This is where the Internet comes into play. Not only because of the possibility of taking these courses remotely (something we already discussed last week in the part of this special dedicated to e-learning and which can be applied to languages with initiatives such as That's English ), but also because of all the resources that can be accessed through the Internet.
The evolution of traditional resources
Thousands of courses on the world's main languages can be found on the Internet. Not only are there websites that offer courses in various categories (for example, Aula Fácil or eMagister), but brazil email list there are also academies, institutions and even private users who make very valuable materials available to all users for learning grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and other characteristic elements of a particular language.
There are many institutions that offer various types of materials and courses online as a complement to their offline or traditional training. For example, Cambridge offers a wide variety of dictionaries for free. However, perhaps one of the most widely used dictionaries due to its large number of languages is WordReference , which also has various extensions and mobile applications to make it easier to use.
If we move on to more complex material, BBC , curiously, not only has a section dedicated to teaching English but also offers resources in many other languages: French, Italian, Chinese, etc. It is not the only example of a television channel that allows Internet users from all over the world to learn the local language. In Germany, for example, Deutsche Welle has a complete and very well-structured German course, with various levels and containing numerous multimedia resources. In Spain, RTVE tried to do something similar but was not successful.
In all these cases, the courses have the advantage of being interactive : they are usually accompanied by audio, videos and other games and resources that can be used thanks to the characteristics of the Internet. This is one of the great advantages of online courses, as it is no longer necessary to attend a class to watch a clip or listen to a recorded conversation.
Almost unlimited access to online material
But the importance of the Internet when it comes to learning languages goes much further. In the past, it was necessary to go to public libraries and other places if you wanted to have access to original material in another language . Today, fortunately, all of this is just a click away and, in most cases, at no cost to the user.
Newspapers, news websites, videos from television channels... the resources available to students to practice and gain confidence are almost endless. We can read the New York Times of the day if we want to practice reading English or watch some recent programmes or videos from the RTL channel if we want to improve our understanding of German.
