What happens when you have successfully completed your language course?
One of the most important things to keep in mind is that language is something that needs to be worked on continuously. When we learn a language and then stop using it, our brains tend to forget it. This can be applied to languages you would have been learning for years or a language you have just picked up recently. Languages are alive and they need to be worked in order to work.
When following a course, most of the work is done outside the classroom. It is one thing to sit in a room and have a teacher or classmates to fall back on, but it is another story to leave the class and apply what you have been taught in real life situations. It is even scarier when you are alone and in a foreign country which speaks the foreign language you are currently learning.
What about when you go back home?
Does everything stop once the holiday and the course stop? This is a bold ‘No.’ Once you travel back home, it is your responsibility to put what you have learnt to good use and build on that. It does not matter if your language course lasted only a week and you are a beginner; there is a foundation that can be developed. Think of the language as a city that has become a mix of old and new architecture, such as London, or perhaps more locally, Valletta and Sliema. As you walk through the streets of Sliema, you begin to notice a variety in the style of the buildings which surround you, some being well over hundreds of years old and others which are still being developed. I am not justifying the blocks of concrete that have taken over the city, but it is a part of growth that a city has to go through, in order to remain alive. This is the same with languages. If you want the language to remain functional you have to build over the foundations you started with.
Everything is just a click away
Living in the digital era, we should really consider ourselves lucky, especially when it comes to keeping in touch with foreign aspects of our lives. Of course, this is particularly useful for language learners; for example, if you are trying to learn English, the easiest thing to do is go online and switch your browser language. Looking up music, videos, podcasts, news articles, and more, apart from being essential to language learning, is much easier to do regardless of the country you live in. Even exposing yourself to music in the foreign language on a, preferably, daily basis would significantly improve the level.
Keep it going – from home
Once you are in the comfort of your home, whatever the weather, learning the foreign language becomes a more fluid process. Buying course books and other supplementary materials makes it simpler to keep up the continuation outside of the language course. Having course books also helps you test yourself; with most books having the answers at the back, learners can test their understanding, as well as map out the progress made so far. It is important not to fall into the trap of translation; when we rely on the possibility to translate, we do not really substantially learn anything.
inlingua Online Learning
Following your course at inlingua, you are given the opportunity to directly continue your studies using our inlingua Online Learning (IOL) programme. If you book IOL, you are given material which would be linked to the course book used in class. Students benefit from a lesson plan; interactive learning; reading, writing, listening, speaking exercises along with grammar and vocabulary exercises and much more. It would be a great opportunity to continue your English lessons from any part of the world.