It’s five years since we launched the first lesson of Coffee Break Spanish, and since then we’ve served up millions of language lessons to learners around the world through our podcasts, our enhanced lessons and our ebooks. We’re delighted today to announce five new courses, and we’ll also be letting you know about a few exciting projects which are due to be launched early in 2012.

Spanish

¡Empecemos con el español! On the 18th October 2006 we began with Spanish, and we’re doing the same today. Today we’re delighted to launch a brand new Spanish show. When you’re learning a language on your own, or if you don’t have access to a teacher or a native speaker, it’s difficult to get the answers you need to help you make progress. We receive questions almost every day from learners through posts on the website, emails, voicemails, tweets and Facebook, and we decided that the best way to deal with all of these questions would be to launch Q&A Spanish: you ask the questions and we provide the answers. Q&A Spanish will be hosted by teacher and languages expert JP Villanueva and native Spanish speaker Nahyeli Mendivil, so you have the best of both worlds! Each week they’ll help you develop your confidence in Spanish further by providing tips and examples of Spanish vocabulary, usage and grammar. Q&A Spanish starts today, so you can already subscribe to the podcast. Click here to find out more about how you can take part in the show.

French

We’re also delighted to be announcing a brand new French video show. In On Location French you can join Sophie who is a UK student currently studying in Paris. She’s there for a year and she’s agreed to be our “correspondent”, bringing us weekly reports on interesting expressions she learns as she interacts with native speakers every day. Sophie will also be providing some cultural input as she gets to know the city, and we’re really looking forward to finding out more about her experiences in Paris in her weekly videoblog. Find out more and watch the episodes at the On Location French page.

Dutch, Flemish and Arabic

We’re delighted to be launching three new courses in our ever-popular One Minute Languages series. One of the most requested languages over the past few years has been Dutch, and we’ve decided to produce a Dutch and Flemish version of the course. Both languages are very similar – Flemish is the variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium, and of course Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and in other countries around the world such as Suriname and Aruba. One Minute Dutch launches on Thursday 20th October and One Minute Flemish will be published on Fridays from 21st October. We’ve also been asked many times to produce an Arabic version of our One Minute Languages course. One Minute Arabic will run for ten weeks from tomorrow, Wednesday 19th October. We’re concentrating on Modern Standard Arabic which will ensure that as a learner you’ll be understood across the Arab world, from Casablanca to Kuwait. With these latest additions to the One Minute Languages series, we now cover 26 languages, from Arabic to Zulu making Radio Lingua your first stop for language-learning on the go, literally from A to Z!

What’s coming down the line?

There may be some of you who are looking forward to a third season of Coffee Break Spanish. We’re working on this at the moment and by the time the reruns of Show Time Spanish end in January we should be ready to go with Coffee Break Spanish Season 3. French learners will be very pleased to know that Pierre-Benoît has been wandering about in the streets of Paris again and a second series of Walk, Talk and Learn French is in production. We’re also very excited about the January launch of our new children’s French video course, High Five French. We’ll be releasing more information about all of these projects over the next few months, so stay tuned!

And finally…

Finally, a personal note. Five years ago today, as I uploaded the first lesson of Coffee Break Spanish to the internet I had no idea how things would develop. At the time it was really just a personal project – something to keep me involved in Spanish as my “day job” had changed and I was no longer as closely involved in languages. Since then we’ve seen Radio Lingua grow into a successful company, delivering language lessons to millions of learners from all corners of the globe. I’d like to say a personal thank you to all of the brilliant people involved in the production of our courses, and to everyone involved in the day-to-day running of Radio Lingua. Most of all, I’d like to thank you, the listeners, who find our lessons on iTunes, or who come across our videos on YouTube, or who download our ebooks on your iPhones or iPads. Thank you for continuing to use our lessons, and a special thank you to all of our loyal members. Please continue to enjoy our lessons, and we hope you’re as excited as we are about the new shows we’re launching today.

We love doing what we’re doing and we look forward to the next five years, and hopefully many more!

Mark Pentleton
Director, Radio Lingua Ltd

2009 has been a fantastic year for Radio Lingua and we’d like to thank all our listeners for your support and enthusiasm over the past twelve months. To celebrate the end of 2009 and a new year of language-learning just around the corner, we’re delighted to announce our Holidays sale and give you some exciting advance notice of our plans for 2010. Read on!

No festive period is complete without a sale, and we’re offering you 25% off all our courses right through until 31 December, midnight GMT. If you’ve been thinking about taking your language-learning more seriously next year, perhaps now is the time to jump on board and purchase one of our Season Passes. We’re delighted to be able to offer free language-learning materials to hundreds of thousands of listeners around the world, but you can take your learning to a new level with our premium materials which include lesson guides, extra listening materials and exericses for each of our courses.

To receive your 25% discount, simply use the coupon code holidays09 (lower case) at checkout when you’re buying one of our courses. If you’ve not purchased an item from us before, you can view our full range of products here, or visit the appropriate store front for Coffee Break French, Coffee Break Spanish, Show Time Spanish, One Minute Languages, or School Run French. When you complete the form, make sure you enter holidays09 in the coupon code area at the bottom of the signup page.

Please note that the 25% reduction will be applied at checkout. EU customers should be aware that the prices quoted on our signup pages do not include VAT. If you use the coupon code then the 25% discount will be applied and then 17.5% VAT will be added to the total cost. It’s worth also pointing out that as of 1st January 2010, the VAT charges will have to increase to 17.5% in line with the Inland Revenue arrangements in the UK.

Please remember to use the coupon code as you’re purchasing: no refunds will be given on any materials purchased at full price if the coupon codes have not been used.

Would you like to purchase a gift membership? If so, please contact us at support@radiolingua.com and we’ll get things set up for you. Let us know what product you wish to buy and the email address of the recipient. We’ll process your payment and send the gift membership invitation in time for Christmas. Please note that the deadline for any Christmas gifts is 17 December.

New for 2010: the Radio Lingua Club. We’ve been listening to comments from our existing premium customers and one of the most common requests is for more help and advice for learning languages. We’ve decided therefore to create a ‘club’ around this. Membership to the club will last 12 months and during this time members will receive the following benefits:

1. Weekly podcasts in a brand new “how to learn a language” series featuring tips, tricks and advice on learning language. We’ll also be including interviews with language learners from all walks of life who will share their learning tips. The course will feature tips for beginners and for experienced learners and we’re sure that everyone will be able to benefit from this course, regardless of the language they are learning.
2. Reduced prices on all our content. Members will have access to a special discount rate for any purchases made within the membership period. At certain times we’ll also offer special discounts on certain products.
3. Refer-a-friend refunds. Members of the Radio Lingua club will be able to introduce a friend to Radio Lingua courses at a discounted rate, and receive an affiliate payment. So if you’re a Coffee Break Spanish Season Pass holder and you introduce your friend to the show and they purchase the show, you’ll receive a special payment from us to say thanks.

The Radio Lingua Club will involve a monthly payment of just £4.00 GBP. Alternatively you can purchase a twelve-month subscription for £36. The club will launch on January 1st 2010 with our first weekly language-learning tips podcast. We’re offering a special early-bird purchase offer where you can get 25% off the twelve-month subscription: for just £27 you will get access to a full year’s worth of podcasts, you’ll access the reduced prices throughout 2010, and you will be able to use the refer-a-friend refund too.

Please note that the Radio Lingua Club is no longer available, as of July 2011.

If 2009 has been a big year for Radio Lingua, we’re really excited about what’s coming in 2010! Our Coffee Break French listeners will be aware that we’re moving into lessons 71-80 of Coffee Break French, and we’re often asked about “what happens when Coffee Break French finishes?” Well, we’re busy planning new content for intermediate learners at the moment, and we’re sure that everyone will enjoy what will come after our existing course content.

This year we introduced our first experimental video show – Walk, Talk and Learn French. We were overwhelmed at the response to Walk, Talk and Learn, but as a small company we’ve been limited in terms of the time required to produce more shows. Fans of the show will be delighted to know that we’ve filmed a second series and are working on the content at the moment, ready for launch early in 2010.

We’re a couple of days away from releasing the last ever episode of Show Time Spanish, which has developed into one of our most popular shows. As we’ve explained to listeners, Show Time took an enormous amount of work to produce each episode and we feel that we can’t continue the show in its current format. However, we are sure that Show Time Spanish listeners won’t be disappointed with what we have planned for release in the new year. We’re working on new content which will continue to feature native-speaker conversations and in-depth study of the language. We can’t say too much now, but we’ll be making some announcements early in the New Year.

If you’re interested in languages other than French and Spanish then we’re very pleased to announce that 2010 will bring more content for Italian and German learners and that we’ll continue to increase our range of One Minute Languages.

Last, but by no means least, since September we’ve been working in conjunction with schools in the UK through Radio Lingua Schools, and we’ve been involved in several projects involving languages and creative technologies. In 2010 we’re going to be looking more at the resources side of Radio Lingua Schools and have started work on a major new course for children, due to be launched in August 2010.

Of course, as we’ve said many times, we’re still a small company and we’re doing our best to continue to produce high quality, engaging materials. We hope that 2010 will bring further opportunities for new projects, collaboration and new ideas!

Of course we have lots of ideas as to our new developments, but we’re really interested to hear about your ideas. To this end, we’re asking for 10 minutes of your time and we hope that you’ll be willing to share some of your thoughts about language-learning and your next steps as a learner.

We’ve devised a survey and would be very grateful if you would tell us a little about your language-learning and your experience using Radio Lingua materials. You can give as much or as little detail as you wish, but obviously it’s extremely useful to us if you can provide as much information as possible. There are different sections of the survey, depending on which language(s) you learn with Radio Lingua, and on whether you listen to the free content or use our premium materials. You’ll be guided through the survey and we’ll try to explain why we’re asking what we’re asking.

If you complete the survey you’ll be invited to enter a prize draw – there’s an iPod Touch up for grabs along with five platinum season passes to a language course of your choice!

To start taking the survey now, click here.

All that remains for us to do is to wish each and every one of our listeners and friends a very happy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous 2010.

On 18th October 2006, episode one of a new language-learning podcast called Coffee Break Spanish was released to the world. This show was a bit different from the other Spanish learning shows out there: it was a gradual introduction to basic Spanish presented by teacher Mark, teaching student Kara. At this stage no-one really knew if the idea would work, but Coffee Break Spanish grew to become one of the most popular ways to learn Spanish online. The show quickly climbed the charts on iTunes UK and US, and began to feature in the top podcasts at Podcast Alley and on Libsyn.

Three years down the line and the Radio Lingua Network now produces twenty-seven language courses in eighteen languages and this week saw the sixty millionth download of our language lessons! That means – on average – around 55,000 downloads per day, every day for the last three years.

It’s time to celebrate!

To celebrate this milestone in our company’s development, we’re reducing everything to 60% of the normal prices, ie. 40% off, for one week only, from noon GMT on 18th October through to midnight GMT on 25th October. There has never been a better time to purchase our lesson guides, enhanced podcasts and extra listening materials. Simply use coupon code sixty when you sign up for any of our shows. You can choose between Coffee Break Spanish, Coffee Break French and Show Time Spanish, or indeed one of our shorter One Minute or TwitterLearn courses. By purchasing a membership you can access a range of materials including pdf lesson guides featuring the words and phrases included in each lesson, enhanced podcasts which are perfect for listening on the iPod Touch or iPhone where you can see the flashcards synchronised to the audio, and bonus listening materials to help you improve your language skills even more.

Please note that the coupon code can’t be used in conjunction with any other offer and is limited to one purchase per member. Please note too that in order to qualify for the discount, the coupon code must be used at checkout time. We can’t offer retrospective discounts if the coupon code was not used.

Announcing a new development

We’ve been reading your comments regarding discussion boards and building a community around our lessons. Our previous discussion boards were created before we developed our membership system, so were unfortunately not linked to the system. Today we’re launching our new Community area where listeners can interact with each other, share their language-learning experiences and benefit from collaborative learning with fellow listeners. Accessing the Community is free, but you’ll need to sign up for an account in our system, so we’ll hopefully avoid the spam problems we’ve had in the past.

If you’re already a member of our system then you’ll be able to access My Courses in the community, where we’ll lead activities and generate discussions in which you can practise what you’ve learned in each lesson. My Courses is restricted to our premium members, so if you’ve purchased a Season Pass to Coffee Break French Level 2, you’ll see this course in My Courses, allowing you to interact with your fellow learners in the activities and discussions there. And if you’re not yet a premium member, you can join this week at a hugely discounted price! We’re looking forward to interacting with all our learners in My Courses.

Any questions? Get in touch with us, or post your question in our Community area.

Here’s to many more years of language learning with Radio Lingua!

Pack 2 introduces the topic of the family. In episode 1, learners will learn the words for “family”, “mother”, “father”, “sister” and “brother”. Note that this is the only episode of pack 2 which will be available in the free series. All five episodes of pack 2 can be purchased in our store along with printable puzzle sheets and wordlists. Full details can be found on our members’ page.

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Each pack of School Run French comes with additional materials including puzzle sheets, worksheets and a word list. Children also receive a certificate to mark the completion of each pack. Download the sample puzzle sheet, and if you’d like to go ahead and purchase Pack 1 for School Run French, click here.

Pack 1 introduces greetings and common expressions. In lesson 5, listeners will review all the words and phrases learned in the pack.

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Pack 1 introduces greetings and common expressions. In lesson 4, listeners will learn the words for “yes”, “no”, “please” and “thank you”.

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Pack 1 introduces greetings and common expressions. In lesson 3, listeners will learn to say “my name is …” and ask “what is your name?”

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Pack 1 introduces greetings and common expressions. In lesson 2, listeners will learn more answers to the question “how are you?”

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Pack 1 introduces greetings and common expressions. In lesson 1, listeners will learn to say “hello” and “goodbye” and ask “how are you?”

Download free episode | Members’ materials | Subscribe in iTunes | Purchase
To add School Run French to an existing Radio Lingua account, please log into your Control Panel.

Welcome to School Run French! These programmes are aimed at children aged 6-11. In each episode listeners will learn some useful words and phrases and consolidate these words and phrases through interactive audio games. If children are learning French at school then School Run French is excellent practice for them. If they are completely new to French, we’ll be taking thing very slowly so that everyone can keep up.