Five free language courses for career girls

Learning a new language is something you should always consider, even having a small grasp of a language different from your own can be essential for the modern career girl, and can even determine whether you get a promotion in the future! If you want to learn a language but need something a little more structured to help you do it, then what you need is to enroll in a language course! It can be difficult to motivate yourself to get stuck in and beat the mental block, but thankfully there are courses out there that are immersive, fun and really accurate. If you’re interested in learning a language well, and doing it from the comfort of your own home then read on, here are our five favourite free language courses.

#1 Future learn ‘Introduction to Dutch’
This course lasts three-weeks and each week you’re asked to dedicate just three hours to the course, you’ll be taught through the medium of video lectures conducted by lecturers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and will learn to speak, write and understand basic Dutch! It started yesterday, but there’s still time to join so hurry up and sign up if you’re interested! Future Learn is a great tool, and has a wealth of free courses so even if you’re not interested in Dutch keep your eye on it for more amazing courses coming up.

#2 Memrise
Memrise has over 300k courses, and works on the basis that you’ll build memories about the language you’re learning. You can make your own flashcards and compete with friends which will give you a great incentive to keep going, and if that isn’t enough Memrise learns with you, picking up on your personal learning habits and tailoring the program to what works best for you.

#3 Livemocha
Livemocha is a little different from other websites, as well as boasting of online language lessons it also promotes peer to peer interaction as a way to learn a language. Essentially this means you can connect with other people from around the world and maximise your language skills. The community of Livemocha uploads videos, lessons, text documents and will interact with you if you want them to, strengthening your grasp at whatever language you choose to learn!

#4 BBC Languages
The BBC Languages portal has access to a few good language courses that you can do in your browser, even though the page is archived and no longer updated. They’re not as immersive as others, but it also has a good section for quick holiday phrases in a wide variety of languages which is invaluable to anyone thinking of going travelling. Some of the languages have short tests and quizzes to help you test your knowledge, too!

#5 Babbel
Babbel allows you to learn at your own pace and no course ever expires, you can take your lessons in progress with you if you download the app, and are encouraged to actually speak the language rather than just write it down. The only downside to Babbel is that only the first course in every language is free, after that you have to pay a subscription fee to get unlimited access, but it’s great for people who want a beginners knowledge or even to test out a language and see if they want to learn more.