One of the first (and still most popular) online course subjects is language learning.

You can find a digital course for a large variety of languages. English as a second langauge being one of the more popular.

I wrote about language courses before and how you could put a unique spin on such a course to stand out from the crowd and to dominate your niche. Because let’s face it, if you create a course teaching a specific language then you’re up for some stiff competition.

So how is this course idea, language hacking, any different?

Simple: it’s not about mastering a language but instead about “hacking” a language.

By “hack”, I mean teaching shortcuts in a particular language (or set of languages) that make it possible for students to pick up on key concepts quickly and immediately apply it during their travels.

Now you may be thinking that creating this curriculum is going to be difficult, and you are partially correct. However, there is one resource you can use to give you a head start, and that’s the popular “How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months” article by Tim Ferris.

The article is fantastic and already outlines the key words you’ll need to teach in your program. You will probably want to give it your own twist for your language course but it’s a great foundation.

All you have to do is figure out how to best structure your lessons and quizzes so that your language hack is taught in an efficient way. Also, three months (while short for learning a language) is a long time to be studying a particular topic. To keep learners engaged you may wish to implement some simple gamification elements or other social learning components.

To date I have yet to see a language program take this approach and execute it well. The opportunity is there!