Posts Categorized: Language Tools

By Alexa Boyce – When people call asking about our US-Based language programs, the question I most often hear is “How can I be immersed in the Spanish language and Latin American culture without leaving the US?” As you may know, the Hispanic population in the United States has been growing exponentially in recent years…. Read more »

By Elizabeth Gregory So I'm sure many of you have heard the bad joke that goes – what do you call someone who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. Of course, I've only heard non-Americans laugh at… Read more »

By Connie Marianacci I wanted to get together some of the typical sayings found in Spanish. Some can be very funny! I was just talking to a friend from Peru and told him tengo la vena inchada, which is Argentinean for "I am very mad", and he just started laughing and could not stop. So… Read more »

By Elizabeth Gregory OK, so a while back I blogged about French words used in English. Since then, I've been looking into other languages that English has adopted words from. There are a ton of them. Today, I thought I'd share with you what I learned about German words in English. Although there were not… Read more »

By Anne-Marie Dingemans I get this question a lot from prospective participants. They want to learn and/or improve their Spanish and ask which is the best place to go, in terms of accent and vocabulary. The reasons for this question are varied. Some of you use your Spanish mostly in contact with a specific population… Read more »

By Connie Marianacci Trying to learn a language once you arrive to a new city, meet new people, with a lot of new things to do, a lot of excursions and cultural activities and night life, it gets quite hard to sit down and study everyday, or even do your homework. But, most likely you… Read more »

I just learned from the guys at CyraKnow that they're going to be adding some new languages to their Rambler iPod phrase books. They currently offer audio phrase books in Spanish, French, Italian and German, and come March, they will be offering them in Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. I'll be checking them out once… Read more »

By Elizabeth Gregory Every spring I teach a beginner Spanish night class for adults. It's not a formal college course or anything, just something offered by a local school district under their adult education evening classes. I mainly provide handouts for this course; however many times people ask for supplemental texts or reading materials to… Read more »

Happy Monday! I've finally finished school for the semester today, so I can fully devote myself to studying German for the next four weeks. I've been practicing a lesson each week from the German Complete Course by Living Language, and if anything else, my ability to pronounce German words and phrases is remarkably better. I've… Read more »

I should start by saying that I don't know what I ever did without my iPod. From music to podcasts to audiobooks, I spend more time listening to my iPod (Phil) than I do just about anything else…well, aside from homework. Why am I telling you this? Well, I felt that I should explain my… Read more »