Internet Trips That Perfect Your Foreign Language

It has been stated on numerous occasions and in most specialty books and courses that the best way to learn and to build up on a foreign language is to live in an environment where this language is constantly present. The most obvious choice would be to visit or even move in a country that speaks that particular language but this often involves great costs and requires that you sacrifice a hefty amount of time for the trip (staying there for 2-3 days won't help too much, obviously). However, there is an alternative that can get you surrounded by the language you're learning without involving the costs and time requirements of actually visiting a foreign country: the so called "Internet Trips".

Internet trips will have you surfing the Internet for a learning location that is completely covered with the foreign language of choice. Using your favorite search engine, you could type in a common phrase in that language and click through the various sites resulted, in search of one that has some interesting information to read, view or listen to. If possible, try looking for a site that is completely built in that language, with as little English as possible. You need to feel "abroad" on this site, so it needs to be as foreign as possible in what regards its content.

Forums are also a great place to arrange an e-trip on. It doesn't really matter what the forum's subject is, as long as everyone or most of the participants in the discussions on are speakers of the language you're learning. Getting involved in the discussions, or even simply reading what others have to say about a subject will boost your vocabulary and general knowledge of that language. However, please note that it's a common fact for forum users to use slang, grammatically incorrect expressions or even common spelling mistakes.

The third option is to visit a "live chat" channel using one of the various programs designed for this purpose, or programs that offer live chat channels as an addition to their real purpose. Amongst such programs, we can include the IRC, DC and all of their variations. Visiting such channels gives you a chance to dynamically engage in conversations with native speakers of the language you're learning, but the same hindrance as in the above mentioned forum case remains: grammar and spelling are often sacrificed in favor of faster typing or simply commodity on these channels. Not to mention that sometimes the chat can get overly trivial for no reason, so you might be building on the wrong side of the vocabulary :).

This said, I wish you a safe journey. If you're after a more focused location for the language learning subject, you can skim through the numerous sites offering such services. If you find the language you're learning amongst those covered by these sites, try combining them with the above mentioned methods to get a better overall experience of your trip :).