Resources for learning Swedish beyond the A2 level

It's easy to pick up “hej-hej” and “nej tack”, but being great at Swedish requires quite a bit more. The golden rule of learning is that whatever you practice, that's what you become better at, so here are some things for practicing various aspects of Swedish.

From beginner to intermediate

• (reading, listening, speaking) Radio Sweden på lätt svenska — the biggest news from Sweden and the world in common words and simple sentences. Read out by a native speaker, slowly and clearly, every weekday. 5–10 minutes. Since this program has the text of the news on the website, it’s easy to use for the techniques like ‘shadowing’ and ‘chorusing’ — pronouncing a text as close to a recording of a native speaker as possible.
• (reading, listening, speaking) 8sidor — same as Radio Sweden på lätt svenska, except they speak a bit faster and cover more stories.
• (reading) a score of “lätt svenska” (simple Swedish) books is available at the libraries. Some people like to start with children's books, but I didn't have much success with that since (1) the story is often not that gripping, (2) the vocabulary is actually not that simple. When I thought of the nursery rhymes and fairy tales in my native language, it suddenly made sense: there are lots of ancient, sound-imitating, and just plainly nonsensical words in that sort of literature, which is awesome, but hard for a beginner.
• (reading) Swedish wikipedia on familiar, simple subjects — it has 2.5 million articles, taking the fifth place in the ranking after English, Cebuano, German, and French.

From intermediate to advanced

• (reading) non-fiction books on familiar topics, then fiction books (they tend to have a more extensive vocabulary).
• (listening) audiobooks — available from the libraries and private companies. Audiobooks are good for learning since it’s just one person talking, and at a pretty uniform speed, without any background noise or speech fillers (and there’s a chance the library has the printed version of the book to follow along too).
• (listening) SVT, Swedish national television. It has a website with the current programs as well as an archive, and apps for both iOS and Android. All the programs have Swedish subtitles available, although the quality suffers for live streams like a political debate. It might be hard finding something that is perfect for one's current knowledge level, but thanks to the context of the video it might be easier to reach for higher difficulty. For example, two of my favorite programs are Svenska Nyheter and På Spåret. I'll write an in-depth love letter to them some other day, but the short version is that both of them use lots of advanced vocabulary, puns, and so on, but the entertainment value is so high it lifts you up to the challenge.
• (writing) LangCorrect gives you writing prompts, and when you post a text (which can be just a couple of sentences or a couple of pages) notifies native speakers who show up and make corrections with explanations. It can be a bit of a hit and miss because not that many learners of Swedish hang out there, but there are natives who use it and when they do review the texts, it's highly useful feedback.
• (writing) Similar to LangCorrect except without the UI which makes the corrections clear: r/writestreaksv. Also not that active unfortunately, but when people do review, they review amazingly well.
• (listening) podcasts — oh, podcasts. I am 70% sure that almost every Swede is producing a podcast or two. The language difficulty varies — I’d recommend starting with those where just one person talks (and not five). There’s a bunch of websites to find podcasts in Swedish — poddtoppen, podcasts.nu, bra podcast all split them into categories (true crime is apparently a huge one).
• (speaking) meetup.com, local libraries, and churches often have weekly language cafés where learners can practice conversation with patient people. Search by ‘språkcafé + the name of your town’. There's also a digital one from Kompis Sverige for those who don't have the time for the commute or any meetup nearby.
• (writing) working through an advanced grammar textbook with exercises, for example ‘Avancera Gram’ by Marianne Mathlein (it has answers to check yourself against).
• (speaking) paying a tutor to speak in Swedish and correct your mistakes a few times a week, possibly online.
• (writing) chatting with other learners and native speakers in realtime: r/Svenska, a subreddit for learning Swedish, has an active Discord group.

From advanced to seriously advanced with a specific goal like becoming a lawyer

• (reading) legalese on the government’s website — they have a newsletter too.
• (reading, listening, writing, speaking) going for full-time study of Swedish to a university of your choice for a semester or a few. If you have a residence permit, the tuition is free.
• (reading) vocabulary-enhancing textbooks like Text i Fokus 2 and their sources — newspapers like Dagens Industri, Forskning och Framsteg.
• (reading) There are some shared Anki decks meant for the native speakers to expand their vocabulary before Högskoleprovet (an optional exam for increasing one's chances to get into a competitive university program). I'm currently working through one of them, correcting the typos and such; I'll link it when I'm done.
• (reading) natives writing without editors but with slang and other difficult words, i.e. forums:
  • the biggest Swedish subreddit, r/Sweden
  • the infamous Flashback — everything from politics to videogames to drugs to conspiracy theories to travel tips
  • Byggahus — home improvement and building, huge and active community
• RikaTillsammans — personal finances, huge and active community
• SweClockers — software and hardware
• Kolozzeum — working out, healthy diet, etc
• Sporthoj — motorcycles
• Garaget — cars
• Min Hembio — home cinema
• Fotosidan — photography
• Utsidan — outdoors, e.g. hiking, climbing, diving, fishing
• Studio — music writing, studio building
• Företagande — running a business.
• (listening) podcasts on more complicated topics, with dialects or multiple speakers (whatever's hardest), for bonus points on 1.5–2x speed. Plenty of players provide the functionality of speeding up, but my favorite is AntennaPod because it does all the things and is free, open-source, and privacy-friendly on top of that (and it’s available on f-droid too).

Except for paying a tutor, all of these options are free if you have access to the internet and a library. And of course just trying to use Swedish every chance you get, especially if it’s hard, is the ultimate training.

Other notes

Studieledighet is a kind of unpaid leave which the employer must grant if the employee wants to study something. It doesn’t need to be Swedish, it can be anything from a driving license education to business development, as long as it’s not self-study (so sitting at home with a textbook is not a valid cause for this kind of leave). The length of studieledighet is unlimited, you can take it for a day or for a year, and it can also be part-time. The employer can postpone this leave for up to six months, but they must grant it if you’ve worked for them for half a year.

Libraries provide their services for free. They’ve got books, e-books, audiobooks, music, sheet music, comic books, movies (as a streaming service as well as on DVD), videogames, and all sorts of events. The largest offering is in Swedish and English, but other languages are usually represented as well. The few librarians I’ve had a pleasure talking to were impeccably knowledgeable and happy to help. I can’t recommend Swedish libraries highly enough. The municipality's website usually has all the information about them, like the opening hours and the events.