SOYOUWANNA LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE?

3. LANGUAGE FOR BUSINESS

Learning a foreign language for business is pretty straightforward: you want to make your business partners feel comfortable, impress them with your dedication or otherwise tilt the emotional scales in your favor during negotiations. Aside from that, being able to get around in a foreign country without a guide or a translator can be very useful to a business person. Even if your business is completely online, knowing a foreign language can give you that little extra that spells the difference between landing a lucrative contract and losing your shirt.

Start Early

Give yourself the time to learn the language. Colleges ask for at least 10 hours of combined classroom and independent study per week for fifteen weeks in order to master very basic tasks in a foreign language. Unless you are just learning a few greetings and politeness phrases, learning a foreign language requires a considerable time commitment on your part.

Work Smart

Do a little work each day. The road to fluency with a foreign language is paved with earlier lessons. As you gain more confidence in the language you will be able to learn at a faster pace.

Practice Often

Fluency in a language is just like any other learned skill. You have to use the skill to maintain it at a given level. Practice is especially important when you are learning a foreign language because, unless you are a 3-year-old, you are past your language-learning prime.

If you are learning a foreign language for business reason, you will probably want to find a program of foreign language instruction. Whether you want to attend classes at a community college or try out a virtual classroom online, the program you choose should have these features.

Fast Pace

If you're learning the language because of the demands of business, you probably do not have the luxury of a lot of free time. You'll need a business language course that moves along quickly so that you can get the skills you need.

Real-World Practice

Whether you are learning a foreign language to impress a client at a formal business meeting or to chat with a supplier at a restaurant, you want to look for language instruction that gives you examples drawn from the situations you are likely to face.

Native Language Instructors

The more experience that your foreign language course gives you with real examples of the language that you are learning the better. Look for courses that offer lessons given by an instructor who speaks the language as their first language.