European Union Forums

[1980raerae]

One of the (many) things I admire Europeans (and non-Americans in general) are their ability to learn languages. I SUCK at learning languages. I have been studying Italian for seven years now and I an no where near fluency. I seem to be stuck in the basic/intermediate levels and am much better at reading/writing than listening/speaking.
Anyway, I was curious as to what second (or third, etc) language you know and how did you learn them.

[Big_Becka]

I think the English also generally suck at languages The main problem is that most people speak English, so there is little incentive to learn another language. If you travel, people always want to practice their English with you!

For me, I did a course by distance learning which took my knowledge from a basic/intermediate to intermediate/advanced level. You may find that some local colleges or tutors run an evening class or a weekly informal chat.

I once talked to some Swiss friends about languages, and they told me it was easy for them to learn English because there are so many films and so much popular music released in English. You will notice that a lot of Europeans speak english with a mild american accent

So, I now improve my German by following their advice. I find German music on the internet, I order German films from Amazon, I try to read German books and articles on the internet, and I subscribe to a German magazine aimed at people learning German (from Spotlight Verlag: they also have an Italian language magazine called ADESSO http://www.spotlight-verlag.com/ I thought you might find it useful )