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Learn How to Deal Language Barriers While Studying Abroad
As human history has witnessed, overcoming language barriers might not be everyone’s favorite task. However, the same history has also witnessed that after overcoming the language barriers, human history has progressed more than ever. The same formula applies for study abroad individuals as well. Know what overcoming language barrier entails here.
Table Of Contents
Table Of Contents
1. Language Barrier
After carefully planning your study abroad with full confidence, suddenly you realize about the possible language barriers. Even though you apply for an English speaking country or in an English-taught program in a non-speaking country, language barriers are bound to occur. Thus, overcoming these obstacles are really necessary if you want to immerse, thrive and enjoy the best of life in the intended country. The reasons for language barrier can be in permutation and combinations. Let us explain here.
2. Reasons for Language Barrier
If you want to overcome any obstacle like language barriers, then you must carefully uproot what’s the propelling reason behind it. Once you introduce the problem, there you go, your half of the problem would be gone.
Fear of Grammatical Mistakes: Well, we all want to be perfect and composed while speaking. But this fear of making grammatical mistakes is actually detrimental for you to hone your skills on learning a new language. Hence, make all the mistakes you want, and learn anew.
Confused about the Accent or Pronunciation: We have so much expectation while speaking a language or interacting with someone who can speak the targeted language that we confuse the accents or mispronounce it. Thus, a fake accent or lack of intonation can make the listener confused.
No Practice: Lack of practice can be a barrier when speaking the language after so much time. Suppose, you have learnt French since childhood but with no practice you’ll be unintelligible to a native speaker.
Low Self-esteem: Some people struggle because of low self-esteem and it creates a communication barrier or language barrier. People who are afraid to make mistakes and want to remain in their biased or prejudiced comfort zones, will face a language barrier.
3. Types of Language Barrier while Studying Abroad
Different types of language barrier occur while you study abroad and since we know the reasons, let us categorize the types or examples of language barriers in communication:
3.1 Academic Language Barrier
Academic language barrier implies when a student finds difficulties learning from lectures, writing assignments or exams. To prohibit it from resurfacing, universities demand an English proficiency score like IELTS/TOEFL/PTE/Duolingo or language tests for other foreign languages.
3.2 Social Language Barriers
Social language barriers convey the meaning of stopping one from interacting with others solely because of language. International students face these kinds of situations all the time, even though they are enrolled in an English-taught program, besides the academic set up, they face tremendous pressure of language skills.
4. Tips to Resolve Language Barriers
If there’s a difficulty, then there’s a solution too. Learn what you can do about language barriers. Solving these kinds of issues are essential as this may hamper your normal social life. Check the tips below:
4.1 Find Other Ways of Communication
Humans are good conversationalists even before the creation of language. These communications were in the form of body language, gestures, touching, dancing, humming etc. Try dance classes, group sports, artist guilds to communicate what you can not say bluntly or immediately.
4.2 Ask for Help
It’s not wrong to seek help when you are facing language barriers. Sometimes, all you need is some communication skills to solve your language skills. Ask your colleagues, flatmates how effective communication in native skills is.
4.3 Build Your Friendships with Locals or Residents
The long term residents or citizens of an area know best when it comes to the language they communicate. Any kind of language is not simply divided between standard and colloquial form. There are nuances of languages that one needs to understand in order to communicate effectively. Mingle with the locals to immerse yourself in the language.
4.4 Partake in Clubs, Societies or Guilds
To explain it broadly, when you are in a situation of need, naturally you will become more alert and confident. These two factors contribute to your language skills as well besides developing other skills. Also the universal character of any social cohort doesn’t need much language to communicate!
4.5 Check Out How Student Support Can Help You
All study abroad universities have fully functional student support groups. Thus, when you are in desperate need of communication assistance, you may seek help from these resources. They will help you with basic phrases for communication and manuals too.
4.6 Language Exchange Programs
There are language exchange programs in study abroad universities that help a student to learn the language of the other. The beauty of this is, whether official or unofficial, you can always pair up with someone as needy as you to overcome language barriers of communication.
4.7 Enhance Your Language Skills
This might seem daunting to you but learning a language may help you in the long run. If the language you feel is difficult to learn and communicate is a world language like French, Portuguese or Mandarin then you better start your classes today. These languages ensure a good career too.
4.8 Use Gadgets and Apps
The modern inventions have really smoothed the nomads of the modern world and the biggest benefactors of it are the study abroad students. There are hundreds of apps and gadgets that can translate and convey your messages with the assistance of AI. You can even choose not to speak.
5. Conclusion
In the final analysis, we can draw the conclusion that learning a language is a mammoth task. Since, it can take months or years if you want to learn a language. Besides, reducing language barriers is essential too as it can take away most of your study abroad experience if not resolved. We can help you prepare for the larger world by offering help for the English proficiency tests. These tests are important to get enrolled in the upcoming 2024 intakes abroad.
6. Who are We!
Career Clinic is your ideal go to place when it comes to study abroad. We make sure that our study abroad consultancy delivers you the ideal study abroad venture and everything that comes within. Thinking of language barriers abroad? Don’t worry about it, we will solve that too. Contact us for more info!
Frequently Asked Questions
There are some common things that can be attempted by the study abroad students to do to evade language barriers:
- Watch TV series or movies in the intended language
- Read if you can about the language
- Go through the literary history of the language if it is available in your language
- Try to hum the songs of the language. This will attune to the intonation of it.
- Visit the daily markets. It’s a great way to learn the pedestrian language.
Yes, you can. There are language courses you can pursue beside your study abroad program. These kinds of courses are taught in the university itself and targeted for the study abroad students. They are designed for beginners to all the way to advanced learners. Language courses within the university have credit points assigned that can be added to your overall scorecard. For example, ESL courses are usually counted as part of the main study abroad programs.
Language learning apps which can be installed in hand-held gadgets as well are developed to learn languages in a phrasal way. These apps ensure that you can learn the basics or pedestrian level of proficiency but is not limited to that task only. You can go for more advanced level learning in the ame apps but most apps will charge some amount of money. There are some apps that teach you languages like English, French, German, Russian and Japanese in an audio-visual way. Some apps that we can name for this instance are British Council, Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, Memrise etc.
Google translator comes really handy when it comes to overcoming language barriers. It’s an app that not only translates a good number of languages but also uses the speaker system to narrate the translated sentences. Thus, you can talk to any language speakers if you have the Google Translator app in your android or iOS phone. The more you utilize it, the more it gives you precise results.
