hello everyone and welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is sarah and quite
a lot of videos that i make on this channel are to do with my experience as a languages student
at university in the uk right now i'm in my third year and for my degree that means
spending as much of the year as possible abroad but of course because of this whole situation
at the moment i'm not really able to spend as much time abroad as i would like to have done and of
course this year has been difficult for everyone and for languages students this difficulty in
particular has been perhaps not being able to get as immersed as we otherwise would be able to be
whether it's not having as many chances to meet people to practice conversation and stuff like
that or if like me you're not able to go abroad for as long as you want so i thought that in this
video i would discuss a few relatively easy ways that you can get immersed in another language for
free from your home and i'm gonna categorize these ways also into the four key skills of
reading writing listening and speaking and while some of these ways are quite common methods used
by people at home to get immersed in a language i'm hoping that some of these ways will be a bit
more outside the box so yeah i hope that you guys find this video useful whether you're studying a
language as part of a qualification or perhaps you've set a goal for the new year to learn a
new language or maybe even if you have studied a language before but haven't studied it for a while
and you want to pick it up again i hope you find this video useful and that you perhaps pick up one
or two ways that you haven't thought of before and let's get into it so as i said in the intro
i have tried to break these down into the four key skills and obviously some of these are going
to overlap and belong into more than one but i've tried to categorize them into the one that fits
best for each if that makes sense so first of all with reading number one is follow instagrammers or
whichever social media you use the most and you're more likely to use anyway follow people on there
my favorite just happens to be instagram think about the kind of accounts that you like to follow
anyway in your native language and then also follow them in your target language so for example
i do have a soft spot for motivational quotes so i don't only follow motivational quote accounts
in english i also now follow some in italian and i also really like memes and i think that
it's just so satisfying when you're learning a language and you find you get to the point
where you can understand memes so yeah i do follow quite a few italian meme accounts now and i follow
some german ones as well but of course because i am meant to be in italy right now i am actively
doing this more in italian at the moment poetry pages photographers whatever takes your fancy
follow them and in a similar vein follow bloggers i don't tend to read blogs that much to be honest
but if you like reading blogs anyway then why not follow some bloggers in your target language
this is quite a classic one this next one and that is read a book but hear me out a lot of people do
start reading books but never finish them but often if they're doing it in a language that
they're learning from my experience anyway i have started a few books in german which
i never actually finished i think a huge reason for that was because they were too hard for me
and i didn't really want to accept that so i would say find a book of your level there are
books which are designed for especially for learners you don't feel like you are
at a native level of reading yet there are one straight from beginners to write the other end
of intermediate find a book on a topic that interests you too i mean of course
the availability of books varies depending on how many people learn a language so it would be a lot
easier for example to find a book in spanish on a load of topics than for example to find a book in
i don't know what kind of language hawaiian for example is that a language i think it is yeah
see what there is around if around the house you have loads of food for example which is
distributed in different countries or you have a load of manuals for random things around the house
then have a look at the manuals or the labels of the food or whatever and try and see if there are
instructions or a list of ingredients or something in your target language and if it was distributed
in your country then chances are it will also have your native language so try and read
as much as possible without looking in your native language and then compare it as well
if you get me i quite like to do that i don't know if i'm just weird that i like to read
random stuff like that but if you think you would like doing that then give it a try hey
so there is this web extension that you can get called toucan which when you're browsing
the web changes random words in the text that you're browsing so like say you're reading a
wikipedia article it changes random words within that article to your target language if you tell
them which language you're learning and i find that quite cool sometimes it can get a bit of
a nuisance like if i'm reading something or i'm trying to scan an article really quickly
if i'm researching for an essay or something but there is an option to turn off so you don't
have to have it on and you can choose like how frequently you want the words which they turn
into the target language to appear so yeah you can have it like one or two every page
or like a fair few it is quite good to getting used to switching between the languages quickly
which is definitely something that i personally need to do and similar to this one if you're
researching for an essay or just doing a random search on the web which it doesn't necessarily
matter which language you do it in then why not try using a search engine of a country where your
target language is spoken so for example if you're learning german then you could use austrian google
for whatever it is you want to do and similarly i know that using wikipedia isn't necessarily
good in terms of academics but wikipedia have real people who translate articles so there are
often articles at least the more popular articles which will have translations in loads of different
languages so you could for example try reading a wikipedia article in your target language and yeah
probably most popular websites have this too and just like many of the ones which i've mentioned
before this is probably more for intermediate learners but if you're trying out a new recipe
or you fancy trying cooking something new or baking something then why not follow a recipe in
your target language i obviously would say before you do that make sure that you understand every
single word so that you can anticipate what it is that the recipe tells you to do when you follow
it step by step but i think again that this is a great way of encouraging you to think in the
target language and again related to this why not set your phone in the target language so when i
was doing a level german i set my phone to german quite early on and now that i'm learning italian i
have my phone in italian now and if you need to do something important like i don't know do a
bank transfer or check into a flight then you can always change your phone back or in settings you
can actually change the language for individual apps so if it is just one app that you're using
and you want to make sure you get everything absolutely right which i can totally relate to
if you do because i do that then you can always set it to another language i mean of course we
are living in a very difficult time and you might not want to do this but if you feel like it and
you want to know what's going on then you could try reading the news in your target language
try and suss out which news outlets are the free ones and then maybe try and read i was calling
those and of course you couldn't follow news outlets and magazines etc on social media too so
i really like this one and i've been trying to do this ever since i got back from living in florence
and of course florence is famous for its art so why not take a virtual tour of an art gallery in
a country where your target language is spoken so for example i know for a fact that the uffizi
gallery in florence does a virtual tour of all of their exhibition rooms at the moment so i don't
know if this will still be the case after the pandemic but certainly at the moment there are
so many places out there which are doing virtual tours so yeah if you have a favorite museum or art
gallery in a country where your target language is spoken then see what they offer online and you can
read the plaques and things in the target language and often alongside those plaques they also have
the english so you can compare and if you're reading in the target language and you don't
understand a particular word then you can quickly glance over to the english and i just think that's
quite cool because it's almost like you're reading a parallel text hello editing sarah here sorry for
the change of scene and for the fact that i'm a bit of a mess but we move i just realized while
i was editing this that i've actually missed out two of the reading points which i actually
think are quite important and one of these is my favorite i'm gonna do now so the first one is
label some objects around your house not every object obviously of course that would be
quite overkill but household objects which you particularly struggle to remember the name of
i know that there are quite a few in german which i always forgot until i did this in my
second year house i lived with a couple of languages students and we all like labelled
certain objects in all of our languages and it was actually quite cool to do that so yeah if you are
struggling to remember sort of everyday objects it's something that we don't necessarily learn
when we're learning a language formally then this technique might work for you my next one isn't
quite as wacky but this is to do an online course so of course there are loads of online courses out
there which you have to pay for but nowadays i don't know if it's always been the case but i've
found recently quite a few which are free so for example there's this platform called open learn i
think it's from by the open university this isn't sponsored obviously in any way by anyone but they
do quite a few professional courses and some of them are particularly focused on languages and you
don't have to be a beginner although there are beginner courses available too but for example
i'm currently doing an advanced german course on german history and culture so yeah if there's a
course in your target language have a look around if there are any that interest you particularly
then consider doing them let's go back to the video now i hope i have not forgotten any more so
for writing if you like keeping a journal then you might want to write occasionally in your target
language so of course what you can communicate and write and stuff all depends on what level
you are but even if you can just write very very basic things like things i'm grateful for
in your target language then i think that that's a really good boost to immersion and if there's just
one or two words that you need to look up then what's wrong with that i personally don't keep
a journal but sometimes i think that it is nice just to write down my thoughts if i feel like
i want to have a brain dump or whatever and yeah depending on how i feel sometimes i do like to
write in italian or german sometimes it's just in english but you know depending on what i feel
i do like to watch a lot of youtubers in my target languages because obviously i love youtube anyway
i have my own youtube channel and quite a lot of this time not always but sometimes when i
do watch a video of a youtuber who's speaking in my target language i do like to comment on them
and because i watch quite a few small to medium-sized youtubers more often than not
they do actually reply to me as well which i just think is so nice like you can have a conversation
with a person in your target language and yeah you're practicing your target language
if you're the kind of person who likes to write a to-do lists or set yourself reminders then you
could write them in your target language why not chances are you would do this anyway if you know
people who speak your target language but why not message them in your target language if you do
and if you don't know people who speak your target language then because technology has
obviously come a long way in quite a short time there are loads of bots and stuff that you can
talk to if you don't have anyone else to talk to in your target language i haven't personally
tried this myself but like for example duolingo or if you have an iphone and you set your phone
to your target language then i'm guessing that siri would also be in that target language so
i don't know that's just another way and that's also good for speaking of course not just for
writing so this next one is about listening and obviously you can do this either actively
or passively but i would say even if you stick something on in the background and you're not
necessarily listening to every single word that they're saying you're getting ready or something
i don't know whatever then i would say is it still worth doing that because personally i often stick
a podcast or something or youtube video on and i'm not necessarily listening to every single word but
it's sort of to emulate for me the environment that i would have been in when i was in italy
when obviously i don't know loads of random people on the street uh speaking
in italian obviously i'm back in the uk it's not like that here so and yeah you can either
do these following things actively or passively so as i've said before watch youtubers i have
now started watching quite a few italian youtubers and i will be making a video on this soon because
personally for me i always like learning about new youtubers so i figured out that some of you guys
are probably almost certainly learning italian so yeah i want to share this with you guys at a
later date and i think i've also mentioned this before listen to podcasts and if you
like listening to the radio then listen to that or watch tv shows or films and i've discovered
actually that even though netflix of course have quite a few films from other countries if you want
to not only limit yourself to the netflix of the country which you're in then for example in the uk
bbc iplayer do actually have tv programs in other languages so if there happens to be a tv program
on a on-demand website of your country in a language that you like then yeah have a look
this is a classic one and a method which has been extremely helpful for me personally especially
with german and that is listen to music and if you want to really really digest the lyrics of the
song and you want to understand every single word and you perhaps want to learn some slang terms
and stuff then you can use an app called lyrics training this is quite well known so i won't talk
about that loads but lyrics training is one of my favorite apps ever it's just amazing so moving on
to speaking like i said before if you have course mates then try calling them or you can talk to
i don't know siri or alexa if that is available in the target language which i'm guessing they would
be available in loads of languages and of course this isn't a good idea at the moment because
we can't meet but if there are any local language groups for example on facebook then
try joining one of those and perhaps meet up with a tandem partner or whatever and i really like
doing this this is definitely a one-sided thing but if you have a pet then talk to it in your
target language um i talked to my cat in italian i talked to my cat in german and most the time i
talked to my cat in english but i think that he appreciates the variety definitely and this is
something that i have done and that is if you have a youtube channel or you want to have a youtube
channel then make one and make videos in your target language obviously this isn't for everyone
and it's definitely putting yourself out there a lot but i really enjoy doing that and i know
i realized that i didn't make a video in german in december and i wanted to make one every month
and yeah i haven't quite attained that but i found that when i was in florence in particular when i
was in italy and i was hardly speaking any german that was really really good for me and quite a few
of you guys when i make those kinds of videos you comment on them in german which i really really
appreciate so yeah thank you if you do that and that again really really helps me and it could
help you as well if you do that and finally this is more for pronunciation but if you find
pronunciation difficult or intonation or something then try and record yourself reading something
in the target language and then compare it to how google translate pronounces it now i know
that people say that google translate isn't very good for translation but honestly i think that
it is quite good for pronunciation of individual words obviously it's quite monotonous and robotic
but it's better than no way of telling you how to pronounce a word isn't it so
yeah let me know if you guys have experience with that but so far what i've experienced of
pronunciation by google translate it is actually a sound way of hearing it so yeah i think that's
everything i want to make this video as an introduction to more videos to come in the
new year so i am hoping to do a series on like for example my favorite podcast in Italian and
my favorite youtubers in Italian and stuff like that because i know that for us languages students
this is a difficult year as i said before in terms of getting immersed so yeah i hope that this will
be helpful to you guys if this is the kind of thing that you're struggling with at the moment
and i hope that at least one of these things is something that perhaps you haven't thought of
before and that's i've given you a bit of fresh inspiration and of course this is kind of even
though this list is exhaustive based on all the things i could think of when i was brainstorming
for this i don't think this is everything by any means and this is just based on what's available
in my target languages if you have any ideas of your own then feel free to comment them down below
and of course i don't do all of these all the time one or two of these things i haven't actually done
myself but i've heard good things about from other people and it's okay if you don't want to
do what you normally do in your target language like obviously i still watch youtubers tv shows
listen to podcasts in english and that is doing nothing for my foreign language skills obviously
but i think that it is good from time to time to do what you would do anyway in your target
language so yeah that's kind of what the idea of this video was and i've linked all the stuff
down below as usual and if there's anyone in your life who you think would find this video
useful then feel free to share this and hopefully they can get some inspiration from this too
so yeah please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it that really helps me out
and please subscribe if you haven't done already because i will be making a lot
more similar videos in the future and i'll see you in another video very soon bye you