KEEPING LANGUAGE SKILLS UP OVER THE SUMMER
The long summer break is not ideal in seeking the continuity needed in language learning. Remember: you never stand still in a language. To ensure you move forwards over the next 4 months here are a few suggestions about how you can maintain your language skills until classes start again next semester:
To consolidate this year’s work:
- Work through the consolidation exercises inyour dossier, coursebook and the accompanying activity book, if there is one for your course.
- For further grammar study, work through the relevant sections in your coursebookor ask your tutor for other suitable grammar books. Most have a key so you can check your answers.
- Work on any texts in the relevant sections of your coursebook that you did not read during the course; this will be a useful way of revising vocabulary and grammar structures.
- To keep up your listening skills, work with the listening materials for your coursebook, and/or others available in the Self Access Centre.
It is important to try to work on the language little but often, i.e. do something at least once or twice a week.
What else can I do?
Other very useful ways to keep up your language include:
- listen to radio programmes or, if you have satellite or cable (available in the Self Access Centre), watch programmes in the target language (you can learn a lot of language from soaps and game shows!)
Visit foreign Web sites or chat rooms on the Internet.. Ask your tutor or check WebCT for useful website addresses
- find some foreign language reading books in your local (university) library or academic bookshop; there are lots of graded readers, including some parallel texts available for language learners
- try the local library for films (with or without subtitles) or switch the language on a DVD you are familiar with to the language you’re learning
- at more advanced stages it is often a good idea to read something in a foreign language the content of which you are already familiar with - e.g. a novel you have read in English, a foreign magazine on a specialist interest such as fashion, cinema, tennis, football or cycling. Large newsagents such as W.H.Smith and, increasingly, major supermarkets stock a range of foreign language newspapers and magazines
- ideally go to a country where the language is spoken (and insist on speaking it!) or link up with a native speaker in this country - the CELE (Centre for English Language Education) may be able to tell you if there are any French students on/around campus over the summer.