NoW: Norwegian on the Web

Norwegian on the Web (NoW) is a complete online course offered for free by NTNU, a university in Trondheim. On first glance it takes the form of a book based course, being laid out in chapters with a dialogue followed by grammar notes and exercises. The online nature of it though means that you can access the dialogue straight away when you need it and you get instant feedback on the exercises. I hadn't used this course yet and realised that I was wasting a great opportunity to get a free course from a respected university. Therefore, I have decided to give it a proper go for this blog, having a look at how it compares to what else is out there and where it can fit in to your Norwegian studies.

The Course

When you first access the website, you are presented with a nice, clean web page from which to navigate the course. The contents of the page is a guide on how to use it. This is a good way to begin as, though it is very similar to how a book based course would work, the Internet nature of the course means that there isn't necessarily a clear beginning and end so this gives you a god grounding on the best way to work through it.

There are 10 chapters in the course, which at first doesn't seem like a lot. However, each chapter contains around four dialogues and it's best to think of these as being separate lessons; they build on each other to gradually strengthen your vocabulary and grammar and each comes with their own exercises and grammar notes. There is a table of contents which you can use to base your study around.

Here we have chapters 1 and 2 and we can see that the first text or dialogue is "From Oslo by train". The next column tells you what the expected learning outcome is and then we have grammar and pronunciation. This gives you a good idea of how to progress through the chapter, doing each item in turn from left to right.

The Lessons

The first lesson follows Ken and his journey from Oslo by train to Trondheim. The big difference between NoW and, say, Duolingo, is how heavy the course begins. This is very similar to how a book-based course with audio works. You are exposed to the language in context from the beginning and you really need to take your time listening to the dialogue, learning the vocabulary and working out the meaning before you progress. This is where sites like Duolingo have an advantage over more "traditional" approaches; by turning language learning into a game and easing the student in, you ensure self-motivation is kept strong. However, that is not to say this approach is that difficult to get to grips with, it just means that at the beginning it requires more work if you have no experience in the language at all. I always find that once I get into a course like this, it actually gets easier (before obviously getting harder again when more advanced language is introduced, but by this time you know how to go about learning it).

Here, you are presented with a dialogue and they actually do you a massive favour here by giving it to you in a slow version as well so if you are struggling, you don't just give up, you can just reduce the speed. You have a few options on how you go about using this. You can either listen to the full dialogue first, then again reading the text and see how much you understand straight off, or you can bring up the vocabulary and listen whilst reading the meaning of the words. They make this easy for you, just click on the "vocabulary" link on the left hand column under "Ken".

This brings up the vocabulary list on the right of the page so you can still listen and read the text. If you are completely new to the language, I'd probably go about using the lesson like this:

1. Listen to the dialogue at full speed without reading. Close your eyes to make sure you're concentrating fully!
2. Play it again, maybe at the slower speed, whilst reading the dialogue. See how much you can pick up without looking at the vocabulary. With a language like Norwegian you'll probably surprise yourself. 
3. Now look at the vocabulary for any words you don't know. Remember the list just gives you the dictionary form of the word so it might not look exactly the same. You can click on the vocabulary here to get the pronunciation of the word in isolation. Repeat what you hear.
4. There is an English translation, accessed by the left-hand menu. Look at this if you're still struggling or just want some clarification. For the first few lessons you probably won't need this as much but as you progress it will be useful to get the meaning of more idiomatic expressions. 
5. Listen again, trying to understand as much as you can. Repeat until you understand most of it.

Once you've understood the dialogue, you're ready for the exercises!

The Exercises

This is where I feel NoW really comes into its own. The exercises are varied and really drill in what you'e been studying.

This one, for example, is a gap fill exercise reinforcing the personal pronouns. Because it focuses on one aspect at a time, it allows you to get to grips with the grammar in an more indirect way. Later exercises look at vocabulary and take the form of a crossword or matching exercises that allow you to recognise common phrases. Of course, because it's online, you get instant feedback and this allows you to go back and strengthen something you may have missed first time round. For example, I realised I really need to look at numbers again as I struggled with these. There are also listening exercises that focus on the dialogue you have been studying and make sure you can recognise individual words in a sentence.

Here, you listen to the text and fill in the gaps. These ones are a bit trickier because it's asking you to analyse the text as a whole. For me though, listening is always my weakest skill in any language I look at so this will definitely be a feature that I make use of. Other listening exercises ask you to listen and repeat and so you can focus on getting your pronunciation as close as possible to the speaker's. This isn't marked so it's up to you to decide if you're close enough to move on.

Grammar and Vocabulary
Each chapter has a complete vocabulary list that also gives you the inflections of the words. This is a clear differentiator with Duolingo, where the Norwegian course still lacks a vocabulary list. It also sets it apart from book based courses, where vocabulary lists are a standard feature but inflections are never given. This is a good reference to have and allows you to develop your own writing ability, using these as a basis to create your own texts.

A grammar overview is also provided. This is again, another great reference to have and means you know where to look if you have questions on the text you've been looking at. The grammar for the lessons is just a quick overview but NoW also provides a downloadable reference grammar that compliments the course.

How well will I be able to speak after doing this course?
 In the description of the accompanying textbook, it states that chapters 1-7 will bring you up to A1 level, and the last chapters will take you to A2.

Conclusion
The NoW course is a brilliant, free resource for learning Norwegian. If you can't afford textbooks then this is a great alternative. Even if you do have books, the amount of audio with related exercises provided means that this is a great resource for finding listening practice in a more structured way than just watching videos. I can see some people struggling to begin with, but the detailed vocabulary explanations and the English translations should mean that you have enough support to follow the course on your own at home.