Study material for a course

Course books for linguists: save cash with revision guides

When you commit to learning a foreign language, it’s not unusual for a first step to be seeking out good course material. There are plenty of very well established courses, the best including audio material. The staple Teach Yourself series, for example, was always my favourite place to start when starting out on a new language project.

Unfortunately, it can be an expensive business. Course books, audio CDs, dictionaries, grammar reference guides – it all adds up. Fortunately, there’s a cheaper alternative if you’re after simple beginner materials. And they come with some unique advantages over traditional courses, too!

The wallet-saving secret:
Revision guides intended for first-level language exams at high schools.

It was through writing reviews for several revision guides in recent years that I realised how useful the could be beyond their target audience. For a start, they’re comprehensive; the best guides from publishers like CGP include:

  • Thematically organised vocabulary lists and phrases
  • Grammar reference broken into bite-sized chunks
  • Audio material for listening practice
  • Word glossaries at the back, which double up as handy simple dictionaries

Moreover, they’re cheap. Aimed at schoolkids, they’re meant to be an affordable route to getting the best grades. CGP’s GCSE French (Edexcel) revision guide is just £12.99. For comparison, the full Colloquial French course is £19.99 for the book, and £10 for the CD on Amazon.

Horses for courses

OK, it’s not a completely fair comparison, like for like. A revision guide, by definition, is concise and snappy. It’s meant to remind, not to teach. Conversely, a full course will give you lengthier explanations and more extensive examples.

But sometimes, less can be more. If you want an at-a-glance list of useful words or grammar points, then maybe you don’t want all the extra fluff. Revision guides give you all the content, with very little padding and hand-holding.

What’s more, the CGP guides come with useful extras like online library versions. You might prefer not to lug the physical book everywhere. No problem: just access it via an internet-connected device. You’ll find it much harder, generally, to get the electronic version of a full-blown course as a free addition to the hard copy.

Weighing it up

Here are some key advantages and disadvantages to bear in mind when choosing cheap and cheerful course materials over more ‘grown-up’ stuff:

Revision guides Full courses
Cheaper
Concise but comprehensive
Can include audio material
At-a-glance learning material, no ‘fluff’
Many include online versions at no extra cost these days
Great quick reference
Often fun, colourful publications rather than boring old black-and-white
More extensive examples and explanations
Audio material usually more comprehensive and varied
May include more ‘grown-up’ topics and more relevant examples for mature learners

Going off-course

One final point for consideration is language availability. As schools are the target market, you’ll only find guides for languages commonly taught in schools. As an example, the CGP GCSE guides are available only in French, German and Spanish. Not much luck if you’re after cheap materials in Basque, Finnish or Norwegian.

If you can find a good fit for your language, though, consider revision guides.
Made for kids, great for all beginner linguaphiles!

Sites like Swagbucks can really help spare your wallet by offering rewards you can turn into language learning resources.

Swagbucks for linguists: premium learning that spares your wallet

Language learning can be a pricey business. Apps, books, subscriptions – they all add up. Enter Swagbucks, which is great for turning clicks into learning resources!

I’ve been using the Swagbucks reward site since November, when I found out that it offers iTunes credit as rewards. I’d put off buying an expensive language learning app, AnkiMobile Flashcards, due to the cost. But if I could earn vouchers to buy the app rather than use my own money, it wouldn’t hit my pocket so hard!

It took me a few weeks of occasional surveys and clicks to reach the £20 iTunes credit I needed. I won’t pretend that it’s a riveting business, filling in surveys! However, it’s no real hardship, and the points accrue quickly. The site is a favourite of Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis as a great way to garner treats in your spare moments.

Swagbucks for the linguist

Once I’d got my Anki app, why stop there? Swagbucks awards treats not only for iTunes, but also Amazon, and even hard cash through Paypal. All three of these can greatly benefit the language learner by providing a payment source for learning resources. Here are some of the things you can do with your bucks:

iTunes

For a start, you can pay for apps with your iTunes vouchers. There are lots of great pay-for apps, like AnkiMobile Flashcards (which is well worth the high price by the way), and the Eurotalk range of apps for basic vocab.

But you can also use iTunes credit to pay for subscriptions. A couple of big language-learning apps follow a freemium model, where the app is free, but you pay for extra content in the form of subscriptions or add-ons. A couple of the biggies are:

Amazon

It’s a no-brainer – if you redeem your Swagbucks as Amazon vouchers, you can purchase almost anything. Digitally, that means Android apps, foreign language music and Kindle books. In the real world, it’s practically any language learning tool you like, from language courses to DVDs.

PayPal

Likewise, cashing out as PayPal gives you a real freedom to choose. You’ll get a slightly lower rate of conversion, though; you’ll get more purchase for your bucks when redeeming iTunes or Amazon vouchers, so only use PayPal if there’s nothing useful you can get with the other two.

In terms of hard cash sites, one of the most useful resources I’ve found is iTalki. The site offers face-to-face lessons with global teachers over Skype, with prices starting from just a couple of pounds per lesson. Convert your Swagbucks to cash, and they’ll go a long way to promoting your fluency when spent on iTalki lessons.

So, a little elbow grease on a rewards site can really help fuel your language addiction. Roll up your sleeves, grit your teeth, and commit to a Swagbucks survey or two a day. Enjoy guilt-free, wallet-sparing access to premium resources as a result!

Aeroplane

Language travels on a shoestring

Despite brill online face-to-face services like iTalki for practising and learning languages with native speakers, you can’t beat time spent in the country as the best way to immerse yourself in your chosen language. Seems like an expensive way to fluency, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t have to be, with a range of web tools for sourcing super-cheap travel to your target language country.

Top of the list, and indispensable to the travelling linguist, is Google Flights Explore. It’s not particularly well signposted online – in fact, it’s practically clandestine, and you have to be told by someone else ‘in the know’ before you can find it! Why the experimental extension to Google’s flight search is not promoted more is a mystery, but it’s second-to-none at sourcing cheap flight offers with very general search terms (and I mean very – you can pop in ‘Scandinavia’ or ‘Eastern Europe’, and it will check the lot!).

For instance, say you’re learning Polish. Enter your preferred airport of origin, then Poland as the destination. You can adjust the length of the trip if you like, but the default 3-5 days is a good short break duration if you’re looking for a cheap getaway to practise your language skills. You don’t even need to add a date, as when you select your start and end points, you’ll be presented with a list of destinations along with time charts of the cheapest flights to each. It will even order them, with the cheapest, on average, at the top.

The example below shows that I can get to Warsaw from Edinburgh for as little as around £20 return (USD$25, although prices in your local currency appear when you click through to one of the flights on the time chart).

Google Flights Explore example

Google Flights Explore

Switching to a traditionally more expensive flight destination, such as Norway, still yields great results; a quick search today threw out some £30 returns on London-Oslo routes. It’s just as handy for longer-haul flights, too; flying from New York, Norwegian students can get to the country for under USD$300 return in a sample search made at the time of writing.

But how to minimise costs when you get there? Accommodation will be perhaps the biggest expense on the tick-list. It’s no big secret that, for value, you can’t really beat private rental services like AirBnB. Combining with the sample Polish flight search above, you could add a private room in a shared house for just £11 a night at the time of writing. That amounts to less than £100 for a 5-night stay, flights and accommodation included.

But there are more benefits to using these services like this than low rates. For a linguist / cultural explorer, a private rental property will likely:

  • come with a direct contact, and so more opportunity to meet a local and practise a bit of language as soon as you’re off the plane
  • give you a more authentic experience of what it’s like to live in the target language country, especially as it’s more likely to be self-catering (think of all that shopping vocab you can practise!)
  • give you day-to-day, lived experience of the language if you’re in a shared property / room in someone’s home

Compare that to the often sterile, internationalised hotel reception experience, and private accommodation offers big boons for the language traveller!

There are ways to minimise living costs while you’re there, too. They may not be glamorous – buying food supplies at supermarkets rather than going out to eat, grabbing a cheap pølser i brød (hotdog) at an Oslo kiosk for tea – but again, they bring you into direct contact with the target language, rather than sanitising your experience through safe, familiar settings like restaurants.

It might seem an extreme measure – and, intuitively, an outrageously unaffordable one – to ‘pop abroad’ when you need some target language practice. But it needn’t be bank-breaking, if you know where to look. Commit to a cheap cultural scouting trip once every month, or at least couple of months, setting yourself a tiny budget and seeing what you can do with it. Your inner linguist will thank you!