From Average, Ambitionless Student to World-Travelling Language Lover: How High School Spanish Class Changed My Life Posted by Transparent Language on Sep 15, 2014 in Archived Posts
Guest post by Sean Duhaime, one of our trusty Quality Assurance Testers and our go-to Hispanophile here at Transparent Language. Before I started learning Spanish, there was nothing concrete about me. I was a wayward child with a C average and a vague ambition to become the next singer-songwriter-sensation. I was eleven years old when I…
Romantic Languages: Not Necessarily Romance Languages Posted by Malachi Rempen on Sep 8, 2014 in Archived Posts
Today I’m going to completely disagree with my own comic. I made the above strip a while back and thought I could mine some easy chuckles from a common stereotype. But now that I’m older, wiser, and more proficient in all of the above languages, I’ve come change my tune. Not only that, I’m going…
An American in Iceland: the Benefits of Learning the Language Before a Vacation Posted by janet on Sep 3, 2014 in Archived Posts
Starting in late fall of last year, I found myself planning for a summer trip to Iceland, a place I’d wanted to visit for a very long time. Shortly after the tickets were booked and the dates circled on the calendar, it suddenly hit me that this little island in the middle of the Atlantic…
5 Reasons Why You Should Pay Attention in Your Foreign Language Class Posted by meaghan on Sep 1, 2014 in Archived Posts
“I’m never going to use this language, why do I have to take this class?” “Everyone speaks English, so why do I have to learn another language?” As much as it saddens my language-loving heart to write such things, I see tweets from young students making claims like those above every single day. Most high schools…
Flawless, Impossible Fluency Posted by Malachi Rempen on Aug 27, 2014 in Archived Posts
Germans have this funny habit of downplaying how good their English is. I feel pretty confident in saying that, aside from perhaps the Scandinavians and the Dutch, Germans speak the best English in mainland Europe. And yet every time I ask a German stranger if they speak English, they either fidget and shuffle their…
Confessions of a Native English Speaker Posted by mtaulier on Aug 25, 2014 in Archived Posts
In my last post, I interviewed my wife Natalya. Natalya shared her language learning experiences as a Ukrainian native who left her country to settle in the United States. Today, I’d like to share with you the same kind of interview I conducted with my mother. My mom, born and raised in California, moved to…
Learn a Foreign Language in Your Hometown: Visit Your Local Library Posted by Transparent Language on Aug 25, 2014 in Archived Posts
Did you know the Queens Borough Public Library system is home to more than 800,000 foreign language books and employs 6 language specialists whose job it is to locate more materials for popular languages in the area? Were you aware that Seattle Public Library teaches basic and intermediate English as a Second Language (ESL) classes…