By Tom Jager
Studying abroad can be really difficult, especially in the first couple of weeks. There are many obstacles that a foreign student needs to overcome in order to fully adapt to another culture and another language. Furthermore, the most difficult part is adapting to the new system of studying which may be a lot different from their home country.
Luckily, the Internet offers many resources that will help all of those who are either struggling to adapt or just want to learn more and feel better about being in a different country. Here are a few important ones that can help you.
Grammar Up – learn English grammar and test it
In order to study in an English-speaking country, you need to arm yourself with impeccable grammar. Grammar Up is a website that provides interactive test for testing your grammar and through which you can also learn new and interesting things that exist in English grammar. Furthermore, all the examples on this website are taken from the famous English books, which will allow you to learn about the literature as well – and what is a better way to learn about a culture but from the books?
Sounds – speak like a native speaker
This tool helps people from non-english speaking countries who had come to study to an English-speaking country. It is simply named "Sounds“ because it basically provides information and practice on how to properly pronounce English sounds. Why is this important? Well, people with an accent may sometimes mispronounce certain words and, thus, cause the hearer to misinterpret those words. You do not want your words to be misinterpreted when you study.
Elevate – practice all language skills at once
Based on the newest discoveries in cognitive sciences, Elevate provides the user the ability to train their brain in order to achieve better communication and better analytical abilities. In other words, Elevate trains your reading, speaking, listening and writing skills all at once through entertaining games. The study has shown that people who used Elevate to train their skills improved by 69% when compared to the people who did not use the application.
Google maps – know your way around
I am certain that most of the people reading this article are familiar with Google Maps, but it is still a very powerful tool that it is worth mentioning. If you have a Google account and you study in another country, you might want to see what are all the options that Google Maps offer – and there are dozens of them. If you have the app installed on your phone as well, you will have no problem getting around the world at all.
Google translate – translate anything to your native tongue
While we are on the subject of Google, Translate tool is also worth mentioning. Although still not perfect and not really suitable for translating phrases or sentences, Translate will help you by translating individual words. Word groups will be somehow robotically and unnaturally translated, but you will still be able to deduce the meaning.
Eventbrite – see what interesting events are happening in your environment
The best way to understand culture of a certain people is to expose yourself directly to its most traditional festivals. Luckily, Eventbrite scans your location and shows all the nearby events that may be interesting for you. Furthermore, there is an option to filter out things that you are not interested in and just see what you might attend. Eventbrite also lets you create your own events and buy tickets for the already existing ones.
MoneyWise – keep track of your expenses
One of the biggest problems that students from another country encounter when studying abroad is how that other culture views and handles money. Furthermore, if those foreign students have someone send them money from their homeland, it can take up several weeks before they arrive. Therefore, MoneyWise is a GooglePlay app that will let the students keep detailed information on all the possible expenses, incomes and outcomes that they have.
These are just a few resources which you can check out and which will eventually help you overcome all the barriers that may exist while studying abroad. Whether you have a cultural barrier or a language barrier, just remember that practice will solve everything, and now practice is made a lot easier with these apps.
Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at Write My Essay for Me. He has a degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+ or Facebook.
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