Multi-linguists

alexthecheese · 20 Nov 2006 at 13:30

Have we got any here?

Been away for the weekend in Switzerland and come back wanting to learn a language - again! My mates out there know about 4 languages each and I barely know one.

I would like to learn French, but wouldn't know where to start really. Really, actually, I suppose I do - ploughing through books and what not but that kinda removes the excitement of doing it. I could always attend an adult learning course or such like, the price seems reasonable (£90 for 15 weeks on an 'intensive' course), which actually seems like it could be kinda fun.

Anybody else do this kinda thing? I think it would be quite satisfying to put myself out and learn another language.

KaHn · 20 Nov 2006 at 13:34

best way to learn a language is move to the country in question, not always viable but still

I would suggest a basic course, learn the spoken language and go from there.

KaHn

karoshi · 20 Nov 2006 at 13:34

depending on where you are go chat up the local colleges?

quite a lot of them will do evening classes in various things for adults, they usually don't cost too much.

i'm currently doing stage1 russian at the brasshouse language centre, it's the basic (pre-gcse level) course.. it's one evening class a week for two terms cost me £100 to sign up for

edit

to answer the o/p a little more, i've been interested in learning another language for a long time now (in my case russian), i'd tried the teach youurself books and computer based cd-roms but hadn't really got that far with anything.. actually having a teacher who speaks the language as a native really helps

jas72 · 20 Nov 2006 at 14:00

I would do an evening course it's the best method.

Having self-teaching books will help too.

It took me 6 years to become proficient to "work" in french but only 1 year to be able to converse. I attended 3 hours per week night school and 1 day a week day school for 4 years.

French is not an easy language to master but you can converse in french in a matter of months.

Bill101 · 20 Nov 2006 at 14:05

try the BBC for a starter package
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

alexthecheese · 20 Nov 2006 at 14:36

I think I will sign up for a course, one starts in January and it's not far from where I live (if I'm lucky it will be 100m away at the end of my road).

I did French at GCSE level for about 5 years and didn't really pick up much, I always had the attitude of 'why bother?' which hasn't really helped me.

The BBC resource is very good by the looks of it, are there any other free websites for learning languages available? I'll check out the library too, see what I can find.