You can get stuck in a traffic jam and learn better Spanish. Really!

There’s only one way to be a safe driver.  When you are driving, concentrate 100% on your driving.

Surprisingly, the better you get at concentrating on your driving, the better you will be at concentrating on learning Spanish.

Here’s how to use your driving time to learn Spanish (or any language) faster.

Learn French playing Monopoly?

Games for learning French, Spanish and other languages are popular in the classroom — but do they work?

Most language learning games, are a little bit like playing Monopoly.   You learn as you play, but it takes a long time.

Here’s what we think about French learning games.

According to author Dan Pink, grades really don't motivate us to do something like learn Spanish.

You might guess that getting a reward like money or a good grade would really motivate us to do something good like learn Spanish.

But according to Daniel Pink, author of “Drive – The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” that’s not how motivation works.

Read more about how to improve your motivation to learn Spanish.

Click on this to see if you can tell what is an ad and what isn't. Google has eliminated the once clear difference between ads and organic search.

Language learners tend to rely on Google to plan their travel.  Say for example that you are using Language101.com to learn French online but you also want to take an in person French class when you visit Bordeaux.

The image to the left is a screen shot of a search on the term, “Learn French Bordeaux.”

Click on it and quickly see if you can tell the difference between the ads and the organic search results.

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If you're learning French and you see this man say, "Vous êtes Barack Obama."

How would you like to be able to speak over 10 languages and read almost 20?

Dutch language genius Mark Benninga can do that.

French is one of his favorite languages, so, we’ve asked him to share some of his advice for learning French.

The phrase "Times Studied: and then a number shows how many times you have studied this phrase."

Sometimes it would be nice to know, “How many times have I studied that phrase?”

We just now made knowing the answer a LOT easier by adding a feature that shows you the word, “Times Studied:  ____”  This appears at the top of the main study screen.

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The Little Prince

When we make language lessons we always try to bring you the best of every culture.  Of course with French culture there are so many wonderful things to choose from.

If you are learning French you absolutely must take time to listen to this audio recording of our French teacher reading a selection from “The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Click on the link below (or the book cover above) and then click “Play Complete Lesson Soundtrack or Video”.  If you don’t yet know much French, you can read the translations in English by scrolling down the page as the teacher reads.

Try to focus on how you feel as you hear the teacher read the story.  I think you will find as I do that it is stunningly beautiful.

Le Petit Prince – audio.

German has some funny words like Fahrt.

When you learn German, you’ll notice that it has some funny words.  Take the word Fahrt for example.

It sounds a lot like the English word fart, but as you might have guessed it has a completely different meaning.

If you are learning German, you’ll definitely enjoy our article on  German Fahrts.

For a long time now I’ve been encouraging people to break their “News” habit and use that time to learn a new language.  For most people, watching the news makes them worry about things they can’t possibly do anything about, so why bother.

However if you feel compelled to start your day with news, I recommend the Daily Good.

Language101.com is always developing new lessons.  Currently we have part time positions open for three linguists and one computer programmer.

Click on Linguistics Jobs for details on all the jobs.

If you just take melatonin for jet lag, you are missing several safe and easy remedies.

If you are planning a trip on the airlines that crosses more that one time zone you will probably want to read my new article about jet lag remedies.

Getting over jet lag is now a lot easier for me than it used to be.

If you had seen me at work for the last two months you might have said, “What’s he smiling about?”  Well what I’ve been smiling about is adding cool new features to our program.

The most important and obvious feature that we have added is a dramatically different set of interactive instructions that replaces the video that you used to see when you clicked “Try It.”  In the old instruction video you had to watch and remember three minutes of tightly packed information and then remember how to apply it later.

It wasn’t always easy.

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The charming woman who cleans my house is going on vacation to Italy. She wants to try a few Italian wines and maybe flirt with a few Italian men.

Naturally, I wanted to help. Fortunately, we now have many more lessons completed than she could possibly learn before arriving in Italy.

Because we are so close to being done with our Italian lessons, I made a deal to swap house cleaning for an Italian learning program so she could have a better time on her vacation.

If you are planning to travel to Italy soon, we may be able to help you too.

“Super Package” Customers Can Now Learn Italian

Our Italian lessons are not yet completed, but if you are planning to travel to Italy soon and if you are already a Super Package customer, or if you want to upgrade to a Super Package (if you are not currently a Super Package customer), please contact us, and we can help you a LOT.

I would like to help you have more happiness on your trip to Italy,  just as I helped my cleaning lady!

We are still not yet accepting new customers for Italian by itself, but if you want to buy a Super Package and learn Italian and something else with it, go ahead and sign up through the page of the other language you want to learn.

Contact us for help on how to study Italian after you have signed up for a Super Package.

It’s possible to be completely bored while watching a big-budget Hollywood action movie.

It’s also possible to be completely engaged while learning Spanish words with simple flash cards.

If you have ever been bored when you are studying, here’s

how to avoid boredom.

Solar flares affect the earth's geomanetic field and might speed up learning.

Have you ever had days when your study seemed to go very well, perhaps for reasons that you didn’t understand? It could that be the earth’s magnetic field was helping you.

“Rats exposed to geomagnetic fields learn mazes more quickly.”

This is from an article by B. McKay and M. Persinger, “Geophysical Variables and Behaviour: LXXXVII. Effects of synthetic and natural geomagnetic patterns on maze learning,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1999; 89 (3 pt 1): 1023-4.

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