2021 Holiday Gift Guide for Language Lovers: 30+ Language Learning Gift Ideas for the Holidays
Wondering what to get the language learner in your life? Or maybe, you yourself love learning languages and are trying to figure out what to tell someone else to get you!
You’ll find something for everyone on this list. I hope it inspires you with your gift-giving (or wish list building) this year!
Holiday Gift Guide for Language Learners
Language learning is typically divided into four different skill sets, so here are gifts organized by the skills you need to develop. But first…
Black Friday Deals for Language Learners 2021
Before we get into gift ideas organized by skill set, I wanted to share just a few items that are on sale during Black Friday this year. So let’s start there!
Up 75% Off Olly Richard’s Black Friday Deals
Olly Richards of I Will Teach You a Language and Storylearning is offering discounts on many of his products including five of his Uncovered courses for German, Japanese, French, Italian or Spanish.
$100 Off “The Language Habit Toolkit” from Kerstin Cable
Kerstin has created an amazing resource called the Language Habit Toolkit – one of my go-tos. It is a structured guide for learning any language by yourself. It’s all about setting yourself up for success and building positive habits around your language learning. It’s workbooks are incredibly helpful and a lot of thought went into the creation of this course!
This course is normally $300 but you can get it for $200 using code BLKCM2021.
Get it here. (Use code BLKCM2021 to get $100 off)
$100 Off “Podcasting 101” from Kerstin Cable
Want to find your voice and share it with the world?
Podcasting 101 is a fun and effective online course that will guide you through each stage of planning, producing and publishing your very own podcast.
Kerstin is an incredible podcaster as host of the Fluent Language Podcast, if anyone knows how to teach podcasting in the language space — it’s Kerstin!
This course is normally $250 but you can get it for $150 using code BLKCM2021.
Get it here. (Use code BLKCM2021 to get $100 off)
50% Off Language Learning Accelerator from Eurolinguiste
With four jobs, two kids, a blog, and fourteen languages under my belt, I’ve had a lot of experience developing time management and energy management skills. I created this course to share them with you. If you ever feel too busy to learn a language, or too tired, Language Learning Accelerator has all the tools you need to work through it and finally find the time to learn your language.
50% Off Language Conqueror from Eurolinguiste
Ready to embark on an epic year of language learning? Join me on 12 monthly Quests to take your language learning to new heights in Language Conqueror.
Normally $499, you can get Language Conqueror for $250. You’ll take part in Quests that help you with goal setting, time management, language learning habits, and so much more.
90% Off Fluent in 3 Months Black Friday Package
As you know, I’m the Head Coach of the Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp. But I don’t just coach Bootcamp, I also take part regularly. Why? Because I know it works.
My thoughts: I’ve now taken part in back-to-back Bootcamps for around four years. I’ve gotten to a conversational level in Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, and most recently Persian with Bootcamp. The community and weekly tasks help me stay focused and on track with my studies and the accountability is what keeps me coming back.
Bootcamp is a language learning program where you aim to have a 15-minute conversation at the end of 90 days. You do so with a structured course, a supportive community, and knowledgeable coaches.
Plus, you get access to their 2022 Live Webinar subscription.
Price: $199 (usually $2,039)
Writing Gifts for Language Learners
Many language learners still take notes by hand, even if it’s to quickly complete coursebook exercises or to jot down something useful they’ve come across along the way. Having a notebook handy — especially one they enjoy writing in (or looking at) is important and this makes for a great gift.
This one goes hand-in-hand with notebooks. You not only need something to write in, but something to write with! You can get them fancy pens like these from Stabilo, or go a more traditional route with ballpoint pens.
I use sticky notes for all sorts of things — quick notes, adding notes to something I’m reading, to remind myself of things I find interesting, and to label things in another language around the house. These are an endlessly useful gift!
Does the language learner in your life highlight their notes or even the books they’re reading? Then this set of highlighters would be a great, colorful gift you can give them!
- Premium online course
There are loads of fantastic online courses available on the market today. Here are just a few of my favorites.
- FluentU (here’s my FluentU review)
- Uncovered Courses: French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish
- Language Hacking Book: French, German, Spanish, Italian
- Keyboard stickers
These are really useful if you need to type in another language often. No more hunt-and-peck on the keyboard typing with these helpful stickers. They’re available for most languages, but here’s Farsi, Arabic, Korean, Russian, and Japanese.
I recently worked through Judith Meyer’s Script Hacking Persian book and I’m hooked (read my Script Hacking review). The great thing is they’re available for loads of languages including Russian, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and more.
When I was learning to read and write in Chinese, calligraphy paper was a useful thing to have around.
Listening Gifts for Language Learners
Headphones (or earphones below) are a must-have for language learners. They help you focus on what you’re listening to, cutting out background noise, but also make whatever you’re listening to more private.
For those who prefer earbuds to headphones.
There are loads of foreign language shows and movies available on Netflix for language learners to binge watch. Plus, even shows not originally in a language have overdubs or subtitles available in a variety of language. It’s an incredible resource for learners!
Pimsleur is one of my favorite audio resources and something that I have used for every language I’ve learned. It’s a series of listen-and-repeat lessons that slowly introduce useful words and phrases in a wide range of languages. Read my Pimselur review.
Did you know that if you buy a movie from another region, you likely won’t be able to play it on your blu ray or dvd player? That’s because movies are locked by region. But there’s any easy fix that will help you build your international movie library. And that’s to buy an all region player!
If you have a music lover in your life (who also happens to learn languages), a Spotify Premium account is a wonderful gift. Spotify has a nice selection of music from around the world accessible for language learners.
For the reader who prefers to listen to their books over read them. Audible is a great resource for language learners because of their selection of both language learning materials and foreign language books.
Constant ad interruptions when trying to study a new language are no fun. Gifting the language learner in your life a Premium Youtube subscription lets them skip the ads and get more language learning time in.
Speaking Gifts for Language Learners
italki is an online platform with a wide range of tutors of hundreds of languages. Plus, they’re ready to help you learn at affordable prices!
Speechling is a fun app and tool you can use to practice speaking a language. You record yourself reading various expressions or phrases in the language you’re learning and you get feedback from native speakers.
Help learners improve the quality of their language lessons and exchanges with a microphone. That way, their partners and tutors will be able to hear them clearly and avoid misunderstandings!
The Fluent in 3 Months Bootcamp promises participants that they’ll have a 15-minute conversation in a new language after just 90 days. It might sound too good to be true, but I’ve done several and it has worked every time!
Help the language learner in your life document their learning adventures with a GoPro camera. It’s a great tool for their video calls, for their self-recording and for the adventures (when we’re able to go back on them).
A few years ago, I put together this course with Fluent in 3 Months to help shy and introverted language learners gain the confidence to speak in a new language.
Reading Gifts for Language Learners
I love LingQ. It’s an incredible app that offers tons of tools to help learners start reading in a new language. It has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get into it, it’s an irreplaceable tool.
Let the language lover in your life choose the tools and resources they want most by getting them an Amazon gift card.
I recently bought this exact book holder and it has changed my life. It makes it so much easier to take notes and learn with coursebooks because I’m not trying to hold a book open with one hand and take notes with the other.
Combine the best of the digital and physical resource realm with this digital pen scanner. Scan useful texts to your computer or device to keep your language learning organized.
Give the language learner you care about the gift of digital storage. A Kindle tablet gives them a place to store all of their digital learning tools and take them along wherever they may go.
- A great book about language or learning
There are loads of fantastic language books available. Here are just a few:
- Through the Language Glass
- Babel No More
- The Story of French or The Story of Spanish
- Fluent in 3 Months
- Fluent Forever
- How to Speak Any Language Fluently
- Ultralearning
Don’t let your language learning friends use scraps of paper or other random things as bookmarks — hook them up with a beautiful, meaningful bookmark that will make them think of you whenever they sit down to study!
Olly Richards has several fantastic books published for language learners, notably his series of Short Stories. They’re available for many languages — both common and uncommon.
Language Learning Gifts for Productivity, Habit-Building, and Structure
Help your language learning pals get organized with a 2021 planner.
Habit is a useful app for language learnings looking to establish a language learning habit. It’s free to use, but you can “pay what you want” to hook up your friends with a Premium subscription.
Todoist is my favorite project management tool and it’s how I keep all of my projects — both personal and work related — organized.
The Total Language Learning Package
Want something that covers a little bit of everything and will really help the language learner in your life take things to the next level?
- Language Conqueror (don’t forget you can get 50% off!)
I recently created Language Conqueror, a course created for language learners who are looking for direction, motivation, and more excitement while learning a new language using tried and tested methods.
Each month, we release a new Quest to help you take your language to new heights through passion-driven learning.
Each Quest includes:
- A video lesson introducing the Quest
- Daily prompts to give you something to work on each day
- A workbook with all the exercises and instructions you need to complete the Quest
- A video demonstrating the Quest in action from one of our hosts (or special guests)
- Trade secrets from me: these are tricks you can use to succeed at your Quest
- A Side-Quest: an action you can take to help you gain the confidence you need to complete your Quest
- Access to the Quest community so you can collaborate with other learners, share what you’re working on, and get support
- Your Quest: the final assignment you complete to put everything you learned over the month into practice
Join Language Conqueror Master Quest and get 50% off!
And that wraps it up!
What are you getting the language learners in your life? Let me know in the comments!
