Study Abroad with Phrase Books for your Kindle

Preparing for a study abroad trip requires extensive planning, especially when you get down to the nitty-gritty packing phase. While packing for an extended stay in a foreign country may get easier the more seasoned traveler you become, deciding what stays home and what travels with you can still be very difficult. Phrase books and verb books for the language of your host country are indispensible and until now, took up a lot of space and were just plain heavy to lug around. 

Nowadays, however, if you're lucky enough (or just plain smart enough!) to own a Kindle 2, you can leave all those heavy, cumbersome books at home. For almost any language, you can instantly download the books of your choosing. No reason to be shy; they'll all fit in your new wireless reading device! We've compiled a list of great phrase books, all available for download to your Kindle. Happy reading!

For those traveling to Spain or Latin America to learn Spanish, be sure to pick up Barron's 501 Spanish Verbs as well as The Everything Spanish Phrase Book. If you're a bit adventurous, or just really want to know what everybody's saying, grab a copy of Talk Dirty Spanish too. 

What if you're going to China and plan on visiting a Cantonese-speaking area as well as studying Mandarin in Beijing? And what about all those pesky characters? Luckily, now you can carry as many phrase and character books as you like. For Mandarin, try Chinese: An Essential Grammar and for Cantonese, Basic Cantonese. For characters, a good guide is A Dictionary of Chinese Characters. 

Not to be left out, Arabic has Kindle-ready books as well. Some good ones to try are Arabic Verbs and Essentials of Grammar, or for a complete guide, try Arabic in the City. For writing Arabic, get step-by-step instruction from Write It in Arabic, a workbook that teaches the Arabic alphabet and gives great practice in writing. 

Studying in Italy, France, or even Poland? Never fear, we found great verb and phrase books for all of them! For Italian, try Barron's 501 Italian Verbs or Easy Italian Step-By-Step. French language travelers will like A Frequency Dictionary of French  which concentrates on core vocabulary and essential words. Even those going to Poland to learn Polish have phase books available, such as Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar which features an index of 500 of the most essential Polish verbs.

As you can see, the Kindle has revolutionized packing and preparation for study abroad. This is just a small sampling of resources available to those who are planning a study abroad trip, or any trip abroad. From ease of packing, to portability when traveling around your host country, travel with the Kindle 2 is certainly the way to go in this day and age.