In this special episode, Mark provides an update on all things Coffee Break Spanish including the return of the Coffee Break Spanish Magazine in late April 2022; the launch of the Coffee Break books, available from June in your local bookshop and from online retailers; and the Coffee Break Spanish Club, where you can get your daily dose of Spanish activities. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every 30th September, the podcasting world comes together to celebrate podcasting on International Podcast Day. We're celebrating today by saying thank you to the Coffee Break community in this special podcast episode. International Podcast Day aims to raise awareness about podcasts and gives podcast creators and listeners a chance to celebrate the medium and the podcast industry.But podcasting has been around for a lot longer than that! Back in 2004, broadcaster Adam Curry asked developer Dave Winer to develop an audioblogging system and without going into the technical side of things, or indeed who specifically “invented” podcasting, it was Curry and Winer who got the ball rolling. The word “podcast” however, was first mentioned in a newspaper article in the Guardian by technology reporter Ben Hammersley. It was declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary in 2005. Of course, at this stage Coffee Break hadn't yet launched, but Coffee Break host Mark did start podcasting for an education project he was running at the time called Partners in Excellence or “PiE”, and The PiEcast was used to bring a community of learners together and help them develop their language skills. Mark quickly realised that podcasting was the perfect medium for publishing language lessons, and for sharing his passion for languages with a wider audience. Coffee Break Spanish was launched in October 2006. As the very first Spanish podcast for beginners on iTunes, it quickly gathered an audience and learners around the world started learning with us. Since then we’ve gone on to produce Coffee Break French, German, Italian, Chinese, Swedish and English and we have plans to develop more Coffee Break languages in the future. We’ve also created shorter podcast series called One Minute Languages covering over 30 languages from Arabic to Zulu. We’ve published well over 1,000 episodes across the different languages and our podcasts have been downloaded over 290 million times, and we currently deliver over 2 million free language lessons every month to a community of Coffee Break learners. So that’s why today, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you, our podcast listeners, our Coffee Break community. Without you there wouldn’t be any Coffee Break! Thank you for choosing to listen to our shows, to learn with us and to share your 15 or 20 minute coffee break with me and my cohosts on each episode of the show.Now just before we finish, a couple of important points: if you’d like to hear about the latest episodes and series from Coffee Break, make sure you join Mark on Sunday 4th October at 4pm UK time / 11am Eastern / 8am Pacific for a live broadcast on YouTube and our Facebook pages. You can go straight to our YT channel - Coffee Break Languages - and click the “Set Reminder” button.And, if you’d like to help us celebrate International Podcast Day, why not simply tell a language-loving friend about what you’ve learned with our podcasts and help us grow the Coffee Break community even further?Merci beaucoup - vielen, vielen Dank, muchísimas gracias, grazie molte, xiè xie nimen, tack så jättemycket and thank you! There’s lots more coming from Coffee Break and we hope you continue to enjoy learning with us. Happy International Podcast Day! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nine years ago today we published the first episode of Coffee Break Spanish. Since then we’ve gone on to publish courses in 27 languages, and we’ve delivered over 160 million language lessons to learners around the world.Some of the team have spent this weekend in London at the Language Show where we’ve been meeting thousands of language lovers, among them many members of the Coffee Break learning community. To celebrate our 9th birthday we’ve put together a special show featuring interviews with some of our listeners which we’ve recorded here at the Language Show.Listen to the episode If you’d like to tell us your story and potentially be featured in a future episode of one of our courses, click here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we approach the end of 2014, Mark has recorded a special news podcast to look back at the past 12 months and to look forward to some of the exciting new content coming in 2015.Looking back2014 has been an exciting year for us here at Radio Lingua. We’ve released 84 episodes across our range of courses including Coffee Break French Season 4, our new Coffee Break Spanish Espresso and Coffee Break German which has just finished its first season. We’ve also introduced our new gameshow, the Coffee Break French and Coffee Break Spanish Two Minute Challenges.In 2014 we have delivered over 16 million free language lessons to our learners around the world, bringing the total number of free language lessons delivered since we started back in 2006 to over 155 million! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning one of the 26 languages we offer!High Five French Family EditionThis year we’ve also introduced our French course for younger learners, High Five French, featuring presenters Emma and Mathilde. High Five French has been popular in schools throughout the UK and we’ve just released the Family Edition of High Five French, so if you have children or grandchildren who would like to learn French with this fantastic video resource, you can find out more here. Early in the New Year we’ll be offering some free High Five French audio lessons – there’s more information in the news podcast, and you can learn more about High Five French here. If you’re interested in using High Five French in a school, please visit our Schools page.Coffee Break Spanish Season 4We’ve also announced our fourth season of Coffee Break Spanish. From January 2015 you can join presenters Mark and Carmen as they follow a serialised story featuring a range of characters from around the Spanish-speaking world. This show has been specially created to help advanced learners of Spanish build their confidence in tricky grammatical constructions and increase their range of idiomatic expressions. Find out more about Season 4 here.Coffee Break ItalianWe’re also introducing a new series for Italian learners. In January 2015 we’ll be launching Coffee Break Italian. The forty lessons of this first season will introduce learners to the language and you’ll start to develop confidence in using the language in a variety of situations. Mark takes on the role of teacher for Coffee Break Italian and is joined by learner Katie and native speaker Francesca. There’s more information about Coffee Break Italian here.Mark’s learning SwedishAs we move into a new year it’s the perfect time to start learning a new language or to commit to improving your existing language skills. Mark is making his own New Year’s Resolution to learn Swedish and will be keeping a blog of his experiences. You can follow his adventures here.Our Sale is still onFinally, don’t forget that our End Of Year Sale is still on and you can save 15% on all our courses with coupon code WINTER2014. This includes the option to preorder Coffee Break Spanish Season 4 and Coffee Break Italian. You can check out the terms and conditions here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s five years since we launched the first lesson of Coffee Break Spanish, and since then we’ve served up millions of language lessons to learners around the world through our podcasts, our enhanced lessons and our ebooks. We’re delighted today to announce five new courses, and we’ll also be letting you know about a few exciting projects which are due to be launched early in 2012.Spanish¡Empecemos con el español! On the 18th October 2006 we began with Spanish, and we’re doing the same today. Today we’re delighted to launch a brand new Spanish show. When you’re learning a language on your own, or if you don’t have access to a teacher or a native speaker, it’s difficult to get the answers you need to help you make progress. We receive questions almost every day from learners through posts on the website, emails, voicemails, tweets and Facebook, and we decided that the best way to deal with all of these questions would be to launch Q&A Spanish: you ask the questions and we provide the answers. Q&A Spanish will be hosted by teacher and languages expert JP Villanueva and native Spanish speaker Nahyeli Mendivil, so you have the best of both worlds! Each week they’ll help you develop your confidence in Spanish further by providing tips and examples of Spanish vocabulary, usage and grammar. Q&A Spanish starts today, so you can already subscribe to the podcast. Click here to find out more about how you can take part in the show.FrenchWe’re also delighted to be announcing a brand new French video show. In On Location French you can join Sophie who is a UK student currently studying in Paris. She’s there for a year and she’s agreed to be our “correspondent”, bringing us weekly reports on interesting expressions she learns as she interacts with native speakers every day. Sophie will also be providing some cultural input as she gets to know the city, and we’re really looking forward to finding out more about her experiences in Paris in her weekly videoblog. Find out more and watch the episodes at the On Location French page.Dutch, Flemish and ArabicWe’re delighted to be launching three new courses in our ever-popular One Minute Languages series. One of the most requested languages over the past few years has been Dutch, and we’ve decided to produce a Dutch and Flemish version of the course. Both languages are very similar – Flemish is the variety of Dutch spoken in Belgium, and of course Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands and in other countries around the world such as Suriname and Aruba. One Minute Dutch launches on Thursday 20th October and One Minute Flemish will be published on Fridays from 21st October. We’ve also been asked many times to produce an Arabic version of our One Minute Languages course. One Minute Arabic will run for ten weeks from tomorrow, Wednesday 19th October. We’re concentrating on Modern Standard Arabic which will ensure that as a learner you’ll be understood across the Arab world, from Casablanca to Kuwait. With these latest additions to the One Minute Languages series, we now cover 26 languages, from Arabic to Zulu making Radio Lingua your first stop for language-learning on the go, literally from A to Z!What’s coming down the line?There may be some of you who are looking forward to a third season of Coffee Break Spanish. We’re working on this at the moment and by the time the reruns of Show Time Spanish end in January we should be ready to go with Coffee Break Spanish Season 3. French learners will be very pleased to know that Pierre-Benoît has been wandering about in the... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 developmentWe’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 all our... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.