Intermediate Swedish

[Montray Yadav]

Awonderful feature of Duolingo for intermediate learners is that you can choose to begin with a placement test to help determine your current level of Swedish ability. There is no need to waste time working through beginner lessons you have already mastered simply because you start using a new program to learn.

Babbel has built a reputation for providing quality language learning tools. This program does a good job of blending listening and reading skills by always pronouncing the words as they are introduced. Lessons also include sample dialogues to help put new vocabulary words into context right away. Babbel offers opportunities to review the words that you have already learned as well as progress through new lessons to learn new words.

For many languages, Babbel also offers the choice between a self-study program, live online classes, or a mix of both. Unfortunately, live online classes are not currently available for Swedish. The audio on the self-study program is recorded from native Swedish speakers, so you still have the opportunity to learn pronunciation from native speakers. You will not, however, be able to receive feedback to evaluate and improve your pronunciation.

Rosetta Stone is well-known for its immersive approach to language learning. If you choose Rosetta Stone, you will not learn Swedish from English or any other language. All text and audio will be in Swedish without translation. It is well-designed, using images for clarity.

Rosetta Stone allows you to choose a starting level of beginner, intermediate, or advanced, based on your proficiency. There is no placement assessment to determine this, so you should evaluate your own skills to find the right fit.

One unique feature of Rosetta Stone is that lessons include voice recognition software so you will actually practice pronouncing words and some answers will be spoken rather than written. Each verbal response will be rated and then the recording of the native speaker will repeat the phrase again so that you can hear it correctly.

SwedishPod101 is a podcast/listening based program for learning Swedish. Most of the materials are available for free through their website or on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Since the website includes additional features, in addition to tracking your progress and saving your results, creating a free login is recommended.

Sign up to receive daily Word-of-the-Day emails to help you learn new vocabulary and improve your pronunciation. Then choose from five different levels to begin your journey (absolute beginner, beginner, intermediate, upper intermediate, and advanced). There are helpful tips listed to help you determine where you should start based on what you already know, and an optional diagnostic assessment (40 questions) is also available to help you start in the right place.

Choose which skill you want to practice: listening, speaking, or vocabulary building. You can also adjust your level of difficulty by choosing multiple choice, text input, or transcription (for listening skills). The more difficult your practice, the more points you earn toward your running total.

The free version of the app is limited by how much you can practice each day, and not by how far you can progress, in contrast with many other apps that offer both free and paid versions. Another unique feature is the ability to change your language pairing, which allows you to learn Swedish from a language other than English. At this moment, you can learn Swedish from Dutch, Finnish, German, and Spanish.

A disadvantage of Mango for intermediate learners is that the program automatically starts in chapter 1, lesson 1 for beginners. You can skip between different lessons, but it takes trial and error to find the right lessons for your current level.

Reading lessons are interspersed among the other lessons at specific intervals to help integrate the sounds of the language and the written form of the language. Reading lessons do not always match the spoken-language lessons, but are designed to support or supplement them in different ways. Quick Match quizzes (10 questions) are available periodically to help you check understanding. A fast-paced matching game called Speed Round is a fun way to review and build fluency through quick recognition.

Because nouns make up such a huge chunk of any language, adding plenty of them to your intermediate Swedish vocabulary will really get you places. Here are some of the most useful Swedish nouns in different categories to get you started.

Our next set of intermediate Swedish words consists of the most useful verbs for this stage of your learning journey. Memorizing this selection of practical action words will allow you to be more precise in your conversations and make your stories more interesting. To practice, try combining them with the nouns above to form complete sentences!

We use adverbs to give additional information about a verb, an adjective, or even another adverb. Learning just a few Swedish adverbs can help you better express yourself and add color to your conversations or writing. The lists below are a great place to start.

Prepositions play an important role in intermediate-level Swedish, as they allow you to be more specific in your descriptions. We have included some of the most frequently used prepositions in Swedish below.

Here, you get access to thousands of video, audio, and text lessons, from which you can save your own online flashcards. Plus, you can choose to only study content that caters to your exact level. Add to this several other features on SwedishPod101.com, like line-by-line breakdowns and pronunciation comparison tools.

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As I just mentioned above, I recently passed the intermediate level of the general examination in Swedish in October 2023. The test is popularly known among foreigners in Finland as YKI, abbreviation of Yleiset kielitutkinnot or National Certificate of Language Proficiency, which is available for multiple languages, i.e. English, Finnish, Swedish, German, etc. YKI intermediate level in Finnish and Swedish are among conditions for citizenship application in Finland.

Pick up Swedish again in a more serious manner. However, at that time I was in my hometown, so I have not had much time and materials learning. I mainly practiced with Duolingo every day. For me, Duolingo is a really good source to learn Swedish at the first place as it somehow forces me into the habit of learning Swedish at the initial stage when I have not been really into learning the new language. I have also bought Duolingo plus to practice Swedish speaking and I think this method helps me get more confidence in speaking out loud Swedish sentences and at the same time remembering new vocabulary.

I start to register a lot of Swedish conversation classes for B1 level at ilmonet.fi. Ilmonet is a joint online portal of different adult education centers in Greater Helsinki areas. On Ilmonet, you can easily browse through different language courses at different levels with multiple options of learning methods offered by several adult education centers at reasonable prices.

It was also from May that I started YKI preparation course with teacher Mirja Pekanmki. The course is an intensive course where teacher would go through different components of the test like what to expect, what to pay attention or what mistakes to avoid. The teacher also provides with multiple prompts for writing and speaking practice and she helped correct our writing tasks. I found that the course helped me a lot to get accustomed to the test format and to be well prepared mentally for the long test. During that time, I also formed a small group of friends to practice Swedish speaking for the exam at least three times a week where we mostly used the prompts from the book Frbered dig fr allmn sprkexamen (tryckt bok) by Gimara and the prompts given in the preparation course.

In addition to attending the courses, I also try to learn myself from several textbooks. Of all textbooks that I have, I found Rivstart A1+A2 textbook and half of B1+B2 textbook would be enough to clear the exam. I also bought other textbooks simply because of my interest in learning further. Rivstart Yrkeliv is also helpful as it provides with a lot of vocabulary with work related topics. Sprkporten and Rivstart B2+C1 would be the books if you want to study for advanced level. From my observations, Sprkporten is used more by teachers in advanced classes. In most textbooks, I would try to go through the texts, listening to the audio and trying to do some listening tasks and writing tasks as well. I found some of the writing prompts given in Rivstart are quite helpful in the sense that it helps you better imagine what is to be expected if you are asked to write something in Swedish. For writing practice, I tried to write as much as possible to be familiar with grammar and sentence construction. I used ChatGPT as a helpful source to provide me with suggestion for writing part.

I am still learning Swedish, however, I am not learning as intensively as I was. I still participate in speaking classes and advanced grammar classes when I have time and actively search for events in Swedish in Helsinki to get myself immerse in the language. The thing that I learn from this whole Swedish learning is that persistence and discipline make the difference.

Looking back in 2023, while there are still many things that do not happen up to my expectations, I am so far satisfied that I have somehow acquired a new language and learn to use it effectively. I hope that I could improve my Swedish in the future to use it as an advanced learner.

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