I’m planning on making a multi-post series about this, but today I’m going to talk about the program currently going on at University of Oslo for free introduction to Norwegian classes!

They are working through a program online called FutureLearn, which offers free online educational courses. I’ve just begun the University of Oslo course and completed week 1, and I can say it’s an exceptionally unique and interesting way to begin. At the end of the courses, you are allowed to purchase certificates of your qualifications and achievements through FutureLearn.

The course, so far, has been a lot of fun. It is divided up into 4 weeks, where you have 2 days of study per week (but really, you can do it all at once.) The main format of learning is videos, where you are introduced to foreign students in Oslo meeting each other for the first time. It progresses like a story from there, where you learn more about each “character” and begin to learn the language through their interactions. There are then videos where they introduce pronunciation, repetition, and other things that are a little bit more difficult to introduce through exciting videos, like the alphabet and counting. However, all of it is really well done. The videos have subtitles available both in English and Norwegian, so once you begin to understand, you can switch to Norwegian to get a good feel for how the words are pronounced. Additionally, they offer downloadable PDF transcripts of the videos in Norwegian, and word list downloads for the relevant words.

So far, it’s been a great class, and I’m looking forward to next week. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in learning Norwegian, and the FutureLearn platform seems pretty great as well!