It wasn’t that long ago—I’m sure you remember well—when your children took their first rides on a rocking horse or read their very first book on their own. Now your children are all grown up and are teenagers. They’re expected to get good grades, speak eight languages fluently, and build successful careers. Here’s a good tip: Don’t let yourself get stressed out or even misled. Instead, send your son or daughter out into the world, because nothing is more beneficial for language learning than a stay abroad in the country where the language they’re learning is actually spoken. Nothing benefits your children more than making friends with kids from all over the world on a language trip—because there they’ll form lifelong connections paired with lasting memories that they’ll fondly look back on later. While the obvious benefit of language trips for students is, of course, language acquisition, there are still numerous other reasons to send your child out into the wider world. Here’s an overview of some notable advantages:
- Learning in small groups allows for individualized support! The instructor helps students overcome their personal challenges with the foreign language.
- Without the pressure to perform, learning is more carefree and easier! Mistakes aren't punished with bad grades, but rather serve as learning opportunities for each student and the group.
- A native speaker as a teacher serves as an authentic linguistic role model! The instructor can give each student valuable tips on improving their pronunciation and knows which colloquial expressions are actually used in everyday life.
- Experiences abroad facilitate deeper language processing! Since students associate all the words they encounter abroad with their experiences, these words are stored in their long-term memory and can be easily recalled.
- Intercultural competence develops through interaction with locals! What we consider politeness in Austria and Germany does not apply to all countries. By talking with native speakers, students discover which cultural differences can lead to misunderstandings in communication.
- A trip abroad is a great way to make lifelong friends! Students get to know many other young people, with whom they do lots of activities and may even stay in touch after the language trip.
- Studying abroad boosts your motivation to learn a language in the long run! The language skills you gain and the experiences you have abroad will ensure that you continue to study intensively even after you return home.
- A language study trip combines a relaxing vacation with intensive learning! While students attend language classes in the morning, organized excursions and other recreational activities await them in the afternoon. This keeps them motivated and adds a fun, exciting change of pace to their daily language course routine.
These are just a few of the noteworthy benefits that a language study trip offers. Aside from the subsequent academic success at school, which is reflected in good grades, a teenager also gains maturity when he or she steps away from Mom’s apron strings—perhaps for the first time.
The Right Provider
The range and variety of language travel providers online is enormous, and as a parent, it’s hard to keep track of everything amid such an overwhelming number of options. The decision about whom to entrust your child to should therefore be carefully considered and is certainly a matter of trust. If a family-owned business has more than 10 years of experience and hundreds of positive reviews, then this provider is very likely to be a better choice than a large agency designed for mass processing, where you’ll search in vain for a personal touch and a family-like atmosphere.
To Eastbourne with matthes.de
Even as a student who had gone on language trips time and again for many years, Jürgen Matthes—while studying English—came up with the idea of organizing language trips for students and dreamed of turning his passion for Eastbourne into a career. That was 30 years ago now, when Jürgen Matthes, together with his current wife Meike, turned his dream and passion into a career. And as we can see today, it’s been a success—because the facts and figures speak for themselves. With over 125,000 students, including more than 20,000 repeat participants, this is arguably the best endorsement many language students can give a language travel company. A 100 percent program guarantee, guaranteed learning success, genuine enthusiasm for the work itself, carefully selected host families, and a fantastic recreational program for participating students make matthes.de a highly successful family-run business that has firmly established itself in the language travel market. What makes matthes.de special—and what ultimately sets this family-run business apart from other language travel providers—is the personalized support and the charm of the entire experience. With its own on-site office in Eastbourne, the company is able to provide students with truly personalized care, offer them a thoughtfully designed leisure program, and always have a German contact person available on-site. With matthes.de, parents are happy to let their children set out to conquer the world!
