Tips for Keeping your Language Skills Fresh During the Summer Break

Use it or lose it!  Don't let the summer break see your language skills trickle away or disappear!  Here are some tips to keep you on track with your foreign language skills until Fall semester.

• If you're in Spanish 1A, take Spanish 1B over the summer.  Click here for the foreign language summer schedule. 
• Watch television programs, listen to radio programming, or read news online in the language you're learning.  Click here for a link to resource pages for each language.  Look under "Media" for recommended sites for television, radio, or print media.
• Watch movies in your language on NetFlix, Comcast On Demand, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Streaming (to name a few resources). 
• Read magazines, check out books and DVDs from the San Francisco Public Library.  Don't know where to start?  Ask a librarian! 
• Listen to popular music and songs.  Try Spotify or Pandora. 
• Visit an ethnic market, in San Francisco that might be in Chinatown or Irving Street (@20th Street) for Chinese, the Mission District for Spanish (all over), North Beach for Italian (Molinari's, Lucca's or A.G. Ferrari), Japantown for Japanese (J-Pop Summit is coming up on 7/27-28) and the Outer Richmond for Russian.  For French and German markets of any sort, you'll have to book a flight! But French and German restaurants abound in the City. 
• Go to an ethnic restaurant and practice ordering from the menu with your very best accent!  Wienerschnitzel, anyone?   

Students, do you have any suggestions or tips that you have used?  If so, leave a comment to share with others.