If this article has caught your attention, there are great chances that you love learning new languages and that, in fact, you can speak and write in a couple of foreign languages quite fluently. But, unless you live in a multilingual city in which you need to be constantly putting your language skills to the test, it’s really easy to lose fluency and forget vocabulary or expressions.
It is true that traveling is an excellent way of keeping up with a foreign language but it can be an expensive hobby and, besides, you can’t spend your whole life jumping from one place to the other.
Fortunately, there are many interesting and funny ways that can help you maintain (or even improve) your foreign language skills.
Pen-palling:
You may think that writing letters is old fashioned or boring, but it is a wonderful way of meeting new friends and making sure you don’t forget how to write in a language that is not your mother tongue. Besides, finding a letter amongst piles of bills and unwanted advertisements in the mailbox is really nice. Many a time, you combine writing letters to sending emails or sharing things in Facebook and other social networks and, needless to say, you can find your friend for a lifetime!
Join a Conversation Group:
Look around for groups in your area in which people with similar interests gather together to share their experiences. They are usually organized by native speakers that work as coordinators and ensure everybody in the group participates. These groups can deal with different subjects although it is more frequent to find those related to politics, literature or traveling. You can also find groups in language websites or in boards at your language school.
Take Advantage of Tech Gadgets
If you love having your tech gadgets at hand at all times, you can definitely use that love to your advantage. All of them can be set to a language of your choice so that you can practice it while checking your emails, your social sites and so on.
International Sign-Up
This is a great way of keeping up with any language you don’t want to forget. There are many pages that send you regular emails or articles in a foreign language. You can learn new words or see how an expression is used in the real world.
Enjoy the Movies
If you are a movie-guy, you can take advantage of your passion and watch movies in their original language or set the subtitles to the language you want to keep up with. If you have the chance of attending a theater play in a language that is not your mother tongue, don’t miss it! It’s an excellent way of putting your listening comprehension skills to the test while enjoying a cultural event.
Dine Out!
If you like dining out, why don’t you try to improve your gourmet tastes while improving your language skills? Eating at a German, Swedish, Italian or Japanese restaurant will probably give you the chance of interacting with native speaking waiters and guests, reading foods you don’t eat often in the menu and so on.