According to OnePoll, the average American spends more than eight hours a week in the car commuting to work or school, running errands or traveling to meet friends or family.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could optimize all this time in the car by mastering a foreign language?
In fact, it’s entirely possible to learn a language while you drive. Let’s check some of these apps out and then figure out how to harness their potential to advance your language skills.
5 Practical Apps for Learning a Language at the Wheel
1. Michel Thomas
Summary: This practical audio course will have you speaking from the start, no reading and writing required—perfect for when your hands are busy behind the wheel!
Michel Thomas is a language learning product that has been around for a long time, and their entire method focuses on oral language. Currently, Michel Thomas offers audio-based courses in 18 languages including French, Spanish, Japanese and Arabic.
I love that Michel Thomas courses focus on conversational skills right from the get-go, homing in on common vocabulary and phrases. Rather than rote memorization, these courses had me using the language actively and engaging in mock conversations with native speakers. This is a great way to prepare for real conversations that you could have with native speakers at a later time.
As an added benefit, much of Michel Thomas’ instruction is in English. I found that this helped me to grasp various language concepts more easily.
2. Pimsleur
Summary: This classic language program is heavily focused on verbal communication, and so will help you boost both your listening and speaking skills all in one car ride.
Pimsleur is also a well-known audio-learning resource, and they have courses in more than 50 languages including German, Ukrainian, Chinese and Persian.
Its language learning content is given as 30-minute audio lessons—the ideal length for my car journey to work! The lessons focus on conversational topics, helping learners build a strong core vocabulary and get a handle on common grammar structures. This core vocabulary and grammar will be beneficial for creating meaningful sentences in your target language.
While once an audio-only course, I was happy to utilize some new features to the program—such as the flashcards, quizzes, pronunciation tools and reading practice—which I’ve found to be a great source of extra practice after driving.
3. Teach Yourself Complete Courses
Summary: While much of these comprehensive courses require a textbook, take advantage of your daily commute and get stuck into the listening activities (which include everyday conversations!).
From my experience, the Teach Yourself series is one of the most well-rounded approaches to language learning, focusing on all four major language learning skills as well as to-the-point grammar.
Teach Yourself courses are actually based around a textbook, but each unit comes with native audio dialogues and other recordings. Lessons span common vocabulary topics with in-depth grammar analysis alongside countless grammar and vocabulary exercises.
While using these courses, I have completed the lessons in the textbook first and then listened to the dialogues while driving. This is a great way to enhance listening and speaking skills, as well as vocabulary retention in the long-term.
Additionally, Teach Yourself offers audio-only apps through the “Get Talking, Keep Talking” and “Coffee Break” series. These are shorter podcasts aimed at teaching one bite-sized chunk of the language at a time.
4. Living Language
Summary: These courses also provide a textbook and audio recordings, based on specific topics—complete the lesson before heading out, then listen to the audio recordings in the car to reinforce everything!
Like the Teach Yourself courses, Living Language courses match audio learning with the aid of a workbook in more than 20 languages.
In my experience the lessons are particularly effective for speaking and listening practice as they revolve around a particular dialogue and topic. A transcript of this is given in the workbook alongside specific vocabulary and grammar notes, and each lesson comes with audio recordings as well as dozens of workbook exercises.
After doing the lesson in the workbook, I listen to the dialogues over and over again while driving: this keeps the newly-learned vocabulary in the forefront and allows me to get used to various sentence structures.
5. Assimil
Summary: This time-honored course encourages both receptive and productive language skills, and allows you to learn mostly through audio if you so choose—perfect to do while driving.
Founded in 1929 by polyglot Alphonse Chérel, Assimil is the oldest language learning program on our list! It offers hundreds of courses in foreign languages, and with many 21st century advancements, these courses are available as an app.
The method behind Assimil is to teach languages intuitively, having learners assimilate the sounds, words and grammar structures of the target language. I’ve found this immersion method to be particularly useful, especially at the start of learning a new language.
In fact, there are two phases to an Assimil course. The “Impregnation Phase” has lessons of 30 to 40 minutes aimed at helping learners absorb the language naturally through listening and reading. The “Activation Phase” allows students to use the language creatively and fluidly, focusing on written and oral production.
I believe that both of these phases are ideal for learning a language while you drive, as they activate the two hands-off skills of listening and speaking. Assimil courses can be audio-based, textbook-based or a combination of both.
