Being a foreign student in Sweden has many advantages. One of those perks is that many Swedes speak English very well, which almost eliminates the need to learn Swedish. However, I still find it valuable to learn the language, as it also gives you insights into the culture and makes you feel as part of this society. Also, it is extremely satisfying when you can finally order food or talk to the cashier in the native tongue and they keep talking to you in their language! 🙂

LiU offers Swedish courses for foreign students and they are free for me as an European student. I chose to take level A1 and want to tell you a bit about it.

Logistics

The course starts a little later than other courses in the semester and after a general introduction (which was held on Zoom this year) you could sign up for smaller groups. The courses are held weekly at the same time (you can choose between morning and evening lessons). Each session is 3 hours long, which might seem a little bit intense for learning a new language, but with the interactive sections in between it was definitely manageable!

Course Content

We not only learned grammar, vocabulary and conversational phrases (all very important in real life!), but also facts about Swedish Culture and Sweden as a country. In general, a great mix between lecture and interactive conversations between students.

Assignments & Workload

We had to hand in a written assignment and a video recording of an oral introduction of ourselves. Together with the homework and exercises in the book, there was always a lot you could do to practise. Sometimes the amount of work was overwhelming, but you could also manage without doing every exercise. However, I have to admit that I am glad that I took the course next to writing my thesis rather than together with other courses. I could not have managed otherwise.

All in all, I really recommend taking the course if you are interested in learning Swedish!

Best,

Iris

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