As well as doing the work set during lessons, there are many ways you can improve outside the classroom which aren’t necessarily hard work. Here are a few tips that have worked for me in the past:

VOCABULARY BOOKS

As a language student, you probably already have a bilingual dictionary and a grammar book, but for me the most important book is the vocab book. It was only half way through my degree that I got into the habit of using a vocab book, but I wish I had started earlier. I had always found memorising vocabulary really difficult, so I was delighted when I discovered the benefits of having a little vocab book.

On my year abroad in Russia, I noticed a friend of mine carrying this tiny little black book with him wherever he went, whipping it out whenever he saw or heard an interesting word or phrase. When I asked him about it, he explained that even just the action of writing down the unknown word helped him with spelling and grammar rules. He said he didn’t even try and memorise his words, he just found that writing down words and occasionally looking through his book when he was on the bus would help the vocab stick in his mind. So, I tried it for myself and found it worked beautifully. It’s the best little trick I can share with you. You can really personalise it too, mine is usually covered in doodles…

BOOKS

This might sound like a fairly obvious one, but don’t feel like you should be ploughing through grammar books. Grammar books and textbooks are great if you need to prepare some coursework, but for this exercise try finding something you are genuinely interested in. For example, if you’ve read all the Harry Potter books in English, try and find The Philosopher’s Stone in the foreign language you’re studying. It is very important that you don’t expect yourself to understand everything – it is unlikely that you will! One of the first things I discovered when learning languages is not to be too hard on yourself; languages tend to fall into place as you learn by absorbing vocabulary, sounds, and grammar rules over a period of time and through various contexts.

Don’t feel as though you have to read a novel. Although Harry Potter is a children’s book, the vocabulary in it can be surprisingly tough – especially in a foreign language. Instead, I would start with a young children’s book if you can get hold of one. This way, you won’t get bogged down as much with unknown words, and you can focus on getting into the flow of reading.

So, as far as this reading exercise goes, take it very easy to start with. If you decide to start with a book you’ve read in the past, set yourself achievable goals. I would start with two paragraphs or half a page. Although most people tend to read before they go to sleep, you’ll probably find that this won’t work with this exercise. It’s best to choose a quiet time, when you’re feeling wide awake (weekend mornings work best for me), and sit with your book at a table or desk. Make sure you have your dictionary and vocab book with you, and maybe a cup of tea for encouragement.

To start with, read the first half of the paragraph, or perhaps the first sentence if it’s really tricky and see if you can logically work out what is being said – without touching your dictionary. You can rely on your memory if it’s a book you’re already familiar with, or use common sense if you have a vague idea of what the story is about. Once you have read the sentence/paragraph and tried to understand it, feel free to then use the dictionary if you need to. If you want to build on your vocabulary, write any unknown vocabulary in your vocab book. Otherwise, if you want to focus on the act of reading, don’t worry too much about writing down every unknown word, and simply enjoy the text.

Do not be tempted to translate every word as you go along! Trying to make sense of what you’re reading before you resort to your dictionary really tests your analytical skills, and it’s so rewarding if you find you can get it right without the dictionary. You’ll find that as you become more confident, you’ll tend to use the dictionary less as you go on. This is because your brain will become used to working out what is being said without necessarily knowing the meaning of every single word.

If you’re feeling really keen, go ahead and translate what you’ve just read. I cannot stress enough how much translation will help your language skills. Firstly, it’ll help you with vocab, and even more significantly, you’ll start to notice how word-order varies from language to language. Most importantly, I can assure you that the satisfaction from completing a translation – no matter how short the text is – will leave you feeling smug for the rest of the day.

MUSIC

I started listening to foreign music during my Spanish GCSE course, and it helped me in so many ways: my listening skills improved of course, as well as pronunciation, vocab and even grammar. Shakira’s Suerte (on the album Laundry Service) taught me how to use the subjunctive tense in Spanish! You don’t necessarily need to know this tense at GCSE level, but when it came to the writing exam I found I’d subconsciously learned loads of phrases which happened to use the subjunctive.

Music helps language learning because without realising, you’ll start to memorise the lyrics. If you’re really passionate about a song, you might find yourself looking up lyrics on the internet to understand what the artist is singing about. Again, translation is a fabulous exercise to try with the lyrics of a foreign song. Even if you don’t have the time for translation, simply listening to foreign music is doing you a world of good without you even realising it. For French, I would recommend artists like TéTé, Matthieu Chedid and Les Têtes Raides. Russian artists whose music helped me while I was studying were Pyatnitsa, Zemfira and Maksim (particularly the song Vetrom Stat’).

Finally, if you’re not into music, try and get hold of an audio book online, as these are immensely beneficial too. If you’re very disciplined and feeling virtuous, listening to foreign radio is a great habit to get into.

FILM

This is my favourite method! Foreign films give you similar benefits to listening to foreign music, but they also give you a clear insight into the culture of the language you are studying. Don’t be put off by subtitles, you’ll get used to reading them very quickly and you won’t even realise you are doing it. In fact, I always find it interesting to see how certain things are translated from the original language and put into English. When you are feeling confident, try watching a foreign film with the subtitles in the foreign language.

Foreign films are usually very easy to get hold of, just try your local DVD shop or online shops like amazon.com. Alternatively, try watching a film you already own on DVD and switching the language from English to the language you are studying. This will work similarly to the book-reading exercise I mentioned earlier: as you will already be familiar with the dialogue, understanding the language will be much easier.

These are all tips and techniques that I have picked up throughout my language studies. Try and test them all and see which suit you best, just make sure you are doing at least one of these during your spare time, even if it’s just once a week.

Good luck and keep going! I promise that learning a language gets easier and more enjoyable the further you go with it :)