Pimsleur First Lesson Free

I've been adding links to product demos a lot lately. I find that people can get a much better feel for a language method if they can try it. Unfortunately, not all publishers offer a demo of their products.

Transparent Language offers a Lite version of their BYKI software and I've included a link for every language page that I have on the site. Rosetta Stone offers a demo of their software, and all language pages on the site (for which Rosetta Stone has a product) now have a link to their demo.

Pimsleur is a little different. They do offer the first lesson of their audio programs for free. Finding them is a little tricky. I am adding an audio player and link to the first lesson for all of the languages that Pimsleur has a product for. This will take a little time, however. I've added Chinese, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Arabic. Others will be coming along, but if you can't wait for a language that you are interested in, contact me and I'll make that language a priority.

Surveys Update

I have recently updated the Hardest Language to Learn and the Easiest Language to Learn surveys. The Thank You page (after you fill out the survey) displays the ongoing results in a graph form. It doesn't show the results of the write-in portion of the survey, only the first part. So many people wanted to actually see the results that I made that addition for them.

I was pleased to see in the Clinton/Obama debate a few weeks ago (I believe it was on Feb 21st - International Mother Language Day!) that they raised questions of bilingualism, language, and English as an official language in the US. Both candidates gave a good response - that they would promote the teaching of foreign languages in school and that it was critical for the US to do so. They also both promoted English as the unifying language of the US, but both backed down from the idea of it as an official language.