One Minute Italian

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...

Welcome to Radio Lingua News – in this podcast we’ll be updating listeners on the latest developments from Radio Lingua. Coming up on today’s show:

* Learning languages 140 characters at a time with TwitterLearn

* Introducing our Community Managers

* New features for Radio Lingua premium members

* Announcing our Summer Sale

* Updates on the latest shows

TwitterLearn It seems that in the past few months the entire world has started twittering, helped by the huge number of celebrities using the microblogging service. Some write it off as another banal social media fad, but here at Radio Lingua we’ve been using Twitter for many months to update listeners on the latest podcast episodes and other news from Radio Lingua. This summer, we’ve decided to take our twittering a stage further and we’ve designed a course in French, Italian and Spanish for beginners, delivered in daily tweets of 140 characters, and podcasts of 1 minute 40 seconds. You can join Twitter at  http://twitter.com and follow @learnspanish, @learnfrench or @learnitalian to start your micro language-learning course.

Community Managers This summer we’re joined by three new members of the Radio Lingua team. Ellie, Katie and Marylou are going to be working over the summer on developing our learning communities on the website and they’re also working on the TwitterLearn courses. Initially they’ll be helping to develop the conversations on our Facebook pages. We really hope that Ellie, Katie and Marylou enjoy working with Radio Lingua over the summer months. If you’re a Facebook user, head over to the Facebook pages for Coffee Break Spanish, Coffee Break French, Show Time Spanish and Radio Lingua where the conversations are increasing daily. Make sure you become a ‘fan’ of the shows and tell your friends that you’re learning with us. We’re also looking at the longer term plans for the Discussion Forum on our website. Have your say about how this should develop and contribute to the discussion on our blog.

New developments for members Until now our premium members have been downloading the bonus materials from our members’ pages, but we’ve been working on developing premium feeds for all of our podcasts. You can now use our one-click method to download all of the premium materials through iTunes. Find out more on our members’ pages. Another new development has been the introduction of automatic upgrades. A number of members who have purchased premium memberships have requested upgrades. Until now this has been a manual process, but we’ve just introduced new automatic upgrades for Coffee Break Spanish and Coffee Break French. By simply paying the difference between, for example, the silver and gold memberships, members will be able to upgrade automatically to the higher level. Find out more here.

Summer Sale Until 16 August 2009 we’re offering a 20% discount on all of our premium materials. Now’s the time to purchase our bronze, silver, gold or platinum memberships for Coffee Break Spanish, Coffee Break French, 

We’re delighted to announce the premium version of One Minute Italian. The premium version includes four elements which are not available in the public feed:

* pdf lesson guide – a full list of all the words and phrases contained in each of the lessons, helping you to learn how to read and write the words and phrases contained in the One Minute Italian course;

* enhanced podcasts – enhanced versions of the podcasts which can be played on iPods, iTunes and QuickTime Player, showing synchronised flashcards as you listen to the audio;

* the Take-Off Time podcast – in response to listeners’ requests, we’ve created a special 17-minute recording which brings together all the phrases covered in the ten lessons of One Minute Italian, perfect for loading on to your iPod before you board your flight to Italy;

* the Quick Quiz podcast – test yourself with one minute of translations from Italian to English and one minute of English to Italian, based on the words and phrases contained in the lessons.

The premium materials are available for £10.00 GBP and can be purchased for immediate download. Our new one-click access allows you to download all the premium materials in iTunes with one click, ready to load them straight onto your iPod.

Until 16 August 2009 you can use coupon code SUMMER2009 to get a 20% discount on the premium version of One Minute Italian – just £8.00 GBP. If you need to check what this is in your currency, use the currency convertor on our Pricing page.

If you’re ready to purchase, click here to be taken straight to the One Minute Italian purchase page.