in Hindi plus one in Japanese for teachers.

One of the biggest problems of learning alone is that you are, well, alone. Some learners attempt to reduce the sense of isolation by finding pen friends. The modern version of a pen friend is an online ‘exchange partner’. Once you find a partner, you can not only exchange email messages but also, if you wish, talk online using a chat system such as Microsoft Messenger or PalTalk. This is a great way for fairly confident speakers to improve their pronunciation and fluency. If this appeals to you, you can seek out potential partners in numerous languages at My Language Exchange.

And don’t forget the good old BBC. In Britain, the BBC regularly transmits TV programmes aimed at learners of the most popular European languages plus a few other languages including basic Japanese and Mandarin. These courses are complemented by support materials on the Web.

Internet Broadcasting

Of all the BBC’s language Web sites, by far the best is the Welsh site from BBC Wales. I would go further. This is one the two best online teaching sites of any language I have come across. Radio Wales broadcasts a daily soap opera called ‘Catchphrase’ specifically aimed at Welsh learners. You can download an MP3 file of each week’s episodes plus a PDF file of the script from an archive that goes back to the start of 2002. There are other lessons for more advanced learners as well as online grammar help and video broadcasts of the week’s news for students of Welsh.

BBC Wales - Learn Welsh :: bitwise best web site award for more information on this award, see HERE

The BBC's Welsh Language site sets the standards by which others are judged

The only other online course I’ve discovered which rivals the BBC’s Welsh courses in both quality and quantity are the German tutorials provided by the Deutsche Welle radio station. This has three compendious courses for beginners, intermediate learners and business users.

The beginner’s course, which is divided into two series of 26 lessons each, assumes no previous knowledge of German. Each lesson takes the form of a 15 minute audio MP3 track with a short dialogue and explanations of grammar plus a downloadable PDF ‘chapter’ containing the dialogue, vocabulary and exercises. The intermediate course contains another 52 audio lessons and PDF chapters. The business German course comprises 26 chapters in MP3 and PDF. This is a splendid course which, even though it is free, is much more thorough than many quite expensive commercial courses. We recommend this without reservation.

Radio Deutsche Welle :: bitwise best web site award for more information on this award, see HERE

Radio Deutsche Welle provides tremendous tutorials for students of all levels of German

Italian learners might like to take a look at the Corso di lingua italiana provided by the Italian broadcaster, RAI International. This is colourful, friendly-looking course in which each graded unit is illustrated by a cartoon style illustration accompanied by an audio dialogue, exercise and vocabulary. It is by no means as well structured a course as Deutsche Welle’s German course, however, nor is it is thorough as BBC Wales’s Welsh course. Moreover, I found that RealPlayer keeps trying to find some mysterious ‘additional components’ whenever I select a lesson, fails to find them then plays the lesson anyway. This is an irritating and thus far insoluble problem!

More Italian lessons can be found on the Oggi e Domani site of Brooklyn College. These are useful for revision and practice if you are studying some other course but do not truly constitute a standalone course in themselves.

Free Lessons

If you want to learn Spanish, you can get started by following the free lessons at StudySpanish.com. This contains 101 online lessons which are mainly categorised according to the grammatical points taught. They include descriptions and quizzes but very little audio. The site also sells an audio Spanish course. A more complete free Spanish course, with grammar, audio and even video is the curso de espanol provided, curiously enough, by the German company, infos24.

For beginner French learners, the French Tutorial is a great site. It is a well structured course which takes you from the very basics of ‘Je suis, tu es’ right up to more complex issues such as past participle agreements. There is lots of text, a good range of vocabulary and plenty of audio too. The basic course is free. The optional Deluxe edition (which costs just $11) also provides support forums and a printed edition.

French Assistant is an even more ambitious site. It has three sets of lessons aimed at complete beginners plus numerous tests and exercises for beginner, intermediate and advanced level students. The exercises challenge you to find the correct forms of certain verbs, nouns and adjectives and to match English or French translations from a drop down list of alternatives.

The French Assistant tests your language skills to the limit

The French Assistant’s advanced level really does live up to its billing. It even has exercises dedicated the baroque complexities of the imperfect subjunctive (the cause of some of my worst nightmares)! There is free registration which gives you access to the entire site apart from the audio files. You can try out the audio for a 14 day trial period but if you want continued access to more than 50,000 sound files you must pay a modest £10 or $16 annually. This is an attractive and accessible site which offers good introductory material for the novice and useful practice and revision activities for learners at all levels. It does not, in my view, constitute a self-contained course, however. The structured lessons are currently available only for complete beginners. Lessons for more advanced learners are promised but these are not yet available.

Some excellent resources for language learners can be fund on the About Network. This contains a huge collection of sites dedicated to all kinds of specialist interests including a large number of languages. The quality and extent of the content on each of the About languages sites varies quite a bit. The French language site, maintained by the indefatigable Laura K Lawless is definitely one of the best. This contains lessons, grammar notes, exercises, essays, hints, tips, cultural information, audio snippets and links to other sites. You can also subscribe to email newsletters. Truly a magnificent site and a testament to the knowledge and passion of Ms Lawless. There are About sites devoted to Spanish, Italian, German and other languages. Definitely worth a look!

french.about.com bitwise recommended site for more information on this award, see HERE

The French department of the About network is a must-visit for all students of the language

For Advanced Learners

There are also many Internet audio and video resources for advanced language students. Several Asian languages have their own programmes on the BBC’s Asian Network. To tap into foreign language broadcasts worldwide, try logging onto the RealPlayer home page and changing the default language. Alternatively, use the Radio Tuner on the Microsoft Media Player and select Find More Stations followed by Advanced Search in order to find channels that broadcast in a specific language.

Bear in mind that many conventional radio stations also broadcast over the Internet. RAI broadcasts in Italian, Deutsche Welle broadcasts in German and France Culture has a large archive of French radio programs that you can listen to whenever you wish.

With all those resources at your fingertips, you should be able to start learning a new language or improving your existing skills almost immediately!

June 2005