Schlagwort: Language Learning

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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! 

On a sidenote: I’ve started to use affiliate links so that my website finances itself. If you are interested in testing Babbel Live out, you can use this affiliate link:

Start learning with Babbel Live

Affiliation links often use cookies to track which affiliate links have been used when something has been purchased through that link (even after some days or weeks after activating the link). When you use this link and purchase something, I’ll get a small part of the money that has been used for the purchase.