You can also browse for music on your favorite streaming service and find tunes in the language you’re learning. Such resources train your ear to the sounds of your new language, and can expose you to a variety of experiences that will teach you about cultures and dialects you’d have a tough time learning about otherwise!

Nowadays, you can access audio from all over the world! There are podcasts (like the learner-friendly Duolingo Podcast), and you can also sample radio stations all over the world and hear their music and news at sites like Radio Garden. Thankfully, today we have a lot more options! Stream media in your new language They would subscribe to newspapers, go out of their way to see foreign films on college campuses, or buy short-wave radios and try to pick up transmissions from around the world. See, in the old days, language learners had to get really creative to interact with the language they were learning. And I had 130 penpals at one point (true story!) who helped me learn about other cultures and languages. We’d also check out language learning materials from the local library. Thankfully, I had a mom who took me to the local college for mommy-and-me French classes. What do you recommend to be able to connect with my language learning more when I live in an area that is difficult for me to find those I can practice and speak with? 😀īoy, do I feel your pain, Buckeye Blues! I grew up in a small town with one movie theater, terrible radio reception, and no bookstore to speak of. 🤗💜 I am currently learning Chinese and German-however, where I live in Ohio, I don’t get to interact with Chinese speakers. Thank you for providing such a wonderful app. Over the years, depending on where I was, what I was studying, and the resources I could (or couldn't) find, I've often had to get creative with my learning! So I can really appreciate this week's Dear Duolingo question: Our question: But my hobby has always been learning languages, and I’ve tackled over a dozen: from French and German to Indonesian and Mandarin. Since then, I’ve worked with professors to integrate technology into their teaching, and have led the development of learning content at a number of edtech companies. I started on my first computer-assisted language-learning project in 1989, creating grammar exercises for beginning learners of Russian, and earned my PhD in Slavic Linguistics a few years later.

Hey there! I’m Lisa Frumkes, and I work with the Freelance Operations team at Duolingo. Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for language learners.

Gardenscapes games