the SpanishSense Blogthe SpanishSense BlogHosts and experts at SpanishSense.com blog about the Spanish language and SpanishSense related news. At SpanishSense.com you can learn Spanish with free daily MP3 audio podcasts, lesson review, grammar introduction, vocabulary study tools and a vibra Articles
We’ve moved
2008-06-06 13:20:00 The new Praxis Language website has launched, and we’ve moved this blog to a new address: http://praxislanguage.com/news/ . If you’re reading this in a feed reader, please change your subscription to http://praxislanguage.com/feed/.We look forward to seeing everyone at the new site.
Bienvenue FrenchPod
2008-05-12 05:13:00 Everyone at Praxis Language is very happy to announce that FrenchPod is now open to the public, joining ChinesePod and SpanishPod in the growing Praxis Language family. Erica, Amaury, Christela, and Christophe have been working hard in preparation for this launch, and it shows in the quality and variety of lessons already available. If you’re already a ChinesePod or SpanishPod subscriber, you can sign up for a Praxis Pass to access all three sites for just a little more than Premium access to a single site. Bonjour tout le monde! Venez apprendre le français avec FrenchPod! On espère que le site va vous plaire!
Learn Spanish By Phone – A Pioneering New Service From SpanishPod
2008-04-02 10:07:00 “Spanish Pod has launched the Practice Plan, which connects students and professional Spanish teachers by phone at anytime, anywhere in the world. “ Shanghai, April 2, 2008 - From today, people will be able to practice their Spanish with a native Spanish teacher at anytime and anywhere thanks to a revolutionary new service available through SpanishPod.com. One-to-one phone lessons customized to the needs of each individual integrated with an online syllabus will provide students with relevant conversation practice and personalized study material on a daily basis making learning languages the most accessible and efficient it has ever been. Following on from the success of ChinesePod’s phone lessons, the Practice Plan for Spanish has been introduced to add the element of real conversation to the current study materials available online at SpanishPod.com. “The study resources available on SpanishPod have greatly helped me improve my Spanish, however, the addition... More About: Phone , Learn Spanish , Service , Learn
Our Blogs
2008-04-01 10:41:00 Just a reminder that if the discussion seems a little slow here it is probably because we are posting in the Conversation sections of the LanguagePod sites and on our own blogs. If you are interested in joining the discussions: Ken Carroll blogs at Here Comes Everybody John Pasden blogs at the legendary Sinosplice JP Villanueva blogs at Fluency Dave Lancashire blogs at Adsotrans John Biesnecker blogs at My Chinese Life and I blog at The Network Sense Hank. More About: Blogs
Server Upgrade
2008-03-22 03:43:00 Both ChinesePod and SpanishPod will experience some down time today from 3pm to 4pm (Beijing time), as our servers in the United States are upgraded with more RAM. This should lead to faster and more reliable site performance. We thank you for your patience. More About: Server
ChinesePod in Masie’s Learning TRENDS
2008-03-13 04:03:00 original article @ The MASIE Center Language Learning by iPod: An Emerging Model by Hank Horkoff and Jonathan M. Kayes As podcasting becomes ubiquitous in the world of e-learning, it can bring us almost anything from investment tips, to interviews with leading authors some of which are fabulous and others have you reaching for your MP3 player to switch to The Beastie Boys. Where can you turn for best practices and perhaps even get the added value of being able to better understand a key part of the global environment? What we’ve found is a 15 minute, caffeine-like dose of Mandarin Chinese, brought to you by a high-energy team of teachers and voice actors coming to you daily direct from Shanghai, China. In a nutshell, that is what Praxis Language’s ChinesePod.com has been doing since September 2005, in the process attracting over a quarter of million students interested in learning Chinese. What we see in these podcasts are some best practices - using social web tools t... More About: Trends
Praxis in the NYT
2008-02-17 03:33:00 An article in Sunday’s Times discussing distance language learning (with an excellent photo of one of our students - Mike Kuiack - as well). Check it out » More About: Praxis
Server Downtime in L.A.
2008-02-13 05:45:00 ChinesePod and SpanishPod are currently experiencing downtime due to server problems with our hosting service in L.A. The issue began at approximately 9:30am, Shanghai time (+08:00 GMT), and is expected to last a total of 5 hours to repair. We apologize for the interruption in the service. The sites will be back online soon. UPDATE: The site is back online as promised. Sorry for the interruption. More About: Server
Help us Select a Domain for the Online Confucius Institute!
2008-02-06 23:44:00 With the Hanban partnering with ChinesePod to develop the Online Confucius Institute , we have been encouraging them to be a lot more collaborative with the people who will use the site - that is, you. For reference, the last attempt at a domain name was “Linese”, or short for living in Chinese. Please let us know which one you prefer. Hank. What should be the URL for the new Online Confucius Institute website (options listed in alphabetical order)? confuciusonline.com confuciusinstitute.net ehanyu.com chinesestudying.com confuciusinstitutes.com echinese.org.cn hanyuwang.org e-han.org other cionline.org.cn clanguage.net.cn View Results More About: Domain , Select
Praxis Language Partners with NOCFL to Develop Online Confucius Institute
2008-02-06 23:43:00 Beijing/Shanghai, February 7, 2008 — Praxis Language is partnering with the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (NOCFL, also known as the Hanban) to develop the Online Confucius Institute . At present, 180 Confucius Institutes operate in 50 countries with independent websites and promotional activities. With today’s agreement, however, Praxis Language will develop an official Online Confucius Institute to help unify their activities. It will act as a centralized repository for NOCFL and Praxis Language learning materials, such as ChinesePod. It will also offer students, teachers and institutions up-to-date information on developments in the burgeoning Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) industry. In addition, new social networking features will enable individuals/groups to integrate digital learning materials into their studies. Teachers of Chinese around the world will have the tools to share, connect, and collaborate, thus aiding the de... More About: Partners , Develop
Praxis Language 与国家汉办合作，开发网络孔子学院。
2008-02-06 23:42:00 北京/上海，2008年2月3日 Praxis Language 与中国国家汉办合作，共同开 网络孔子学院。 目前，分布于50个国家的180所孔 子学院都独立运行和推广其网 。而根据今天的协议，Praxis Language将会开发正式的孔子学院 官方网站（网络孔子学院）以 助他们统一其活动。这个网站 由国家汉办与Praxis Language合作开发学习资料库，一 如ChinesePod。同时，网站也会为 习者、教师以及机构提供实时 更新的信息，用以进一步发展 长中的汉语教学行业。此外， 型的网络社交方式使个人或者 团体在学习中能够整合他们的 子学习资料。世界各地的中文 师将会有一个平台去共享、联 系以及合作，从而也推进了汉 教学的发展。Praxis Language 的CEO Hank Horkoff 认为此次合作“将利用最好的 络工具，使中文学习更加简单 ” 孔子学院是一个非盈利性的公 组织，其任务...
Meetups. How can we help?
2008-02-02 02:25:00 We are big believers in language learning as a social process. That said, we do take a different approach than some of the other leading, language social network verticals (e.g. LiveMocha, Mango Languages, Shanghai-based iTalki, etc). While they tend to put the emphasis on making connections first and then introducing the language learning content after, we feel that the lesson is the not only the first step (also see Ken’s excellent post on this topic), but the whole reason the community is attracted and engaged in the first place! This concept of ‘object-centered sociality‘, rather the user-centered sociality, has given us a clear vision for how we need to continue building out the service. The lessons spark the learning process, students add fuel to the fire. Meetups & Groups We have learned a lot of lessons from 88Groups on how to provide tools to bring our LanguagePod’s into the classrooms and group environments. We are currently looking at adding a ...
Partner with Praxis: The Affiliate Program
2008-01-21 08:05:00 How would you like to lend a hand to Praxis Language, with minimal effort, and get paid in the process? If this sounds too good to be true, read on. Praxis Language is now running an affiliate program, and anyone with a blog, website or e-newsletter is eligible to join up. You can place an ad on your site (takes about 5 minutes), and then every time someone clicks through and signs up on ChinesePod or SpanishPod, you’ll get paid! The program is suitable for everyone, from website hobbyists and casual bloggers, through to professional full-time affiliates. For the experienced, here are some details on the program… Cookies: unlimited duration Program Type: Pay per lead Ads available: flash and gif banners, text ads, reviews, etc To find out more, or to sign up, click here. More About: Affiliate , Partner , Affiliate Program
Down Time
2008-01-18 03:25:00 In order to better distribute server load, we need to transfer some data to a new server today, Friday, January 18th at 2pm Shanghai time (+0800). Both ChinesePod and SpanishPod will be down for 2-3 hours. Sorry for the disruption, but the site should be faster overall after the upgrade. More About: Time
LanguagePod Cities
2008-01-16 04:25:00 We are busy planning a number of features to help regional groups of Chinese & Spanish language learners get together. So, I thought it might be a good time to review our current top cities. ChinesePod Top 10 Cities Shanghai Beijing London Singapore Sydney Chengdu New York Hong Kong Bangkok Melbourne SpanishPod Top 10 Cities London New York Bogota Washington Melbourne Sydney Brooklyn San Francisco Madrid Houston Please let us know if you have any ideas or requests on how we might help you and your fellow students in your city.
SpanishPod Product and Community Updates
2007-12-26 13:05:00 Hope you’re enjoying your holidays! SpanishPod Product Update Just one thing to report this week: new subscribers to SpanishPod will be treated to a “Welcome Podcast,” featuring the SpanishPod team explaining their roles, as well as some crucial concepts that are important to the SpanishPod experience. New subscribers will automatically receive the “Welcome Podcast” in their feeds; listen for yourself here. SpanishPod Community Updates Our community has grown considerably due to our big Xmas promotion; thanks for helping us make it a success! Check out our Christmas slide show here. Not much more to report. This is the last SpanishPod update of the year. Thanks for a great 2007, and here’s to a peaceful and prosperous New Year! More About: Unit , Nish
ChinesePod Product Updates
2007-12-24 11:39:00 Here we are again, telling you what’s new on ChinesePod. You can once again choose in your personalized feed whether to include simplified characters, traditional characters, or even both. There is a new “Welcome Podcast” for the new users. You “old users” can still go listen, of course… As for future features: Expect new exercises later this week. (OK, we may have said this before, but we’re serious now.) More About: Product , Updates
SpanishPod Product and Community Updates
2007-12-18 17:22:00 It’s been another big week at Studio Fiesta… SpanishPod Community Updates : Thanks, everyone, for all your encouragement, your support, and for getting the word out about SpanishPod. Today, SpanishPod was #2 among educational podcasts according to iTunes USA, and #45 in overall podcasts. Even more impressive are the great reviews we’re getting on our iTunes site. If you enjoy SpanishPod, please write us a review! Adri is back in Colombia, and Esti is back in Spain for the Christmas Holiday, but they’re both still holding court in the Conversations section! People really seem to be responding to Nino from Del taco al tango: Meet the Parents, and his experiences with dating a latina. Another very interesting conversation is going on about how we go about studying vocab (go to the conversations page and find “How do you study vocab?”); people are sharing their own styles, strategies, and techniques. SpanishPod Product Updates: Free and Basic... More About: Unit , Nish
ChinesePod Product Updates
2007-12-17 11:47:00 Here we are again, fulfilling all your ChinesePod news needs. Free and Basic users will notice that there are now some sections of the site “grayed out.” This is part of an effort to make clearer which features are part of Basic/Premium services. Lessons now have a pop-out player (look for the link right under the Flash player on the lesson page). This lets you click around on various parts of the site while listening to a lesson, uninterrupted. As for future features: Expect new exercises later this week. Vocabulary management redesign continues, and it’s looking good! Once again, don’t miss the ChinesePod Christmas Special. You’re running out of chances to accept offers this good in 2006! More About: Product , Updates
Insanity and Learning in the USA
2007-12-15 04:06:00 The holidays are almost upon us, but at 88Groups we’re trying to dish out some learning gifts a bit earlier. Here are some highlights from the last week: Brendan reveals a great character — 嚏 — for making your Chinese friends lose a little bit of face on Character Insanity . Bill offers an alternative to Character Insanity — appropriately named “Character Sanity” — by taking a look at characters in the way that Ezra Pound and other poets of that era did in Learning Chinese in the USA. It looks like the folks at 88Groups really like their characters. If you like character, too, or anything else under the sun, you can come to 88Groups, create a group, and share the love. More About: Earning
ChinesePod @ Great Hall of the People
2007-12-13 02:17:00 This week the Chinese Hanban (China’s equivalent to the British Council, Alliance Française, Goethe-Institut, etc) invited ChinesePod up to Beijing to attend the second annual Confucius Institute Conference. A group of us braved the snow in Beijing and introduced ChinesePod to the global network of Confucius Institutes. More on the conference can be found here: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/ 6316507.html More About: People , Great , Hall , The People
SpanishPod Product and Community Updates
2007-12-12 14:36:00 It’s been a big week here at Studio Fiesta; here’s the low down: Community Updates José Álvarez Díaz, a correspondent from the Spanish news agency EFE sat down with us for a few minutes earlier this week in Studio Fiesta to talk about our podcasts. That conversation has turned into international exposure for SpanishPod (as well as ChinesePod) and increased interest in our service from all over the Spanish-speaking world. In fact, traffic to our website has tripled since the story went out over the wire, and Madrid, Spain has become the city with the highest number of visits to our site. In addition, Liliana convinced José to join us for a Del taco al tango show, in which he tells us some stories about being a correspondent in Asia, as well as about his love for Spanish guitar. Check out José’s SpanishPod article: El Mundo (Madrid) El Economista (Mexico) El Comercio (Peru) Links to a more exhaustive list of newspapers where the story was picked up can be f... More About: Product , Unit , Nish
ChinesePod Product Updates
2007-12-10 11:00:00 When something new happens on ChinesePod, you can read about it here! All the bug fixing of late has gotten real results, so we’d like to bring to your attention: User vocabulary has long since been migrated, and the users that have reported any missing vocab have had any missing words brought back from limbo. The ChinesePod Dictionary, which suffered from some “click to add” failures for a period of time, is no back in fine form. Use it! A few lessons that had missing comments for a time have had all those old comments re-imported. (Perhaps most notably, Cold Will Kill You. This one’s for you, Goulniky!) The fonts used for the ChinesePod lesson exercises have increased in size. They should be easier on your eyes now. Personal feeds are now limited to 100 items. This is not an effort to restrict you; rather, this makes your feed play with iTunes much more nicely. After some “spammy misunderstandings” on a new mail server, the ChinesePod academic ... More About: Product , Updates
Group Building and Ox Saliva
2007-12-08 02:00:00 Now that 88Group s has been open for a few weeks, we’re starting to see some lively groups form and discussion begin. We’re also seeing a variety of groups form, and we think that from this variety there will be some really interesting content in the coming weeks and months. Some groups to watch (and join and participate in!): Character Insanity, which looks at Chinese characters and the words they form, and discusses their various aspects. If you’ve ever looked at a Chinese character and wondered what all those crazy lines meant, this group’s for you. Brits Learning Mandarin is a regional group run by ChinesePod’s very own Bazza (of ChinesePod Forum fame), and looks at Chinese as it relates to people living in Britain. Thanks to him and his group, I now know that the Chinese for “Oxfordshire” could be interpreted as “Ox Saliva Prefecture.” You never know when stuff like that could come in handy. We’ve also had a few schools sign up to supplement their classroo... More About: Building
Why Buy the Cow?
2007-12-06 02:35:00 We were informed this week that ChinesePod is featured in a recently published book titled “Why Buy the Cow?”. The interview was done over a year ago (says a lot about the publishing industry), but the words still ring true: ChinesePod’s business model threatens the industry incumbents because it re-arranges the supply chain. The company is competing against two types of business entities and taking market share away from both: the audio-book industry and language schools. The disruptive qualities of ChinesePod revolve around their simplified, yet hi-touch/hi-flex delivery methods. A broader application of their approach provides and obstacle for publishing houses that is difficult to respond to: “We give away for free (podcast lessons) what the audio book companies charge a lot of money for. They have no community of users, and receive very little feedback. Nor do the users have any input on the design of their products. The audio book companies are stuck wi...
SpanishPod Product and Community Updates
2007-12-05 16:25:00 So much has been going on here at SpanishPod’s Studio Fiesta, it’s hard to keep track! Here’s what’s going on… SpanishPod Holiday Special The biggest news, of course, is Holiday discount being offered through the month of December on subscriptions. Give SpanishPod as a gift, or add some time to your own subscription! Click here for more details! SpanishPod Community Updates The Conversations section has been hopping lately! By far, the most lively discussion has been taking place on Where are you from?, where members of the SpanishPod community from all over the world have been checking in to say hello. Some of the more advanced Spanish students have been weighing in at Hit The Jackpot, SpanishPod’s first Intermediate-level lesson. Finally, I’ve been trying to come up with a cool name for my new Q&A show that will be coming up soon. I posted some ideas over on New SpanishPod Extra Show; some good ideas, some bad ideas, and one t... More About: Product , Unit , Nish
ChinesePod Product Updates
2007-12-03 16:05:00 This is the first in a series of regular posts keeping you up to date about how ChinesePod is changing. We recently explained that the changes you have seen were a bit more than just “scheduled maintenance.” Here are some of the things you may be noticing: You now see the 5 latest lessons on the Home page, before you log in. The beloved Extra shows, such as Dear Amber, Movie Madness, and Qing Wen now appear in your personal feed and on your personal Home page (after you’re logged in). The Home page updates in real time, meaning you don’t have to log out to see new content after it publishes. Your ChinesePod account is already linked to SpanishPod. Just head on over, log in, and you’ve automatically started your free trial! Now, the road to progress has a few bumps in it, unfortunately. We are actively removing those bumps! Those include: The massive vocabulary migration has finished. If you still have vocabulary missing, please contact us, and we wil... More About: Product , Updates
Unveiling 88Groups
2007-12-01 02:50:00 Today I’d like to talk a little about the newest addition to the Praxis Language family — 88Groups. First, though, I’m going to take a short diversion into the world of music remixing (I promise it’s not totally unrelated!). One of my favorite albums is DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album, an underground remix of Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ The White Album. In the course of a couple of weeks, DJ Danger Mouse laid Jay-Z’s rhymes over The Beatles’ riffs and created something different altogether, neither purely hip hop nor purely rock and roll. Remixing is the core of a DJ’s work, taking tracks from one or more genres and melding them into something that fits his or her audience. Remixing is at the heart of what we’re doing with 88Groups. We’re providing lessons from ChinesePod and SpanishPod, and giving you the platform on which to meld these lessons into something new, along with tools to create your o... More About: Unveiling
Scheduled Maintenance on ChinesePod, SpanishPod
2007-11-19 11:13:00 It’s time for scheduled maintenance at ChinesePod. Tonight, November 19th, Shanghai time, ChinesePod.com will go down for several hours. When it returns, there may be a few small quirks which will be ironed out ASAP. Thank you for your patience and continued support! Nov. 20 Update: We need to make some more changes today which necessitated taking both ChinesePod and SpanishPod offline for several hours. The total length of downtime needed is estimated at 3 hours. What can you expect when the sites go live again? Well, most of the changes are “under the hood,” and we won’t be able to appreciate them fully right away. What you will notice, though, is: SpanishSense is gone, replaced by SpanishPod. Existing SpanishSense customers will be able to download prior SpanishSense content, but we will not move the old lessons to the SpanishPod site. SpanishPod is starting with a clean slate, including all-new hosts and a new feel. Old SpanishSense accounts will work o... More About: Maintenance , Tena , Nish
The Instinct Guy
More articles from this author:2007-11-18 16:34:00 In grad school, they told us “you can’t teach people language; you can only put it out there for them to learn.” I wish I could attribute this quote, but Google is giving me nothing. In any case, what’s behind this quote is a belief that language isn’t taught or learned; it’s not transmitted from parent to child, it’s not drilled into you by a teacher. Instead, it’s acquired by an instinct which analyzes communication and constantly generates updated hypotheses about how the language is spoken. It may seem unlikely, but the language instinct is a way of explaining how a kids go from zero to native-speaker in five years. Some of them have complex subordinate clauses before they’re out of diapers. We should all recognize that zero to native-speaker is a monstrous amount of information to assimilate; the sounds, the words, the grammar… and much of it happens unconsciously. What’s more; kids that are communicate... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
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