13 Blogs to Read if You're Learning a New Language
While there’s no denying that learning a new language is difficult, and can seem daunting at first, there are also more resources for do-it-yourself language-learners than ever before. The web is full of a variety of fantastic resources to answer your questions and keep you on track, and the best part is that many of them are free! With so much free content, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which resources will be helpful to you. That’s why we’ve put together a list (in no particular order) of twelve inspiring blogs to help you with your language goals.
Lingholic is a thorough and interesting language-learning website founded by Sam Gendreau, who has helped unite language learners into a more closeknit online community. With this goal in mind, Sam has created an awesome collection of original interviews with distinguished polyglots like himself. He also shares plenty of useful and detailed information about his own methods for maximizing language learning efficiency, including a fantastic (and free!) downloadable e-book on ‘the three best kept secrets to reaching fluency in a foreign language.’ Entertaining listicals like “It’s Raining Husbands” and Other Idioms Translated into Different Languages, are thought provoking and good for a few honest laughs, whereas other articles, particularly in the review section, are more practical. Part of what makes this website great is that it’s really geared towards helping readers pick the language learning strategy that’s right for them. Once you’ve determined your particular objectives Lingholic is a great place to assess and compare the merits of available programs (both free and paid).
Actual Fluency is an awesome blog built around an informative podcast series of the same name. The podcast and website are the work of Kris Broholm, “a twenty-something year old Dane, who found language learning when hopelessly drifting around trying to look for a path to follow.” And what has come of this ‘hopeless drifting’ you ask? Well, it’s a fun and super-useful language-learning blog for the everyman. Kris is a man on a mission, to learn 10 languages in 10 years. So far he speaks English, Danish, German, and Esperanto, as well as a bit of Russian, and you can follow his journey through his weekly show that’s inspiring, informative, and entertaining. The extensive collection of audio clips makes this blog particularly useful for anyone who really wants to speak a new language more than simply read or write it. Most people fall into this group, since speaking (more than anything else) is the most helpful tool when travelling and networking.
I Will Teach a You Language is an outstanding tool for readers, writers, and language-learners. This entertaining and practical blog was founded by Olly Richards, who speaks seven languages. It’s ideally suited for anyone learning a new language from home and aims to help visitors learn to study and manage their time effectively. It’s usually easier (albeit generally more stressful) to learn a language by going abroad and being immersed in it. This is because you don’t really have a choice or a break – the accelerated learning is the result of an immediate need. However, learning a language before travelling (even if it’s just the basics) will make your travel experiences infinitely more rewarding, it just takes a bit more pre-departure dedication. I Will Teach You Language is full of advice and specific suggestions (with resources & examples!) for learning a language quickly and effectively, without much studying in the traditional sense. In just 24 months Olly has posted 167 articles and the result is an honest, clear, funny blog from an accomplished, yet modest, polyglot. He even offers a few E-Books and new, weekly content for email subscribers.
German is Easy is a very helpful ‘bitesized’ blog by experienced teacher and native German speaker Emmanuel Schuchart. The reason I call it a ‘bitesized’ blog is because German is Easy offers an abundance of short, helpful, practice-focused articles that are quick, enjoyable, and useful. Emmanuel’s exercises come in a variety of forms, including listening comprehensions, work-sheets, a word of the day section, and posts that explain grammar points he believes are under-expressed in most textbooks. He posts sample solutions and corrects any exercises that readers submit, and he even follows up common errors with more explanations – he is really just SUPER helpful in general…along with being honest and funny in his writing. Emmanuel acknowledges the unavoidable problem of laziness, that learning new things (particularly things that are as complicated as languages) is hard, and makes it easy for readers to want to practice by delivering informative, interesting, neatly organized, and charismatically written practice material and assistance on a regular basis.
Talk To Me In Korean is a wonderful website that offers a comprehensive online Korean language learning program. Here you’ll find materials for learning Hanguel (the Korean writing system), a comprehensive speaking instruction course in 9 levels, fun (and useful) on-demand pages like ‘Story Time in Korean Vol. 1 & 2’, and much more. Whatever your goals and/or learning style, Talk To Me In Korean, has something for you! The focused curriculum is suitable for all levels and available learning materials include audio lessons, video lessons, and an online book store. Most of the content is available for free but many of the supplementary materials cost only a small fee. This blog is particularly excellent because it has a clear purpose and plenty of great content that’s tailored to visitor's needs. A recent video series “How Do You Say This in Korean?”, hosted by teacher Kyung-hwa really rounds out the blog by answering FAQs from visitor’s emails, Twitter, and Facebook comments.
ESL Hip Hop, by experienced ESL teacher Stephen Mayeux, is one the most creative and innovative language-learning blogs on the web. Stephen, like many others, has recognized and acknowledged hip-hop as a familiar, relevant, and linguistically rich source of content that can (and should) be used as a teaching tool. Hip-hop culture has been changing the nature, sound, and rules of the English language, expanding them to express a greater range of life-experiences. Posts like “Learn English Vocabulary with Immortal Technique” provide helpful, organized definitions of common expressions that are used outside of hip-hop, like ‘cold-hearted’, ‘cut throat’, and ‘made man’. The overall focus on defining and explaining slang terms and idioms in both contextual and grammatical terms makes this blog particularly accessible and useful, not to mention creative. Stephen's unique and specific blog is an online community that makes learning and teaching English quicker, more fun, and more relevant for the many individuals who are attracted to and inspired by the hip hop genre.
Learn Out Live by André Klein provides a variety of compelling posts and useful materials for learning English, Hebrew, and German. The author presents himself as both a ‘tech-guy’ and a ‘language-guy’ and a lot of really useful information comes out of the intersection of these two identities. Here you’ll find a number of practical and highly specific posts for getting the most out of your e-reader & e-books, as well as several of André’s own stories available for download. He combines learning and fun by using quirky topics to create quizzes and other handy tools, i.e. “10 Totally Weird German Signs – Can You Make Sense of Them?”, and he does a great job of consolidating links to a variety of language instruction services and materials. Overall, the strength of Learn Out Live is it’s superbly written content. Audio clips and videos are great, but there’s something very pleasant about the act of reading. This a fantastic, multilingual resource for high quality reading material. The internet, after all, is both the library and the book store of the future.
Strategies in Language Learning by Andrew Weiler is an insightful blog that approaches language learning from a broad, learning-strategy based perspective (as opposed to focusing on a specific language). He considers how people learn rather than what they are learning in particular. Andrew offers simple but very helpful suggestions for learning languages that readers can easily incorporate into their daily lives – like watching dramas in their target language. At its heart this blog is about empowering individuals to succeed with language-learning while improving their ability to learn more generally. This encouraging, strategy-focused blog is full of entertaining content, like “Yoda’s Advice on Language Learning – Do or do not. There is no try.” Which makes it the ideal resource for supplementing many of the other wonderful language-specific programs available.
Prof Dave’s English Learning Blog is a companion website for Prof. Dave’s English students at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. It’s a highly organized website designed to inspire and support university students in Taiwan to learn English more effectively. While the blog is primarily geared towards students enrolled in his classes, Prof. Dave’s content can be useful to anyone learning English. The assignments and activities he posts for his students are valuable practice tools, and he has provided a number of links for further study. Prof Dave’s English Learning Blog is a very professional resource and a particularly excellent tool for both Mandarin speakers learning English and ESL teachers teaching Mandarin speakers.
Languages of the World, by Asya Pereltsvaig – a professor of Linguistics at Stanford University, offers readers an abundance of informative and original content focused on answering complex questions like ‘How does language make us humans what we are now?’, ‘How do we learn language?’, and ‘How do we navigate our multilingual world?’. Although Asya specializes in Slavic and Semitic languages her blog truly covers world languages, with thoughtfully written and curated articles, booklists, and discussions on language groups spanning every continent. Languages of the World also hosts a variety of sound clips and language maps, supplementing the superbly written content with helpful audio and visual materials. If you’re interested in learning about languages from an academic perspective and in looking at the significant and multifaceted ways in which language, history, and culture inform and influence one another, then this is the best blog around!
5 Minute Language by Agnieszka Murdoch, is all about fitting language-learning in with your busy life. She has created, compiled and streamlined a variety of resources to help readers optimize their time. Each of Agnieszka’s motivational articles or videos takes less than five minutes to read or watch and contain useful tips and techniques for improving your language skills. Most of the suggestions are simple, like single-tasking, going offline, and exercising for five to ten minutes before you practice, but sometimes it’s the small changes that make the biggest difference. The author has learned French, English, Spanish, German, and Swedish to varying degrees but her recommendations can be applied to learning any language. The best organizational tool offered by this blog is most certainly The Motivation Journal, which you can buy a hard copy of or view electronically free of charge. This handy tool can help you achieve your specific goals, make progress, and overcome challenges – everything that this blog aims to inspire and assist with in one neat package!
Words and Worlds of New York is a blog documenting one woman’s linguistic adventures and misadventures learning languages in New York City. Ellen first began her project in July 2009 and sought out to learn as much as she could about different languages spoken around The Big Apple. Even though the project was originally meant to last just one year, it has now stretched on for five years and is set to continue for an indefinite amount of time; so far she’s learned 19 different languages with 9 different alphabets and writing systems. While Ellen’s personal experiences, told in a charming and relatable manner, are at the epicentre of the blog, she also reviews a number of tools that many people use in their own personal language-learning pursuits (like Duolingo!). As an accomplished intellectual and an engaging writer Ellen now speaks at numerous events around the world. If you love her blog you may find one of her events convenient to attend.
Gabriel Wyner, creator of Fluent Forever, was inspired to become a polyglot by his work as an opera singer, which requires him to sing in Italian, French, German, English, Russian, Czech, Spanish, Hebrew, and Latin. Gabriel’s art has inspired an 8 year language-learning journey that’s become something of a lifestyle. He continues his work as a musician and has also become a teacher. The Fluent Forever blog is an excellent resource for language learning tools and an overall great read. Gabriel has posted about each language as he learns it so you can easily follow along and see how someone else overcame the various challenges presented by each particular language. Gabriel emphasizes a non-translation approach to language-learning that’s built around three techniques which often get overlooked despite having been available for decades (or even centuries). He encourages students to think in a foreign language, learn accurate pronunciation first, and use computerized memorization tools. Together, these three keys make becoming fluent in a foreign language a reasonable and reachable goal for anyone.
