Learn a language with podcasts

At multilingua.info we believe you should use all the resources at your disposal to learn a new language. One great new resource - our favorite of the moment, in fact - is the podcast. Even better, most of these are free. (If you really like one, though, you should donate or subscribe to their extra content to make sure this resources stays available - just like buying your language books through multilingua.info!)

There are a variety of podcasts out there, and some are better than others. What makes a great podcast?

• It's short. Pimsleur's 1/2 hour lessons are great, but if you're on a rough schedule, 2 ten-minute podcasts are even better.
• It's talk. Single- and double-rep vocab programs are the same, whether on the net or on cassette. Shows with chatty hosts keep you engaged.
• It's smart - but not too smart. You listen to these things to learn. Too fast to keep up and too slow to stay awake are not options for your valuable time.

Looking at the criteria below, here are our top picks for selected languages. If there's a great podcast we're missing, let us know at multilingua@gbarto.com (subj: great podcast for x language).

Mandarin ChinesePod.com. Ken Carrol and Jenny Zhu spend five to fifteen minutes a lesson making real Mandarin fun. Serge Melnyk's Mandarin. A lot less zip that ChinesePod, but a respectable presentation by a real person, not a disembodied language cassette voice. Worth a listen if you find ChinesePod too perky. Japanese JapanesePod101. Peter and Natsuko aren't Ken and Jenny (of ChinesePod), but they're a lot better than the review they got in Slate. Worth listening. Learn Japanese. This looked promising, but the first episode I downloaded was half an hour. If you want extended lessons, have a look. Spanish SpanishArriba. This is a touch language teacherish, but if you want to learn from the beginning in ten-minute blocks, give it a try. Italian LearnItalianPod. They talk soooo slowly at the beginning. But the content is useful. German Deutsch-Warum Nicht? Not a bad program, with some innovative stuff in terms of presentation. But Deutsche Welle's website is so awful I'm linking the podcast.net entry. That's a start on programs we think are worth a try. For more on language learning podcasts, check out this post at AspiringPolyglot.blogspot.com. multilingua.info home

Recommended materials: Spanish, French and Italian Mandarin multilingua branded merchandise! Other Language Resources Itty Bitty Courses Semitic: Arabic, Hebrew Turkic: Turkish, Uzbek Indo-Iranian: Urdu, Pashto, Dari Finno-Ugric: Finnish Austronesian: Indonesian Tai-Kadai: Thai

Here are some language sites that have linked to us or our sister site, The Language Pages. Tennessee Bob's French links: Acquiring French Vocabulary French Grammar Central Other links French Vocabulary - Vocabulaire FLE Internet4Classrooms.com foreign language section Le Point du FLE

Other links Claritaslux language learning software Translation Central Geos Colleges-English in Oceania