Ever wanted to learn how to speak French, Spanish, or any other language?  Never got started because you weren’t sure which one you’d really use or would be easiest for you to learn?  Here is a quick guide to the three most popular foreign language courses that will help you decide which one is right for you!

Mandarin Classes

• Perks
  • The ability to speak to 1 in every 6 people on earth.  
  • A growing language in the world of business.
• Challenges:
  • Very tonal language, and can be easy to say the wrong thing when the tone is wrong.
  • Completely different writing characters.
• Estimated Time to Fluency:  Estimated 2,200 class hours or taking Mandarin classes for 5 hours a day for 88 weeks.

Spanish Classes

• Perks
  • Be able to communicate in at least 21 countries. (There are 400 million speakers worldwide.)
  • One of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.
• Challenges
  • Learning how to conjugate in different tenses. (Those who have taken Spanish classes should know that they have to learn one extra tense!)
  • Understanding native speakers. (Spanish is spoken at 7.82 syllables per second!)
• Estimated Time to Fluency:  Conversational fluency can be achieved in 350 hours, or 1 hour per day for a year.

French Classes

• Perks
  • Spoken and widely used in many industries, such as fashion, hospitality, automotive, aeronautics, luxury goods, and politics.
  • An increased understanding of French culture.
• Challenges
  • Pronunciation. Many words use the back of the throat to produce sounds, which is not common or easy for English speakers.
  • Tricky subject-verb agreements that do not follow their own rules.  The number of exceptions are too many to count, it comes down to memorization!
• Estimated Time to Fluency:  An estimated 3 years to achieve intermediate fluency, with a student taking 1 hour per day to learn the language.

The Study offers a variety of foreign language courses in different learning environments, such as public group classes, private group classes, one-on-one classes, all of which are delivered through the blended learning method.  Learn how to speak French, Spanish, Mandarin and more when you sign up for a class with The Study today!

Learning a foreign language is one of the best skills you can pick up. After all, being multilingual is a significant advantage for those looking to work abroad at some point in their careers. Fortunately, language tutorial centers, like The Study, offer a wide range of foreign language courses to choose from. The question now is: which foreign language should you learn?

Although you can never go wrong with whichever foreign language you decide to learn, there are a few languages that stand out if your intention is to work abroad. These languages include:

Mandarin

Mandarin is one of the major Chinese dialects with over a billion speakers worldwide. In fact, one out of every six people in the world speak the language. Mandarin is mainly spoken as the official language in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The emergence of China as an economic powerhouse has made Madarin-speakers an extremely valuable asset for multinational corporations, which is why Mandarin classes are a popular and practical choice.

Spanish

Spanish is a very familiar language for Filipinos since it shares a lot of words with Tagalog. It is also one of the most common languages in the world with over 470 million speakers. Spanish is spoken in a large number of countries, including Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and the United States. One of the main advantages of taking Spanish classes for Filipinos is how we share certain vocabulary and grammar rules, making it one of the easier languages for Filipinos to pick up.

French

Many people are interested in how to speak French thanks to the language being nicknamed “The Language of Love”. From a business perspective, however, French is an important language, given the fact that there are more French speakers outside of France than the language’s country of origin. French is spoken in Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, Cameroon, and the Ivory Coast, among others.

German

German isn’t one of the first languages that come to mind when someone wants to learn a foreign language, but there are quite a few advantages to learning it. There are over 100 million native German speakers throughout the world. It is often spoken in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, and Switzerland. One of the main merits of taking German classes is the fact that Germany is the strongest economy in the European Union.