Education Abroad Resources

Rosetta Stone combines advanced interactive technology with native speaker voicing and a rich visual environment to mimic the complete immersion process, which is most effective for successful language learning. You will learn whole-language skills including listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Due to high demand, accounts showing inactivity will be deleted after 7 days.

Contains Spanish language resources and information on traveling abroad.

A LibGuide with resources related to language acquisition.

This guide provides access and assistance for finding books, articles and other information on Arabic and Middle Eastern subjects.

This subject guide is intended to provide a starting point to the resources of the Texas A&M University Libraries related to Germanic languages and literatures (German, Dutch, and Scandinavian).

French studies at TAMU Libraries includes books, publications in many other formats, and manuscripts in the French language or about France and the French-speaking world.

This guide is designed to help you find electronic, print and audio-visual resources in the area of Italian studies.

Duolingo is a free site that teaches users languages through drills, requiring a mix of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. An "immersion" section allows you to read real-world articles while helping to translate them. Beyond that, Duolingo makes studying fun by awarding you points for lessons completed and bonuses if you do well; a social aspect allows your friends to see your progress and vice versa. If you wish, Duolingo will send you daily reminders to study, which is easy to do, even while you're on the go.

Reading, writing, speaking, and listening are studied separately on its platform, with structured lessons that first present new material before asking users to apply what they've learned. Premium membership isn't free, but you can earn lesson credits by tutoring other clients (e.g., editing something that they've written in your native language, or giving feedback on their pronunciation via audio recordings). Livemocha also allows its users to access virtual classes or book private tutors for online sessions.

With an international community of more than 40 million registered native speakers, Busuu relies heavily on its customers' efforts to help teach each other. Beginners' lessons use flash cards for learning new words and phrases, but advanced lessons involve writing and answering questions that will be reviewed by native speakers on the site. Dialogues, writing exercises, and audio recordings are also part of the mix, but grammar-focused lessons, video units, and printable PDF files are only available via paid memberships. However, the free lessons are available on-the-go via Busuu's apps.

Available in a variety of course lengths and costs, the lessons combine vocabulary, grammar, audio conversations, and cultural notes. Games, puzzles, and e-tutoring with native speakers are other popular features. Apps for the iPhone and iPad offer full course content, interactive games, and flash cards on the go. If you don't want to pay for a course, Living Language's Free Resources section affords a variety of language-specific PDFs that are useful to travelers or anyone looking to build vocabulary in a language they've already studied.

The Foreign Services Institute features extensive text and audio resources for more than 45 languages. Designed by professional linguists for the U.S. government, these free materials are of the highest quality, created with the aim of aiding users gain fluency. Lessons are organized around grammar and repetition, and in addition to more popular languages, the site offers resources for learning lesser-studied options like Romanian, Igbo, Serbo-Croatian, and many more.

Visual learners should head to Memrise, a site that features countless categories of so-called "mems," user-generated mnemonic flash cards that rely on graphics, humor, and imagination to implant new vocabulary in your memory. The site hosts thousands of free courses in many languages; you can also upload your own mems for other users to view. Because the content is entirely user-generated, the quality may vary, but when mems work, they really work.

Now an archived site, the BBC Languages page has a useful feature under Choose a Language where it directs you to a wide variety of resources if you choose a particular language.