As a language student looking forward to your third year abroad, here’s something you should know: your third year abroad can only live up to expectations if you have the basics in place first. You need a plan if you want to avoid speaking your own language all year, find a decent place to live, and make lots of local friends.
And you can do that with a homestay. It can make your third year abroad the best year of your life. Read on to find out how.
Finding accommodation – It’s the biggest headache of all on a third year abroad. Many students end up staying in grotty places paying landlords they don’t trust or making temporary arrangements. A much better option is to book a homestay with a local family as soon as you know where you’re going to study or work. Local Lingoo host families provide a comfortable home, authentic meals and a friendly welcome. With Lingoo, you can even get to know them before you stay. True, a homestay does come at a slightly increased cost. But if you stay for just a few weeks, it’s valuable time you can use to find a suitable long-term solution. After all, it’s much easier to find somewhere to crash when you know your host city. Some hosts can even help you reduce costs (see below).
Gaining language fluency – Language students often end up living with others from their home country in university halls or shared flats. So they return home unable to speak like a native, when language learning was a key reason for going in the first place. A homestay with a local, by contrast, means you have to speak their language all day. It’s real-world, round the clock, language learning.
Befriending the locals – If you live with other students from home, it always restricts your social life. Let’s face it; it’s just easier to hang out with them. But by staying with friendly locals in their home, you learn the language as it’s spoken on the street from day one, make more friends, learn about the culture, and get a real taste of local life – things you just can’t get in the classroom.
You can search here for a homestay. It’s a third year abroad option well worth considering. Read more in our blog...
Lingoo is a language exchange and homestay club for, amongst others, young adults. Our online community provides inspiring language exchange holidays and homestays in the homes of native speakers all over the world.
Student exchange programs
Join the Lingoo international student exchange program and you can experience a new culture, discover ideas that open your eyes to fresh opportunities, learn a foreign language in an exhilarating way, and make new friends who introduce you to their community.
With our student exchange program, you choose your host based on their profile. So you can find a host not only in the country and location where you would like to study but who also shares your interests and has a young person in the family of the same age. And to make sure you have a great experience together, you can contact your hosts using our secure messaging system to get to know them before you book. So rather than arriving to stay with strangers, your student exchange program partner becomes your friend. Read more…