The Complete Guide To Learning Languages Online

You're reading The Complete Guide To Learning Languages Online, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you're enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

“How are you learning languages online?” “Where do you connect online? “Is that really that effective?” These are some of the most common questions we get from our prospective customers. Many of you reading this may be thinking the same thing. Maybe you’ve never worked with a private teacher online, or you’ve tried software solutions online that didn’t work out for you. Today, we’ll be addressing many of the questions or thoughts you may have about learning languages online. We hope it helps you make an informed decision.

The Future Of Language Learning

As an immigrant, I’ve personally experienced the upside of learning another language. The world is becoming a more multicultural place by the second, and we’re surrounded by friends, co-workers, and even extended family members who speak another native language. To give you some data, the language learning will have grown from $115B to $286..2B between 2012 and 2018. And online language learning will be growing 11% year-over-year in the next 5 years. That’s massive growth. And we share this number to show you that the future of language learning (and education) is heading online. What’s driving this massive growth? For one, communication tools have become powerful enough where there’s very little distinction between in-person lessons and live video lessons. But more importantly, the benefits of learning languages online are clear.

The Benefits

While there are endless benefits to learning online, the top three are: convenience, productivity, and quality.

Learn Anywhere (Convenience)

Most of us don’t have the luxury of picking up our bags and booking a one-way ticket to Argentina to learn how to speak Spanish. Nor is it necessary today. Having lived in a foreign country for 18 months, I’ve met many people who weren’t able to learn the local language simply because they didn’t put in the effort. Sometimes it was out of laziness, but often times it was out of shyness. If you’re an introverted learner, having the ability to learn at the comforts of your own home, or at an environment where you feel safe is undervalued. While real-life immersion is powerful, you can reap the same benefits without sacrificing your lifestyle.

Save Time (Productivity)

With the ability to learn at the comforts of your own home, we can eliminate the biggest timesucker we have in today’s society – commuting. An average American wastes over 15 full days per year commuting. While we can’t change our work environment overnight, we can change our learning environment. For most of us learning languages in-person, the time wasted commuting is just as harmful, if not worse (depending on where your teacher or school is located). Since time is the most important commodity we have, learning languages online helps us win back more time instantly.

The Best Teachers Are Everywhere, Not In Your Local City (Quality)

As remote working becomes more prevalent in today’s workplace, so is the saying, “the best talents are everywhere.” When it comes to language learning, this is especially true. For one, language learning is as much of a cultural experience as it is an educational experience. The reason most of us learn a language (ex. Spanish) in the first place is to have a deeper connection with someone that comes from a different culture (ex. Colombia). Yet the chances of you finding the right teacher that matches your learning style, personality, and needs, who also originates from your desired location is pretty slim. By leveraging learning languages online, we have the power to work with the best teachers (and talent), not just the available ones within a mile radius from your home.

How To Make The Most Out Of Learning Languages Online

If you’ve decided that learning languages online could be for you, we’ve gathered some tips and tactics for you to make the most of it. Starting with…

1. Quality > Price

Price shopping is the most common form of human behavior when we’re investing in anything. But when you analyze the top performers in business, athletics, learning, they only work with the best. This is a pattern we see over and over again. What these high performers understand is that by working with the best, you can actually save more time and money in the end. When you’re starting a business, hiring the cheapest developer can cost your business 5x more time and money to fix the bugs and mistakes the developer made. When you’re an athlete, working with the cheapest physiotherapist can cost you your career. When you’re learning a language, working with the cheapest teacher can be the difference between knowing a foreign language or nothing at all. This is because learning something new is often more about self-motivation and persistency then strategy, especially when you’re just getting started. With that said, experience and qualifications only go so far. Working with someone who deeply understands your goals, needs, and proficiency should be a top priority, once you’ve found a teacher that’s qualified and experienced.

2. Remove Distractions

When you’re learning languages online, it’s easy to be multitasking while you’re simultaneously on a call with your teacher (i.e. checking Facebook). But the cost of distraction is bigger than we think. According to Gloria Mark, Ph.D. at the University of California, Irvine, upon being distracted during a task at hand, it takes us 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average to regain our focus. While some of us can regain our focus when we’re working on miscellaneous tasks like email or reports, it’s much harder to do when learning a language. This is why it’s important to…

3. Learn In Shorter Periods

Through our experience in high school, and college, we’ve become accustomed to sitting in two hour long lecture halls, trying to retain as much information as our brain allowed. Given by how little most of us actually remember from college, it’s safe to say that learning over long periods of time doesn’t work, especially if it’s inconsistent. Our most successful students at Rype are those who have managed to consistently learn in shorter periods of time over months, versus binge learning one week, and skipping out on the next week. Instead of learning for 5 hours once a week, try to break it down into 30 minute periods a couple of times a week.

“It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently.” ― Tony Robbins

In order to ensure you can do this, we recommend you…

4. Schedule Ahead Of Time

One of the easiest and most powerful ways to build new habits (and avoid decision fatigue) is to systemize your process. Studies have shown that willpower is limited, and the top performers have gotten to where they are by putting in more work over time. When you’re learning languages online with a teacher, the most important thing you can systemize is scheduling your lessons. It’s often overlooked because we’re already so distracted by everything else in our lives. While platforms like Rype directly allow you to schedule multiple lessons ahead of time, this option isn’t as convenient for other language learners. One way to overcome this barrier if you want to book lessons ahead of time with your teacher is to set up repeat events on your calendar (i.e. Google Calendar), and invite your teacher to each event. The point here is to make it as easy as possible for yourself to continue showing up for your lessons, because like many things in life, learning a language is mostly about showing up.

5. Use Complementary Tools

Just like you would want to leverage fitness tools like Fitbit or calorie trackers, even when you’re working with a personal trainer, you should be doing the same when learning languages online. There’s great memorization tools like Memrise or vocabulary learning tools like Duolingo that you can use while you’re working with your language teacher. Taking control over your own success, without solely relying on someone else is the best way to guarantee real results for anything you want to accomplish. You can also check out our free Learn a Language Challenge, which will give you 10 new most common words every morning.

What To Do Next

If you’re already in the process of learning languages online, congrats! To make sure you’re making the most out of the experience, and filling in the necessary gaps, we hope our tips today helped. For a quick review: 1. Quality > Price 2. Remove distractions 3. Learn in shorter periods  4. Schedule ahead of time 5. Use complementary tools Now we’d love to hear from you. What has been your experience like learning languages online, and what are some tips and strategies that have worked well for you? Share with us below 🙂 p.s – if you liked reading this post, we think you’ll also enjoy checking out:

• Complete Guide on How to Speak Spanish
• How to Learn Any Language in 90 Days
• 17 Language Tips From 17 World-Class Language Experts 

You've read The Complete Guide To Learning Languages Online, originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you've enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.

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