Continuing Education PART I: Foreign Language

In the first part of my continuing education series to help you learn new skills and apply yourself in a different way, one of the things you can do is learn a new language! Learning a new language, though not easy, will facilitate you ability to contribute in a global environment and certainly make you more marketable; this is especially true if you are pursuing opportunities with an internationally-focused company. Additionally, learning a new language will also facilitate an appreciation for different cultures, especially if you are learning in a setting where an advisor provides not only language instruction but also information regarding history and / or social aspects of other countries. Considering a self-study program? That’s OK too. You can learn a lot from books, CD’s, and online instruction, and do some ancillary research to provide you with a cultural flavor!

Keep reading! There’s more to come. Now, here’s some valuable tips to help you get started.

FSI Language courses
Provides access to audio language courses developed by the US Foreign Service institute. The courses are available for 34 languages and includes common languages such as French, German, Spanish and Italian; they also have courses in more obscure languages such as Twi , Chinyanja and Yoruba to name a few.

iTunes
The iTunes store is a great source for training as well, through free podcasts. Currently there are 39 languages available – again all the common ones are present as well as Esperanto, Bible Greek and Luxembourgish. The podcasts are available by browsing itunes (Podcasts/Education/Language Courses) or through searching the iTunes store.

Mango Languages
Mango offers both free and paid training programs – the free offerings are less comprehensive with fewer lessons and limited vocabulary and grammar guidance, although the entirety is interactive in nature. The premium service is based on subscriptions and starts at $65 per month with discounts for longer terms. The list of languages is shorter than the those above but includes all the basics.

Livemocha
Livemocha also offers free limited scope lessons as well as a premium service for some languages – the premium costs vary by lesson starting at $19.95 for some of the ones I checked out. One of the cool things about Livemocha is that it is also community driven. You select languages you wish to learn and the resources are searchable. So, you can see other members' lessons, flashcards, grammar guides etc. The challenge is for more obscure languages (I tried to look at Afrikaans and found very few resources) it might be tougher but for the common languages there is tons of content available. You earn mochapoints for being an active participant in the community and as you accumulate mochapoints you can exchange them for additional content.

BBC
The BBC offers beginning and intermediate training in 36 languages. Both audio and video content is available and is supplemented by a languages email newsletter. The site is very interactive and fairly easy to use and is all free.

UK’s Open University
Offers free training in “modern” Languages. There seems to be some good content, but I found the site rather hard to navigate. The content is a good balance between text and multimedia. The language training is also supplemented by cultural and historical lessons.

eLanguage School
Offers a large repository of resources to learn ten common languages. The content is comprised of word lists, both audio and video content, as well as external links to other training resources.

Utah State University
Utah State University is one of numerous universities that have made courseware available through the OpenCourseware initiative. As of now only introductory Chinese (Mandarin) is available, but the courseware is excellent and we expect expansion of the resources over time.

Carnegie Mellon
Another Open Courseware offering Carnegie Mellon offers a French course online via high-quality video-based course that includes interactive features, such as activities and an online tutor.

Wikiversity
The Wikiversity Centre for Foreign Language Learning provides access to text based learning for more than 30 languages, some of them quite obscure such as Breton. The material although mostly text based provides links to additional resources and provides supplemental information on culture and history.

MIT
MIT offers more than 100 free foreign language courses through the Open CourseWare program. Classes are available at the undergraduate and graduate level and all the common options are available. Courses consist mainly of PDF files, but are occasionally supplemented with audio, video and slide presentations.

Coming next - presentation skills.

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Debra Wheatman, CPRW, CPCC is the founder and Chief Career Strategist of ResumesDoneWrite, a premier career services provider focused on developing highly personalized career roadmaps for senior leaders and executives across all verticals and industries.

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