6 great ways to learn a foreign language

Whether you’re planning to travel overseas or just want a challenge to seek your teeth into, learning a foreign language is a chance to give your brain cells a serious workout. Perhaps you'd like to visit a country where the words Twitter and Facebook are banned from use in TV and radio broadcasts, or you've always longed to learn Japanese. Happily, there are lots of ways to tackle the project, even if memories of studying verb conjugation tables from your high school German textbook fill you with dread.

1. Language apps for beginners
There are myriad foreign language learning apps, but AccelaStudy's free "Essentials" series is a good first pick. Available for more than a dozen languages, the app offers quizzes, flash cards, and audio clips of a native speaker pronouncing vocabulary words. It’s available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch; languages offered include Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Turkish, Romanian, Hebrew, Russian, Polish, Dutch, and Arabic.

Android users might want to check out the "Speak [language] Free" series of apps, which offers recordings of native speakers using basic phrases categorized by situation (travel, business, leisure, relationships, emergency, and so on). It's a good resource for travelers who want a practical intro to the language without stepping into the grammar swamp. It's available for would-be speakers of German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian, and French.

2. Software freebies
Take advantage of free demos from language learning software companies like Rosetta Stone and Mango Languages.  Demos give you a great opportunity to try on a language before committing to studying it. And who knows, you may like the learning approach so much that you decide to spring for the software.

To view Rosetta Stone's demo, you'll need to select a language. A new page will load that lets you purchase the software package for that language; you'll want to click the green box that says, "Try our interactive demo online." You'll have to enter a valid email address to proceed. Mango Languages' demo also requires a valid email address.

3. Online language dictionaries
Forget the 10-pound tome collecting dust on your bookshelf. Our vote for best online language dictionary, hands down, goes to WordReference.com. It offers English-foreign language dictionaries for more than a dozen tongues, including Arabic, Romanian, Japanese, and Czech. The site also has helpful language forums where native speakers of various languages duke it out to determine the best translation of idiomatic expressions. There's even a free WordReference app for Android and iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch so you can access all that linguistic awesomeness anywhere.

4. Book club for one
If you’ve already mastered the basics, you can design your own mini language course by listening to an audio book in a foreign language while reading the book at the same time. It's not a bad idea to select a title you've already read in English; it may sound like cheating, but familiarity with the story can give you a toehold to actually acquire some language knowledge along the way.

Audiobook CDs in foreign languages are available at Amazon.com; you can get foreign language books there, too, or visit Amazon’s Kindle Store to download an electronic copy of the book of your choice. Make sure to verify that the book and audiobook you select are the same edition (you'd hate to be reading an abridged version of Don Quixote while listening to the original), and you’ll be on your way.

5. Become a foreign news junkie
Another great way to practice is to read newspapers or watch the news in your target language. A quick Google search should help you identify major newspapers and TV stations in the country of your chosen language. Assuming you don't live in a cave, this is a pretty easy way to increase your listening and reading comprehension, since you're probably familiar with some of the events being discussed.

Another good but easily overlooked resource is the reader comment section that often follows online news articles; the remarks might be brief, but they're a great way to pick up informal expressions.

6. Foreign Film Buffs: A word of caution
At this point, you may feel inspired to purchase a movie in a foreign language to add to your stockpile; tread carefully. DVDs and DVD players have built-in region codes, meaning a movie purchased in North America will be unreadable to a European or Asian DVD player, and vice versa. Some DVD players claim to read discs from multiple regions, but this is a murky area, and no major electronics company currently makes a product designed for this use. So it’s important to make sure the DVD you’re considering corresponds with the label on your DVD player.

If you live in the United States or Canada, you're in Region 1; Region 2 includes Europe and South Africa; and readers in Australia and New Zealand are part of Region 4.

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