Back in 2005, I was studying Russian using the Pimsleur course, and it was working. What fun! I could actually communicate (a little) with these strange new sounds.
Language101.com President Brent Van Arsdell
Unfortunately, every time I got done with a Pimsleur lesson, I ended up saying, “Man, that was boring!” There has to be a better way to learn a language.
Next, I tried Rosetta Stone, but it didn’t work at all. Then I tried a lot of programs that you have probably never heard of, and they didn’t work either. Pimsleur worked, but it was slow and boring.
You might be surprised that I’m an engineer. In 1999 I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. While I was a student at the University of Illinois, I didn’t study foreign languages, but I did learn how to solve problems.
It was a good thing that I learned how to solve problems at UIUC, because now I had a big problem. I was having so much fun learning Russian that I was pretty sure I wanted to learn several other languages too, and at the rate I was learning Russian with Pimsleur, I was going to grow old and die before I learned all the languages I wanted to learn.
In 2006 I started to seriously think about how to develop foreign-language learning software. In December of 2007, I hired my first programmer, and we started developing a program.
Learning foreign languages and traveling the world has been the best thing that ever happened to me. I went from being a typical American who couldn’t speak any other language to being able to speak conversational Russian and being able to have fun in French and German.
I’ve also made some amazing personal changes since I started learning Russian. When I started learning Russian, I worried about everything. Today I don’t worry about anything and haven’t for over a year. Ahh, it feels good.
Today, Language101.com is a small team made up of me, a great programmer, and a long list of smart people with special skills who join us when we need them.
As you might guess, I spend a lot of time traveling and living in many different countries. At the moment I’m traveling, so if you have any questions, you can call me on my cell phone at 760-550-7813 or you can email me.
Call any time, but I’m more likely to answer if you call between 12 noon and 8:00 p.m. California time or 3:00 p.m. till 11:00 p.m. New York City time.
Brent Van Arsdell
Language101.com
