Learning a Language? Here are Some Fun Tools to Help You

Being housebound is not all bad; take advantage and use your extra time to finally learn a foreign language. Here are some tips for learning new words and improving your conversation ability and grammar:Hire a Tutor Thousands of people use iTalki for language lessons with native speakers via video chat. The site provides tutors of various languages highlighting their hourly rate which is usually around $8 - $20 per hour. Some teachers are professionals on the website and discounts are available for trial lessons. Instructors have introductory videos where they describe themselves and their teaching styles alongside reviews and availability calendars which will help you choose your perfect tutor.Apps and podcastsBabbel and Duolingo are language apps and e-learning platforms that have lessons of several languages. These apps have exercises to help you use words in sentences, multiple-choice questions, pictorials and spelling and speaking exercises to aid your learning. Duolingo is completely free unless you opt for the premium subscription. The first few challenges on Babbel are free but then you will need to pay a monthly subscription to access more lessons. The price varies depending on how long you want access.CoffeeBreak is a series of podcasts from Radio Lingua Network that offers free lessons in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Swedish, Chinese and English. Each episode teaches you and aspect of the language you choose and every new exercise is designed to add on what you previously learned. The podcasts act as a trial for Coffee Break Academy's online courses available in several languages. You can listen to the podcasts for free or choose to pay for a course bundle which start at 80 Euros.Flashcards Flashcards are a good way to learn and improve your foreign language vocabulary. All you need is paper and pen to create your own vocabulary flashcards. You could take it a step further and label objects in your house in the foreign language you are learning. Digital flashcards like AnkiApp, a mobile and desktop flashcard app, can help you improve your pronunciation and overall language performance. The app uses artificial intelligence to help you identify words you need more work on.InstagramThere are several accounts on Instagram designed to aid learning new vocabulary in the language you are learning. Some of these Instagram accounts are @frenchwords for learning new French words and @daysofdeutsch for new German words. The visual nature of Instagram helps one to recall the meaning attached to the new words learned every day.Foreign language television shows and news channelsForeign language television shows such as the Spanish series "La Casa de Papel" on Netflix can help you develop your vocabulary and conversational skills. The whole series, which is about a money heist organized by a university professor, is in Spanish with an option for English and other various languages subtitles. Other foreign language shows can also be found on Amazon Prime.Some news channels like BBC and Japan's NHK World offer resources that can aid your learning. BBC provides short introductions in more than 30 foreign languages with basic phrases that can help you in learning new words and vocabulary.Change the language on your phoneIf you would like to completely immerse yourself in a language, changing the general language of your phone is a good way to do this. Apple's Siri and Google Assistant can communicate in a variety of languages, thus they can come in handy when you do not understand what your phone is trying to tell you.