Back to school has never been an easy time. Giving up the relative freedom that you enjoyed during the summer and returning to an institution (whether it be your workplace, a college or university, or on-the-job training) is a drag. You will be returning to a system where you have to follow the rules and compete with others to stay ahead. One of the ways of staying ahead is of course mastering English and hopefully learning another foreign language that will open your mind to a different mindset and way of looking at the world.
Of course we used to learn foreign languages in order to converse with foreigners on a very superficial level. Now we learn foreign languages to understand different cultures and to learn how to communicate effectively using the social and cultural codes of the adopted culture. We have come a long way from the Morse Code! 
These codes of communication include social rules, assumptions based on exterior symbols and meanings, facial expressions and body language, synchronous and asynchronous interpersonal communication, interactional rituals, etc. which are used to judge others and interpret their actions (if you’re curious to learn more about these codes read “Fundamentals of Language” by Roman Jackobson or Fredric Jameson’s work : “The Prison-House of Language” Princeton University Press in which he defines discourse as a sociological phenomenon). Being a linguistic relativist or someone who believes it is impossible to say exactly the same thing unless you change the form, a large part of my teaching focuses on the mastery of these codes so that my students become conscious that communication does not only pass through the words that they learn but also by their capacity to express who they are in a foreign language using the defined codes of that language.
The best way to learn these cultural codes is to go to a country where the language is spoken. In a foreign country your sensory being is immersed in the entire culture and you are forced to learn how to communicate through a painstaking process called trial and error. Another way is to use the technology at our fingertips in order to immerse ourselves in a digital world where these codes are put into play. We can do this through social networking sites such as Facebook where we build our own world, but if you would like to branch out and meet new people, you can join an internet discussion group. A great place to find a group which corresponds to your personal interests is a site called “Find Your Forum” (http://www.findyourforum.com/). You can find anything from Poetry to Entrepreneurship to Investing to Arts and to Sports. Communicating is an excellent way to try out your new language skills and to learn others. Don’t wait another day! Talk to you online! 
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