A list of activities that will be useful for any language learning community
Board games.
People love games. This type of entertainment is certainly suitable for big groups. So, a language club will always engage its’ members and attract more with this activity. It can be games with cards (great for memorising words) or games that require you to write something and practise your grammar.
Presentations.
Preparing a public speech about your hobbies or learning poems and then presenting them at the meeting of the community can work well for improving fluency and strengthening the associations of new words and phrases. At the same time, you develop your presentation skills.
Debates.
There’s nothing like lively discussion to get people talking fluently and sharing opinions. We learn languages in order to communicate and share things with others, so debating provides excellent practice. For example, in Minsk, English learning geeks have created an English Debate Club where they practice both English, public speach and also develop critical thinking.
Sports.
Doing sports together such as bike rides or roller skating is a great outdoor activity for language communities in summer, especially somewhere out of the city. The key thing for your language learning here is that you may see many things when you’re out and about which can spark discussion (nature, flowers, animals, etc).
Real life quests.
This is quite unusual activity suitable for active people who love adventures and quizzes. For this, you should probably have at least pre-intermediate language level, so that you can understand the tasks well and brainstorm with your team effectively. Examples can be treasure hunts with elaborate storylines or mystery solving activities.
Collaboration. Doing your hobbies together or collaborating on a project (for example, composing music, recording a video, singing songs, playing musical instruments, etc) will be useful to improve your language, and also to create something really cool together. It can be online and offline, both for learning in groups and pairs.
Online conversation.
An online language exchange app like Bilingua will guide your language practice and help you find a cool language buddy – a native speaker of your target language who also learns your native language. You can find a variety of topics to make your conversation exchange really enjoyable.
Video games.
This is probably the best choice for gamers, who like online team video games. Being immersed into a virtual adventure, the gamer is likely to start thinking in the target language effortlessly, how it happens in the real immersion environment.
Movies.
Watching movies and discussing them can be a very good listening and speaking practice. It is suitable for a group, and for tandem language exchange. This can be an online or offline activity. If you are learning English, consider watching movies with subtitles. That will help you to understand the movie, as well as make notes and learn new words and expressions.
Travelling & Guiding.
This is a good option for those who like meeting new people and visiting new places. There is a web service called Meetngreetme that connects city visitors with locals. For example, locals may guide you through the city and show you the sights or offer some assistance. In your turn, you can also meet’n’greet some foreigners coming to your city. Thus, at the same time, you can have a good language practice with a native speaker of your target language.
Of course, this is not the end, and one can expand this list of activities more. But the most important thing that makes them really valuable is people. Having nice language partners around the world is what will make your learning enjoyable!
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