We are currently running a language learner survey with our students at la Academia to understand more about their learning styles and what they find helps when learning a language.
It’s still early days, and a little early to be drawing any final conclusions. However, it’s clear that learning a language in a group offers particular advantages, one of which is getting practise speaking the target language in front of other people. One student stated that they would prefer to learn 1 to 1, but that group lessons are cheaper – that’s another good reason to learn a language in a group!
Another interesting early trend is that most people are learning a language for enjoyment, rather than for work, travel or other more “practical” reasons. This is good to know, as non-linguists often think that learning a language is hard work and a bit of a chore – in fact there are lots of people enjoying learning a language just for the fun of it!
Our survey questions allowed a lot of scope for students to add their own ideas and opinions, and some good ideas on language learning techniques have resulted – one in particular we like is the student who listens to Spanish audiobooks, has their phone in Spanish, reads Spanish news and watches Spanish language movies – so far the la Academia “dedicated student of the month” award is destined for this person! It’s interesting though, how many different language learning techniques people have and we may come back to this in a later blog post.
If you are learning a language in a group (not at la Academia, but elsewhere) you can click here to get access to a more general language learner survey – we’d be really interested to hear your views: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PMHQVHV
If you are a la Academia student who has not received the language learners’ survey, please let us know on info@laacademia.co.uk that you would like a copy!