Look at anybody's bucket list, and you'll be sure to see something there about learning a new language. Of course, one reason lots of people don't start is that it can cost a lot of money. But what if you could learn a new language for free?
You can even learn Chinese or Afrikaans or something equally exotic. Learning a new language doesn't just make it easier for you to appear learned to your friends and to help as you order coffee when you travel somewhere overseas.
Studies show that when you raise children to learn a second language or even a third one, they become mentally more alert, more adroit. When you're older, it helps slow the onset of the aging process, too.
The Internet makes it so much easier to learn a new language for free.
The thing is, if you're a native speaker of English and you'd like to learn a foreign language, you can be pretty sure that there's someone who is native to that language in that other country who wants to learn English. Now if only there were a way to get these two people together.
As it happens, there is exactly such a service. They call it LiveMocha. It's a service that boasts 12 million members from many different countries around the world.
When you want to learn a language, you just sign up to LiveMocha, take their online course to gain a basic grasp of the language you are interested in, and then you do their homework that they give you. Here's where the social aspect of the whole thing kicks in.
When you submit your homework, it is reviewed by a native speaker of the language, who will give you pointers on what you're doing wrong. And then, you'll be able to give as good as you get by correcting that person's homework to as he tries to learn English from you.
There are plenty of courses out there that help you learn a new language for free.
BBC Languages for instances of very comprehensive set of free language courses with audio and video. And if you want to hear the language actually spoken, you can look at online audio and video programming that the BBC has in nearly every language on earth.
If LiveMocha, seems a bit complicated, you just might be able to find someone who's native to the language you'rer interested in by toddling down to your local community center where foreign language speakers come to learn English. You'll probably find someone who is able to teach you the language you want, while you help them with their English.
In fact, once you're somewhat passable at the language you're learning, you can actually go down to your local community center where they teach English to little kids from other cultures. You'll be able to volunteer to help out, you will be able to talk to these children and learn from them.
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