Enjoy a 10% discount on Spanish lessons either face to face or online if you book before 31st January 2024.* Maybe your New Year’s was to learn a language or to improve your Spanish. Perhaps you have tried learning on your own but find it hard to find the discipline to do this or struggle to know how and what to learn first. Just a few lessons may be all that you need to help you get started on the right track to achieving your goals. Continue reading →

Introduction

Online learning has changed the way we acquire new skills and knowledge. While traditional education is still useful, online certificate programs have become an increasingly popular option for people who want to learn more about a certain topic. Online courses are a convenient, flexible and affordable way of learning new things without leaving home. In this blog post, we will discuss some of the benefits of online certificate programs. Continue reading →

Now that I have finished school, received my A-Level grades, and confirmed my place at University, I have received a long reading list to get me started with the next stage of my academic career. Amongst other things, this list includes a textbook containing extensive lists of German vocabulary. As I was leafing through the book, I couldn’t help but notice how long lots of those words were, especially the nouns. Now, as a student of the language, I’m familiar with the complex, almost agglutinative nature of many German words – a linguistic phenomenon which can be intimidating to many learners at first. However, if you can see past the character count, and begin to see these words as friends rather than enemies, they can be an invaluable aid in communication … Continue reading →

As most people who have been through the UK state school system will know, language learning is, for many, a difficult process. Many adults will remember struggling through French lessons in secondary school, others will remember fighting the urge to fall asleep in a German class. Others still will remember the feeling of achievement after embarrassing their Latin teacher with a question about the number “six” – you know who you are. Nowadays, we as a society are caught in a trap: the younger generations – mine included – are being socialised into the idea that learning foreign languages isn’t as important as it used to be, on the grounds that the internet provides us with easy digital translation software. But is this a reasonable argument? Does Google Translate really mean we don’t need to learn how to greet our fellow humans in their own languages? Can we get away with not understanding the waiter in a Mediterranean restaurant, because “they all speak English anyway”? No. We can’t. And here’s why. Continue reading →

Maybe you have decided to start learning Spanish on your own without going to a college class or working with a tutor. This is much easier to do nowadays given the many language learning resources available on the internet and more and more language apps you can download onto your smart phone.

You have probably already worked out the benefits of learning alone; you study at your own pace whenever you have the time and will not feel the classroom pressure to keep up with everyone else. You don’t feel left behind if you miss a class. You can choose exactly what to study to achieve your specific goals.

However, there are disadvantages and difficulties that people face who decide to “go it alone” when learning a language. The first problem most people face is “language learning overwhelm”. You come across so much advice about what to learn first – should you focus on grammar or growing your vocabulary? Should you try to start speaking straight away? What are the best resources to use? How are you going to test yourself and keep track of your progress? The list of questions goes on. Continue reading →