Here are our top five language gift ideas (in no particular order)

1. An Earworms CD (beginners, many languages, £12-£14)

Earmworms is one of our favourite products, ideal for beginners, and available in a huge range of languages. Get those essential first words and phrases stuck in your brain with catchy tunes! Read more about Earmworms and how to get a 25% discount.

2. A Cideb  ”Read and learn” book (all levels, French/Spanish/Italian/German, £6-£16)

There’s nothing like reading a good story along with an audio CD to improve your language skills. Cideb do a huge range across all levels from beginner to advanced. Read more about Cideb Audio books.

3. A Michel Thomas Course (Beginner/intermediate, French/Spanish/Italian/German, £10-80)

Undoubtedly one of the best language teachers ever (sadly no longer with us), Michel Thomas’s audio courses require no note-taking and teach with an incredibly intuitive method that really works.

4. A verb wheel! (beginner to intermediate, many languages, £5-£10)

There’s no escaping having to learn verb conjugation in most languages. These cleverly designed verb wheels are more fun that a verb book and would make a really unusual gift.

5. A smart phone app (beginner to intermediate, £5-£20)

We’ve covered a few of these now, from the BBC Active Languages, SuperMemo, and Linguascope. It’s not easy yet to buy an app for someone else’s phone as a gift, but what you could do is make a little voucher with a print out of the website for the app of choice, put it in a shiny envelope and then pay for them to download the app on Christmas day!

And if they don’t speak a second language but love the English language (shameless plug coming…) you could always buy them a copy of my SF thriller, The Looking Glass Club (which, if weren’t with us when it launched last year, was #1  on Amazon UK’s Best Seller lists under Science Fiction, Mysteries and Crime over New Year last year!)

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a linguistic New Year!

Gareth

In this interview, Malgorzata Smigielska explains how the app can help you memorise important elements of a language.

Courses consist of three levels (beginner, intermediate and advanced) where each level contains 12 extensive and thoroughly designed lessons (based on the SuperMemo method). One level comprises almost 3,000 grammar and vocabulary exercises, which allow the user to learn 1,000 new words and expressions. Each lesson consists in working with texts, reading and listening comprehension, and revising the vocabulary used in the texts. The course also includes commentaries and grammar sections.  The website claims 3 languages, but Malgorzata assured me there were many more.

The app is only available for iPhone currently (http://www.supermemo.eu/supermemo_iphone) but is also coming to Android market soon.  The app is based on a well-known principle called Spaced Repetition, which is a method for remembering things that reminds you to repeat something at increasing intervals timed just as you would naturally begin to forget.

It seems like an excellent basis for an app, and well worth a try.

I have an Android phone, so I’m going to have to wait to find out!

Gareth

Cideb are well known in the language industry as publishers of beautifully designed, innovative and dynamic teaching materials.  I own at least 5 of their book-and-CD range for learning French (“Lire et s’entrainer”) and learning Italian (“Imparare leggendo”) and I can say they’re extremely useful to own, and ideal if you want quality language learning materials for self-study and exposure.

I was thrilled to see them exhibiting at The Language Show, Earl’s Court, and took the opportunity to interview their international sales & marketing director, Daniele Vecchiotti.

Cideb have a very wide range of products and they’re nicely graded by level and colour coded to help you pick the level that’s right for you. I can recommend these in particular:

French, Level A1 (beginner)

La Casa Sulla Scogliera

CIDEB, Paperback, $10.73

French, Level A2 (lower intermediate)

French, Level B1 (upper intermediate)

Italian, Level A1 (beginner)

That’s it for the Language Show Interview series.  I’ll do a series round up post next to summarise all the great stuff I came across whilst there.

If you have enjoyed this series and would like to see more video or audio interviews, do write or comment with your suggestions.

Gareth

I was rather excited to have the opportunity to interview one of the founders of one of the cleverest and most effective ‘accelerated language learning’ products I’ve come across: Earworms (see note about discounts below).  If I had to recommend just one language learning product for beginners, or even rusty intermediates, it would be Earworms.  They’re a delight to listen to, at home, on the go, at the gym, or even in bed.  In fact, I’m listening to one in the background as I write this. I have some great news for you too: I’ve persuaded Andrew to give Bitesized Subscribers a hefty 25% discount on their products.  Co-founder Andrew Lodge explained at the show how their brilliant product works:

Earworms is a ‘Musical Brain Trainer’ which uses specially designed catchy musical riffs to anchor vocabulary into your long-term memory.  Each CD contains 200 new words, divided into topics.  A rhythmic dialogue between a native speaker and an English student is set to music in a way that’s both relaxing and a joy to listen to.  It goes further though, using ingenious mnemonics (memory tricks) along the way to help remember difficult words with almost no effort.  As I said to Andrew afterwards, frankly – and I say this very rarely – I wish I’d invented it.  But don’t take my word for it, have listen yourself:

Arabic
Spanish - I would like...
French - Reserving a room
Portuguese - parting
Italian conversation
Japanese - Is there... nearby?
Chinese numbers (example of mnemonics)

Buy now with 25% discount! (use code ‘bitesized’)

25% Discount for Bitesized Subscribers

Earworms is available in 16 languages, and there are two volumes of 200 words in each.  It has to be one of the most pleasant, undemanding and engaging ways to absorb vocabulary.  The CDs also come with beautifully printed vocab lists so you can see what you’re listening to as well.  They also make terrific presents for people!

If you’d like to buy one, you can get a 25% discount of the retail price of £14.99 simply by using the coupon code ‘bitesized’ when you order from the Earworms shop, so each CD is just £11.24.  If you think about it, that’s about 5p per word or phrase learned.

Earworms also have a 5 CDs for 4 offer on, which you can combine with our discount code for an even better deal, so that’s half your Christmas shopping sorted!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Let us know what you think.  I’m going to get cracking de-rusting my Spanish and I’m also taking on a completely new language: Japanese, to see how I get on.  I’ll report back in a week.

Gareth

His series starts at the very beginning and is suitable for learners with no previous experience.  He has some handy mnemonics (useful memory tricks) to help you learn to read Arabic much quicker than you might imagine.  He suggests you should be able to read within one month.

His books make a very clever use of colour in the written script to help visually break up each word into its Arabic letters.  To someone used to reading the Roman alphabet it, can be very hard to distinguish individual Arabic letters and his system certainly made it seem less daunting to me.

Dr Alawiye’s range of products included posters and keyrings and all manner of handy extras to make the whole process pain-free.  In fact, he even has a book called Arabic without tears!

So, if you want to learn to read and write Arabic, Dr Alwiye’s Gateway to Arabic seems like a fine choice to me.

Gareth

KLOO is a really great way for beginners to learn Spanish or learn French.  It’s a traditional board game of the first-to-get-to-home style, home in this case being Paris or Madrid.  In order to move your player, you must construct grammatically correct sentences with words on cards.  Andrew came from a games design company and he’s really thought about the mechanism well.  The cards are colour coded so you can construct grammatical sentences without actually knowing what they mean, and learn the meanings by discovery as you play.

KLOO is a terrific family for those who’d like to introduce their kids to a second language, but I’m sure it’d be just as much fun for adults too!

Enjoy!

Gareth

I interviewed Chris Haworth who represents AIL Madrid and talked about the benefits of doing an intense course in Madrid:

I also spoke with Alice, who was at the show representing In Hispania.  As well describing in detail the sorts of activities such a course can provide, she also surprised me with how cheap the courses are:

There were lots more companies offering similar courses, so worth shopping around, but do make sure  to look for courses accredited by the Institut de Cervantes, or the appropriate counsel for the country you are visiting.

I love a relaxing beach holiday or a week snowboarding as much as anyone, but a study holiday can be just a much fun, and to come away speaking your favourite second language with improved fluency and some new friends has got to be one of the prospects for a week abroad, hasn’t it?

In the next article in my Language Show Interviews series, I interview Dr Imran Alawiye about his impressive and highly innovative “Gateway to Arabic” product range.

Enjoy!

Gareth

Years ago I was a member of an amateur drama group and we did a production of On The Razzle by Tom Stoppard.  There was one line for a waiter in Italian.  It was gobbledegook to all of us initially except the stage manager who was Italian and helped with the pronunciation.  When  the play was over, not only the actor playing the waiter, but every single one of us knew that line perfectly, including exactly what it meant, the correct pronunciation and cadence and I still recall it perfectly twenty years on.

That was just one line, but what about several scenes or even a whole play?  I know it’s possible to learn a mathematical proof by rote without understanding it, but I have a hypothesis: you can’t do that with language.  Unlike maths it’s instinctive – learn the dialogue, know the language.  So, this was my experiment – creating a language course based around a script.  I’ve pulled together a group of friends to practice with – we’re just performing to each other, but even after just one session we all learned a huge amount of dialogue, shared language knowledge with each other and most importantly we spent the whole three hour session laughing and having fun.

Here’s what to do:

• Remember my article How to Learn a Language Matrix-style ? Start by raiding your DVD or Blu-ray collection.  You’re looking for DVDs that have many language options for both audio and subtitles.  If you can’t find one in your current collection, you can always go online and order something specific.  I chose L’Importanza Di Chiamarsi Ernest – the 2002 Miramax film which I have dubbed in Italian with both English and Italian Subtitles available (“In una borsa?!!”)
• Get a group of friends who also want to learn the same language – it’s going to be easier if they’ve already covered the basics and are not complete beginners.
• Pick a scene with interesting dialogue between two characters (or more if it suits your group – you’ll each understudy multiple parts).
• Watch the scene first with no subtitles in Italian to see how much you understand (probably very little).
• Play it again with Italian subtitles to see how much more you can understand this time.
• Next play with English subtitles so that you get the whole sense of the scene.
• Now, it’s transcription time!  Play the scene again with Italian subtitles, stopping at each line.  Everyone transcribes the dialogue.
• Compare notes, get your dictionaries out and ensure you’ve understood the all the vocabulary and idioms used.
• Finally, pick parts and spend the rest of the session taking turns at recreating the scene until you’re comfortable with it.
• Your homework is to learn the lines by the next session.
• Next session, perform the scene and start a new one!

If you want to go a step further and are feeling techie, you can do what I did and rip the audio and the subtitles to help create the scripts in a tidier form.  I put the resulting MP3s on my phone and listened to them constantly to help the dialogue sink in.   This is entirely legal so long as you own a genuine copy of the original film, and vital if, like me, you need to be a little creative finding the time to practise.

I promise you, you won’t find a quicker or more fun way to improve your language skills!

Gareth

How often do you use lack of time as an excuse for not improving your language skills?  We all do it, but the truth is you have far more time available to you than you realise.  The trick is doubling up.

Whilst it’s true that in order to improve your speaking skills you need to practice speaking, you can improve your foreign language comprehension simply by listening more – and the great news is, you can often do this at the same time as doing something else.  Think of all the extra time you reclaim if you were to listen whilst:

There are dozens of hidden pockets of valuable time secreted throughout your day, you just need to get some content on your phone or MP3 player and keep your earphones with you in order to use them.

One final tip: put your audio player on loop.  Repetition is the key to comprehension!

Of course you can transfer our Free Word of the Day onto your phone as one source of audio content, but in my next post, I’ll be giving you some ideas for getting hold of more substantial samples to work with – without spending a penny.

Reciprocity is the social aspect of learning and it’s one of the easiest of the learning muscles to build, in fact. You can learn on your own, but even when you learn from a book or CD you’re getting information from someone else. As social animals we’re hard-wired to receive information from others in a special way; we bounce off each other synergistically.

Team or Group Learning
If you’re not already part of a group, why not form one? Group learning can be extraordinarily powerful – in fact there’s a huge body of research on group dynamics in education. Groups also provide a regular structure that you are unlikely to have learning on your own unless you’re incredibly disciplined.  Group learning also has certain pitfalls, so it’s important to understand what they are and to turn them into opportunities. Mixed learning speed is one issue: you may be the fastest in a group and get frustrated if the group slows you down; or you may be the slowest and feel embarrassed and eventually check out completely as you feel left behind. The trick here is for the extremes to help each other. Teaching something is absolutely one of the best ways to learn it properly. You can’t teach something you don’t fully understand. If you’re the slow one, you can benefit from multiple teachers (more on this in a minute). In well-integrated learning groups everyone benefits. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Being open to feedback
This is a critical learning skill. If you shut down or get sensitive every time someone gives you some critical feedback then you are missing out. Treat every piece of feedback as gold, even if you don’t agree with it, try it on anyway and see what happens. There’s always something to learn.

Being attentive to others
Pay attention to other students, not only their successes but their mistakes and why they make them. Analysing other people’s performance can really enhance your own.

Using empathy: stepping into others’ shoes
This is especially important to deal with group differences. The more effort you make to understand the other members of your group, the better you will integrate with them and be able to use them as learning resources. Don’t get frustrated with other people, try to understand them.

Imitating others
Try to find out what the other students are doing that helps them learn quickly, whatever it is you can mimic them. Mimicry is vital to learning – and I’m not talking about copying in an exam! In language, mimicry is the only way you will perfect your accent, your pronunciation, intonation and stress. Pay attention and copy!

That’s it for now on this series. I hope you’ve found it insightful. Let us know how you get on with building your learning muscles!

Gareth