So, if you’ve decided that learning a language could be a boost to your career, how do you find the method that suits you?

Courses and formal study

You may be an absolute beginner looking to greet colleagues abroad in their own language or you might be seeking to expand or brush up existing language skills to talk to overseas customers or clients. The on-line Business Language Services www.blis.org.uk offers a search engine designed to help you find a suitable course in the language you want. It covers all levels from beginner to postgrad and a variety of learning methods from one-to-one tutoring to distance and/or online learning. Alternatively if you prefer to discuss your needs face-to-face then the Language Show www.thelanguageshow.co.uk, scheduled for 4-6 November 2005 at London Olympia, might be for you.

Make learning fun!

Hate exams? Don’t we all! However it’s always good to test just how much you do know of a language before you have to use it for real. On its website, www.linguaphone.co.uk, Linguaphone includes quizzes in several European languages as well as offering help with conjugating verbs. The company has also teamed up with Virgin Atlantic to offer language learning as an optional part of in-flight entertainment. At the moment only Spanish is available but Virgin is also looking to expand into other languages, possibly Chinese or Japanese. Check out. www.virgin.com/atlantic.

Increase your wordpower

Many sites provide a wealth of useful survival phrases and those on www.linguarama.com/phrases/index.html are particularly useful for business. An easy way to increase your vocabulary is to sign up to www.learning-a-language.co.uk – it’s free – and you’ll receive a word of the week in French, German, Italian and/or Spanish. The site also has audio so you can listen as well as read. Another good way to increase word power is to read newspapers and magazines in your chosen language. Try www.lingualearn.co.uk/learners/brokerpages/broker_newspapers.htm for newspapers in twelve languages including Japanese, Hebrew, and Dutch among the more usual selection. Access to magazines in specific languages is also available from the same site.

What you hear is what you get

The internet is a huge global resource for language learners and many sites provide audio so that you can practice listening and get the pronunciation right. The Guardian education website at http://education.guardian.co.uk/languageresources is particularly useful as it includes a series of articles about the country, in the language of the country, which can be heard as well as read.

Audio, whether on the web or by tapes and CDs, is great for learning simple sentence structure, but for conversation practice you need to talk with native speakers. Try your local Further Education college. Many European languages, plus Hindi, Welsh, Gujarati, Manx, Arabic, Turkish, etc. are often available, at least at beginner level, depending on where you are in the country. If your chosen language is not available locally – and try asking your colleagues as well as training providers – then advertise. You’ll be surprised how many non-English speakers welcome the opportunity to talk in their own tongue and learn conversational English from you at the same time.

Know what you know

Keeping a record of your language achievements is a useful career move. The Council of Europe encourages budding linguists to keep a European Language Portfolio, (further information from www.cilt.org.uk/qualifications/elp/adultelp.htm) although there’s no reason such a record should be restricted to European languages only. It provides a useful overview on your linguist proficiency to current and potential employers.

Further information

The National Centre for Languages www.cilt.org.uk aims to promote language learning in the UK.

The European Union http://europa.eu.int has information available in all European languages plus information about language learning.

The BBC www.bbc.co.uk/languages has a huge amount of information useful to language learners.