Schlagwort: Language Learning

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Community building worldwide: Online language classes can connect the world

Martina Gerdts with a chess board in her hand in front of a camera for a video conference.

Image 1: Martina Gerdts and a chessboard in front of the camera. During my online classes, I mention a few things about myself – like my love for chess – and then ask my students to tell us a bit about themselves. What matters to you? What would you put in front of the camera?

Different ways of learning something new

Do you know what’s the biggest difference for me about learning chess with the Lichess app and languages with the Babbel app? …besides one being an open non-profit project based on volunteers and the other being a for-profit project of a for-profit company? Lichess includes community. There are chats, there are ways to share your own studies with friends, there are ways to share your thoughts with the world and to interact with each other. So, while I might be learning with study material on a screen, I am still able to connect to people. With the opportunity of sharing a link to a game with my coach, I can show my chess group some moves etc. 

Duolingo has some „community perks“ like boards and some level of interaction and competition is possible. But I can’t even access every lesson when I want to work on it (correct me if that has changed at some point). With AI being more and more important for Duolingo, there are some additional questions to be discussed around … the environmental impact of the use of AI, the impact on language professionals and their jobs and the quality of material if it was generated by LLMs. Those questions have to be discussed in a wider setting and it’s obviously not just about Duolingo. I frequently get emails for workshops around the use of AI in language teaching and learning by lots of companies and institutions. At this point I know less and less language-related institutions that aren’t doing that.

The Babbel app is focusing on individual learning. You can share Babbel magazine articles with friends or podcast episodes, but you can’t share your lessons or vocabulary slides. That’s the thing with knowledge and education behind a paywall, of course. With Babbel for Business or having a friend group with several people doing the same units you might be nearest to something along the lines of learning in a community with the app itself. With Babbel Live, they created something that resulted in human interaction … in learning in a community directly. Why are we learning languages? Is it for human interaction? Or for communication with an AI robot for bank account customer support?

The community in Babbel Live was restricted to the classes. Interaction between classes wasn’t planned for. But during classes, there was real human interaction.

Babbel Live experiences from a teacher’s perspective

In my time as a Babbel Live German teacher, I was able to teach German learners all around the world. When students, especially beginners, weren’t yet ready to communicate everything in German or if they had questions, we made use of bridging languages. Most of the time, that was English but as not everyone speaks English and as everyone’s English levels vary, we have also used other bridging languages like Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian. I used pictures from Internet searches, explained concepts in different languages or drew little images of things if German synonyms or explanations weren’t working anymore. During those classes, we were able to compare German words, phrases, grammar and pronunciation with the languages my students were already speaking: Farsi, Urdu, Hindi, Polish, Slovak, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Croatian, Greek, Albanian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Malay, Azerbaijani, Russian, Turkish … and many many more. 

Opportunities through online language classes

Online classes gave us the opportunity to connect people during COVID quarantine with each other; people who couldn’t travel for money reasons could get international interaction and connections to teachers on the other side of the planet; working people who have to do all the care work in their family could connect from home or from their lunch break. And let’s be honest, you can’t get a language teacher even for English, German, Italian, Spanish and French for A1 to C1 classes in any given city – let alone village. The same is true for language teaching gigs, by the way. 

The way of how people around the world are learning languages is changing: Babbel Live classes for private customers are closing

Publicly, the news made the rounds with a LinkedIn post by Markus Witte, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Babbel, according to his LinkedIn bio. Markus Witte wrote on Wednesday (May 21st, 2025) that the Babbel Live classes for private customers would close in the end of June. For the whole post, check out the LinkedIn statement by Markus Witte about the Babbel Live closing.

As I said before, Babbel is a for-profit company. They have to do what they have to do. Business decisions aren’t always related to all the things we want to matter. In a week when the government of the United States of America tries to forbid Harvard University to teach international students (see CNN article, „Federal judge halts Trump administration ban on Harvard’s ability to enroll international students“), it doesn’t feel like good news if an e-learning company like Babbel closes one of their offerings with more direct worldwide human interaction, however. There are other ways of learning languages and teaching languages with online classes. This product focused “only” on English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, so, it never was the answer for everything anyways. And at least their B2B language classes seem to stay. We’ll see what the future brings for that one.

Maybe I’m getting old, maybe I’m getting scared by national, international and world events … but connecting communities is quite a good thing, isn’t it? It looks like for-profit projects aren’t always the solution for everything. But let me end this article on a more positive note. In German, we say “Wo sich eine Tür schließt, da öffnet sich eine andere”, meaning when one opportunity is shutting down, another will rise. I’m not exactly subscribing to that expression … but the Internet, videoconference systems and language learning material keep existing, right? Let’s connect in other – maybe even more sustainable?- ways.

Martina Gerdts with her language learning material in the background

Image 2: Martina Gerdts with her language learning material in the background. You really just need a device, Internet connection, some communication software and language material to be able to learn or teach online.

From a more local Germany-based perspective

A more positive development that lets me look more optimistic into the future from at least a Germany-based perspective is that our local community schools for adult education, Volkshochschulen as they are called, are more and more open for online and hybrid online/in-person classes. This way, people from different villages or cities can more easily access classes that would take place in a city too far away, same for people who can’t leave their home for individual reasons, and same for teachers who wouldn’t get enough students at several schools but enough if those students come together in one online space.

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Polish for the next chess trip? Maybe to the Polish Ekstraliga?A new article is out!

One chess piece says in Polish: "Poddaję się, nie mogę tego zrobić." and another chess piece says in English: "Was that a draw offer?"

Inspired by Grandmaster Rasmus Svane talking about his (and his brother GM Frederik Svane’s) upcoming chess trip to the Polish Ekstraliga, I’ve written an article about the language preparation for a trip like that. I’ve also discussed a few particularities of the pronunciation of the Polish language and why you can’t trust English written lists with Polish names about the correct writing. There is some geeking about phonology, links to Polish pronunciation resources and links to more info about the Polish Ekstraliga! GM Monika Soćko takes the stage in English and Polish as well!

Here is the article: Preparing for the Polish league Ekstraliga: Dipping into language learning.

The article builds on the content of a former Lichess article around language preparation for a chess event abroad. Last year, I wrote an article as preparation for a tournament in the Czech Republic: How to prepare for a chess tournament abroad … language-wise.

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Flirting in your target language: Its very own can of worms

Two chess pieces (a white and a black knight) on a chess board forming a heart.
Heart of Knights, Photo: Martina Gerdts

Social Media brings some gems into the world. French teacher Anne from “Myfrenchatelier” on Instagram posted a few days ago about how to flirt with French energy (“Flirting in French”). That made me wonder: How do you flirt in a language you are still learning?

Dating 101 for language beginners

If you are just starting out to learn a language, it’s easy to get better in the realm of flirting. You start with introducing yourself and asking the other person about themselves. You learn to ask if you want to meet somewhere, and you start discussing activities for a meet up. You can create your very own “dating 101” words and phrases out of beginner material very fast.  

Task 1: What are typical activities for a date for you? How are those activities called in your target language?

Vocabulary around your own interests

After learning the basics, you can think about what else you might need. What about being able to state what you are looking for or how to say phrases you would use while flirting in your other language(s)? Material around how to say “I love you” or “you look pretty in that suit” might be of interest for you. 

ELE teacher Sol Tovar has created a page of material for Spanish learners with some words around San Valentín, check it out here: “Material ELE: San Valentín” (in Spanish).

Task 2: Think about some more phrases you would like to be able to say in your target language that might come handy for flirting situations.

But how do you flirt in ANY LANGUAGE?!

Flirting is a very individual thing. Everyone flirts a little different (if they are flirting at all). But we can have a look at some ways, how some people flirt:

  • Use humor (that translates so well in other languages *throws the irony sign at the statement*)
  • Behave like a nice and kind person (that could also just be a sign of a genuinely kind person doing what they do on a daily basis)
  • Give out compliments (you have to decide which compliments are appropriate in your context and which ones work best with a certain person; Does the person like compliments about their new jumper or do they prefer compliments about their work as an author or about their hobbies?)
  • Show an interest in the other person’s interests (Have you ever told an academic that you have read their thesis without having had to do so? This can work like magic!)

There are way more ways how people flirt. It’s also seen as flirting if someone does whatever they have to do to get some attention of their person of interest or even if they are insulting their person of interest. Please keep in mind that just because you don’t mean any harm, it doesn’t always mean you are not harming anyone. It goes similarly the other way around: Just because they say they don’t mean any harm; you can still feel hurt and disrespected. 

Task 3: Think about different ways of how people flirt and what feels most fitting for yourself. What kind of words and phrases do you need for that? 

Flirting or being genuinely nice or just chatter-loving, which one is this?

What’s read as flirting differs highly from person to person. There are cultural factors, factors of age, gender, social groups; former experiences play a role as much as many other things. Some people need an “I am flirting with you” (very on the nose) to realize what’s happening. 

Let’s take the Northern German cliché for a second. People say that it’s enough to greet people in Northern Germany with “Moin” (‘hello/ morning’) instead of saying “Moin moin” because the latter is seen as chattering. People also say “jo” (‘yes/ yeah’) can be a whole conversation in Northern Germany. Imagine how flirting with a person of very few words might look like in contrast to flirting with a chatter-loving person. But be aware, you could also run into a chatter-loving Northern German person! 😀

Well, yeah, I know. But how do I know then?

I’m sorry, that’s your task to figure out <3 

I’m just here to support your language learning progress. 🙂

Task 4: Take action! (And stay accountable with your actions!)

References:

Anne @myfrenchatelier, Instagram account, https://www.instagram.com/myfrenchatelier (Link last checked: May 17th, 2025).

Anne @myfrenchatelier: „Flirting in French“, Instagram post, https://www.instagram.com/p/DJR1YzDowLQ/?img_index=1 (Link last checked: May 17th, 2025).

Tovar, Sol (2020): „Material ELE: San Valentín“, in: Sol Tovar: Languages & Communication, https://www.soltov.ar/2020/09/material-ele-san-valentin.html (Link last checked: May 17th).

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Creative writing as a method to improve your language skills

If you look into a textbook for some language, you will most certainly find some made up dialogues and texts. The authors of the book used creative writing to provide you some (maybe even interesting) material to work with your chosen language. If you learn how to say your name, your job and your address, it might get a bit boring to say the same thing every time. Creative writing is a nice way to make things more interesting. If you are bored by talking about yourself all the time, try to think about what a vampire from London or a werewolf from New York would say. 

Improving your skills in a certain area of language

 There is the possibility that you want to improve your language skills in a certain area, lets say neopronouns. Maybe you don’t use neopronouns for yourself and no one you communicate on a regular basis with has people use neopronouns for them. Creative writing can help you to get into situations where neopronouns are needed. You could create a character or even several if not all who uses neopronouns. Our imagination is a great tool to get into situations that aren’t our reality to train certain things, like the use of neopronouns in this case. 

Another scenario: Lets imagine your hobby is chess and you wanted to improve your chess-related language. Besides talking and writing about your hobby in your chosen language, you could also make up some story playing in the world of chess. This way, you could make up scenarios that fit with your chess language aim. You could do the same for business language and other topics!

Use it for the Job Language Challenge 2025?

If you’ve reached this blog article, there is a good chance that you have reached or will reach the articles about the Job Language Challenge 2025 as well. If not, feel free to click on the link! Anyways, this language challenge includes tasks where you can write or talk about yourself. How about writing about a made up character instead? How would a CV from a vampire from London look like? How would an online job interview for a werewolf during full moon go? Or what would a person completely different to you write into a motivation letter to get the job of your dreams?

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Job Language Challenge 2025: Task 1 – How does one write a CV in the language you are currently working with?

Month 1, Week 1

Hello and welcome to the Job Language Challenge 2025! The entry article for the first month has been published, now I want to talk to you about the task for the first week within the first month. In this article, I want to talk to you about the motivation for writing a CV in your chosen language and what to do when you have finished the task.

Some background for the CV task

If you are looking for a job at a company using the language you are learning, it’s clear why you wanted to know how to write a CV in that language. But is that all? The first time, I learnt writing a CV in any language was in middle school. We were learning how to create a CV in German, our native language. After that, English was the next one. Knowing how to write a CV in English helps for a lot of working contexts. I had to write English CVs for companies and freelance gigs even based in Germany for international work contexts. I have never stepped a foot in a country with English as official (or generally main) language, but an English CV still helped me to get into online programs that were based e.g. in Canada. 

Maybe you are working at a company or institution, or you own your own business. It’s possible that you don’t have to write any CVs for yourself right now, but you have to deal with CVs from other people at some point. Maybe you search through different websites to look at CVs of other people or you get some of them sent to your company or department. Wouldn’t it help to know the standards of a CV in different regions, especially the ones linked to the language(s) you are currently working with? Let’s look at an example: Imagine we knew a French linguistics professor who has just recently moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The professor is looking for a research assistant and opens the application process, allowing for applications in, e.g. Spanish, French and English. Wouldn’t it be helpful for the professor to check for typical CVs that are used in Argentina to see what’s the standard in the new area? 

At the end of the day, you can decide for yourself if you need to know how to write a CV in the language you are learning. Maybe this is just one task of a lot that are part of your study program even though you don’t see an immediate use of it, or you have a goal that includes writing a CV this week anyway. Finding out how to write a CV in your language might just be a way to improve your overall language skills and that’s fine, too!

Step-by-step process

Here is the step-by-step process for the first week:

  • Step 1: Check CVs in that language 
  • Step 2: Check for important terms used on a CV to describe the (professional) life of a person
  • Step 3: Write a CV in your language using adequate terms

When learning a language, it’s a good idea to do a little every day (or every few days) instead of a big bunch of tasks one day a week or a month and then forget about it forever. Depending on your time and how much language learning you do, you could split the week task in smaller portions and do a little day by day. You could start on Monday with step 1 and do step 2 on Tuesday and Wednesday and finish the task on Friday. Of course, you could also do everything at the same day. It’s your choice really! I would recommend you thinking about it and actively choose one of the ways and stick to it, but I also know how difficult life can get and that not sticking to one way might provide the flexibility needed to stick to a challenge like this at all. Whatever you choose, go for it!

What to do with the results?

There are several things you can do with your result, i.e. the written CV. For one, you can safe it and use it if you need a CV anyways. If you have a language teacher or a friend who knows that language can helps you out with it every now and then, you could also let them check your CV. Maybe they could give you some feedback or correct some mistakes? Another possible step is sharing your result on Social Media to connect with other people interested in a language challenge like the Job Language Challenge 2025. Maybe you don’t want to share your CV online but you could create a fantasy CV to share it on Social Media? How would a CV of a vampire living in London looking for a job as a barista at a local coffee shop look like?

What we can learn from challenges like the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

Have you ever heard about the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? The NaNoWriMo is a creative writing challenge. The aim is to write approximately 50.000 words in a month for a story, so basically writing a whole novel in just a month. It’s not about editing or making sure it’s the perfect story at that point. It’s just about writing enough every day to get to quite a lot of material at the end of the month. It can be a good idea for you to handle the Job Language Challenge in a similar way. If you getting to use your language on a regular basis is your first goal for now, you might not want to strive to perfectionism just yet. See for yourself if getting corrections immediately helps you or demotivates you. It’s often good to get feedback at least at some point. You want to improve your language skills, right? But sometimes having to ask for feedback (and getting it) is the thing that hinders you of trying to use your chosen language on a regular basis.

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Job Language Challenge 2025

If you know LangTwitter (langtwt) or some language Instagram spaces or polyglot communities, you have most definitely heard of some kind of language challenge. Back at school, this was basically just homework. On social media, however, and with similarly inspired language learners, this is more of a tool to motivate yourself to get to work on the language you are currently learning. But before I take all the glamour off language challenges, lets get going!

Depending on the learning aims, there are different kinds of language challenges that are useful. For a beginner, answering little questions everyday might be a great start. Day 1: What’s your name? Day 2: Where do you live? etc. … In this case, we talk about weekly tasks that are a bit bigger than responding to small short questions. These tasks fit best for intermediary or advanced learners of a language.

Job related language learning

As you can already read from the headline, this language challenge is about job and work related language. I remember sitting in a French business class at university thinking „Why didn’t I have any classes like this for Portuguese, English or Spanish?“ Eventually, we did some of the topics in my other classes as well, but a class specialized for business language is not exactly easy to come by. So, to take matters in our own hands, let’s do some research on business language/work language/job language, however you want to call it, for the language(s) that you are currently working with.

How does this language challenge work?

On the job language challenge sheet, you find a task with several steps for every week. The idea is that you do a task with all its steps every week. There are going to be new job language challenge sheets but for now, we will start with one sheet for your first month. You can write your texts for the challenges on some device, on some sheets of papers or in a journal. In addition, you are free to post about it on social media. From where I’m standing, one of the bigger differences between boring homework at school and a fancy language challenge that I’d found on social media, was the community effect (and not being forced to do anything, big factor, too!). So, if you find some friends with whom you can do the job language challenge together, this might help you, too, to stay motivated and to keep learning.

Let’s connect!

Feel free to use the Hashtag #JobLanguageChallenge2025 and #JobLangChallenge25 on whatever platform that you are using when you post about this challenge or your results. Also feel free to link back to this website so that people can choose to stay up to date on the challenge and/or link back to one of my social media profiles in case you find one on the platform of your choice!

Challenge sheets for download

Job Language Challenge Sheet Month 1 – English versionDownload

Thank you for participating in the Job Language Challenge 2025 and also thank you for connecting within bigger language learning related communities!

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Language conversation classes with Babbel: My experiences!

Hello! I hope you are all good and well. Today, I’m going to talk about Language Learning with Babbel Live. 

How I got in touch with Babbel content

Especially if you live in Germany or if you know the Superpolyglot Bros, there is a good chance that you know the language learning company Babbel already. Their headquarters are in Berlin, Germany. For ages, they have a language learning app. Right now, you can learn around 13 languages with that app. 

In the first years of language learning as a university student, I often used the Babbel magazine and the videos from Babbel on Youtube. They talked about languages and language learning and I was intrigued! I tried to consume all the language learning tipps that existed online. With the Superpolyglot Bros, two people that definitely knew how to learn languages created and presented content for Babbel. Maybe the first article that I found from them was the one about their twin story of language learning: https://de.babbel.com/de/magazine/polyglot-bros-rivalen

A while ago, Babbel started a new rubric. It’s called Babbel Live and basically consist of language classes. There is no need to book a whole course for 10 or 12 weeks, but you can book as many single classes as you want. They offer single classes on a diverse range of topics and learning levels (for English, German, French, Italian and Spanish). 

In 2022, I found Babbel Live

So, that’s the background story. Now, let’s skip to 2022. This year, several things happened. First of all, I’ve found the Babbel Live program and I was intrigued. My problem with things like language learning apps as the one from Babbel or Duolingo or others, was, that I needed some way to talk to people as well. I can’t just learn a language through an app if there is no real human interaction included. And while I couldn’t afford paying for an app that wouldn’t bring me human interaction (because additionally pay a language class would be too expensive), Babbel Live would bring me language teaching and interaction and in addition it would bring access to the Babbel app. It sounded amazing! Thus, I started one month unlimited access to all the language classes that Babbel offered. Who knows me, knows that if they offer access to classes in 5 languages I will give my best to test them all. Obviously, German is my home language, so no need to go to German classes. But for my level in English, Spanish, Italian and French, I could find classes that fitted. Officially, they offer classes between A1 and C1. At some point, the English teachers told me that the content might be a bit too easy for me. Well, yeah, I guess writing a blog or working in English in academia might be a good way to work further on my English. 

Just the right content for my language journey

Depending on how many people booked one class, those classes are 1-on-1 classes or classes for up to 6 students. That means, if you are lucky, you get a lot of space to ask all your questions or discuss the parts of the topic that you love most. I had several Spanish C1 classes on feminism and activism where I could talk about my own experience in an NGO and about my linguistic work on non-binary language in Romance languages. The teacher was very nice and interested in what I talked about. This was really helpful for me, because this way, I could train talking about the exact things that I would talk about in my everyday live anyway. Just this way, I got the chance to do it in Spanish.

For Italian and French, I tried classes in different levels around A2, B1 and B2. There was a lot of talking about travelling, everyday life, house cleaning, work and all those things. For the classes on lower learning levels, they often find more people to book a class, so it was less usual for me getting 1-on-1 classes there in comparison to the Spanish C1 classes. Still, I remember having had a huge conversation in French about linguistics and my study program and another time I had a class where we talked a lot about being a language teacher. 

As a costumer of Babbel Live, you can choose the level of your class, the topic, and the teacher. Obviously, not every teacher is available at every time but if there is a teacher where you know that you liked how they teach, you can look out for more classes with them or evade someone whose classes you didn’t like. 

We need to talk… A lot

The classes are focused on talking. They try to get you to talk as much as possible. In the material, they always have some bits of vocabulary fitting to the topic, then some bits of grammar and using the grammar and then a part to start speaking more freely. I’m not much of a speaker when it comes to people that I don’t know and content that I can’t control. While I love language learning, I struggle often with getting myself to speak to people. This is not getting better in the context of speaking another language. For certain contexts, I got over this. I give linguistic talks at conferences, and I participated in summer programs and studied abroad in Portugal. So, I had opportunities to grow and get over my fears. But there are still contexts where the insecurities come back (ask my friends from political contexts. They never heard me giving a speech, not even in German). So, this program of Babbel Live really challenged me to get back to speak Italian and French and have conversations in it. It was always a mixture of looking forward to the next class and loving to be able to improve my knowledge and struggle because I didn’t want to talk. (Yes, I might be a bit too honest with you about my internal feelings. But I talk about it anyway. I know that I can handle this stuff when it’s important, so, no worries.)

For every class, Babbel also recommends certain chapters of the Babbel App and the podcast that could fit to the classes’ topic. You also get the material, i.e., the slides, beforehand. In other words: You can prepare yourself for the class if you want to. It’s not needed but if you want to make as much out of the class as possible, this is a nice way to do that. It’s important to hear and read and use words and expressions as often as possible to let them sink in. So, it depends on you, your learning style, and the time that you have free for doing this kind of stuff. 

It’s always time and money

One big issue that I had and that’s why I only tried the program for one month was the price. The price fits the content that is provided and the unlimited access for a month or several months is worth the money it costs, definitely. It’s just that you have to have that kind of money to use on this. It’s getting cheaper, by the way, if you pay for several months in a pack. And the other thing is as obvious as it is not Babbel’s fault: You need to have time to do the classes and maybe prepare them if you want to. 

Another thing: In the same month in which I tested the Babbel Live classes, I also had one class of Romanian via Italki. As Italki is just a platform that allows teachers offer their services while Babbel creates a more formal framework around the classes of the freelance teachers and their classes, it seems to be easier for Italki to offer classes in way more languages. I might write a bit more about Italki and their offers another time. What I wanted to mention here: Of course, Babbel can’t offer classes for all languages. I like that they offer, e.g., Portuguese on their app but I wish they would offer it on Babbel Live too.

I’m a freelance German teacher for Babbel now!

Now, let me skip a bit further to the present. As you might now, I’m a language teacher myself. Some time ago, I looked for open positions as a freelance teacher at several institutions. I was mainly looking for opportunities to teach online. On this occasion, I saw that Babbel was looking for freelance teachers for German. So, I applied. Some time went by and now I am a freelance Babbel Live German teacher! I give online classes on several levels and topics. The classes are focused on using the language that is to be learnt as much as possible. Sometimes, I use other languages such as English or French to help the students but depending on their level, we are able to solve all the problems and to discuss their questions solely by talking in German to each other. It’s amazing!