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

The apps are made by company Linguascope and in this video, Richard West-Soley shows me how they work:

Linguascope provide language learning and teaching resources, primarily aimed at the younger market.  Apart from apps, they also sell some innovative verb and vocab wheels, which are just as handy for adults as they are for kids!

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

In this first interview, I spoke with Emma Brown of Pearson who were demonstrating an interesting little app under the BBC Active Languages brand.

The Quickstart Apps introduce you to Spanish, French, Italian and German and allow you to learn the basics fast – with a fun, interactive approach. They break down key language into manageable chunks and let you listen to and practise the language yourself, using interactive activities and quizzes.

The Apps feature 14 episodes based on a storyline following three friends on a city break, focusing on essential everyday language and including support activities.

Watch this space!

Gareth

Gareth!

I don’t really want to admit to what I’m about to, but in the interests of everyone’s language studies, I’m going to confess to what will undoubtedly be known in the family from now on as “Chilligate”.

I felt and itch and without thinking, I picked my nose.  Yes, it’s a disgusting, unhygienic practice, I know.  I should have used a tissue or something.  Well, I paid for my poor hygiene.

I hadn’t washed my hands.

A few minutes later my right nostril was very much on fire and my great aunt, Annick (who speaks about three words of English), became curious about my unusual jerky movements. Why was my face red; was I crying?  Had the recipe not gone to plan? (We take food very seriously in France, so this presumably seemed a reasonable explanation for my abrupt change in behaviour) . I could have made up a lie, I suppose, but I wasn’t really in a creative mood by this stage, so I decided to ‘fess up to chilligate.  It was at precisely this moment, that my French failed me utterly.

How on earth do you say, “I picked my nose” in French, I wondered, tears streaming down my face, gently turning to steam against my nose.

Briefly, even Mum (who IS French) couldn’t remember.  She asked Annick who supplied: “Je me suis mis le doigt dans le nez.”

Four words in English. Count them: NINE in French. Along the lines of: I put myself the finger in the nose.

I laughed.  I mean, I put myself the finger in the nose. Really?!

David Sedaris, in his book, ‘When You Are Engulfed in Flames’, talks about similar French struggles:

“Tell me, Jean-Claude, do you like the glaze I’ve applied to my shapely jug?”

Of the above, I can say,

“Tell me, Jean-Claude, do you like the… jug?”

“Glaze” is one of those words that shouldn’t be too difficult to learn, and the same goes for “shapely.” I’m pretty good when it comes to retaining nouns and adjectives, but the bit about applying the glaze to the shapely jug—that’s where I tend to stumble.

In English, it’s easy enough – “I put this on that” –

but in French, such things have a way of biting you in the ass. I might have to say, (in French)

“Do you like the glaze the shapely jug accepted from me?”

or

“Do you like the shapely jug in the glaze of which I earlier applied?”

For safety’s sake, perhaps I’d be better off breaking the one sentence into three:

“Look at the shapely jug.”

“Do you like the glaze?”

“I did that.”

French has a deserved reputation for being difficult for English speakers for precisely this reason.  Mum was trying to explain to Annick why this was funny to me.  How could such a simple sentence in English be more than twice as complex in French and involve such a convoluted construction?  Mum, rather sagely I must say, offered the explanation:

“You have so many verbs in English!  And you make new verbs up all the time. You verbify nouns!” she said, being cleverly ironic.

We do.  How many people have you “friended” on Facebook recently, for example?  When did the noun, ‘friend’, become a verb?  About two years ago, it seems.

French is by comparison, (as are indeed all the so-called Romance Languages: Spanish, Italian and Portuguese) quite depleted in terms verbs compared to English.  There is no verb “to pick [ones] nose”, hence the convoluted construction: “Je me suis mis le doigt dans le nez”.  It doesn’t seem remotely complex to the French, it’s worth noting.

I thought this was rather a lovely, insightful explanation, and I found it quite comforting thought as I tended to my streaming nose, washed my hands and continued the meal.

Some of the constructions in French might be more complex but at least there are fewer verbs to learn. .. so it’s swings and roundabouts.

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

Sarah comes from a background of working with actors.  We talked about what people can do to improve their accents, and the sort of problems people experience when coming to English from a different language or culture. I found it quite insightful to hear how different languages have a different use of tone, rhythm, volume and stress.  Certainly worth bearing in mind when working on your language skills!

Sarah’s final advice to students wanting to improve their language skills around pronunciation was to listen to as much quality content as possible.  In my previous post, I wrote about the excellent Earworms series, which I highly recommend for beginners.  For more advanced students, radio is an excellent free resource for language exposure and many radio stations are now available on the internet.  Sarah suggested Radio 4 for English. If you have some good radio suggestions for other languages, why not share them with us?

The background noise from the show was rather loud during this video, so I’ve subtitled it to make it easier to understand.

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