As you all know, Coffee Break Spanish level 2 came to an end with lesson 80 and we’re planning to follow up the course with similar content to our Season 3 of Coffee Break French. However, we’ve only just started working on this content, so it’s likely that it will be available later in the year.

We have been asked about the next steps for Coffee Break Spanish listeners and it seems that many listeners have not heard of our intermediate/advanced course Show Time Spanish. We’ve decided to add the Show Time Spanish episodes on the Coffee Break feed over the next twenty weeks, with two lessons per week. The materials are definitely more challenging, and ideally there would be a bridging course between the two. That’s exactly what Coffee Break Spanish Season 3 will provide, but in the meantime we hope that you find our Show Time episodes enjoyable.

Show Time on Coffee Break Spanish will begin tomorrow, on Tuesday 7th June and will continue twice-weekly for the next twenty weeks.

As with Coffee Break Spanish, our Show Time Spanish course features a range of additional materials which can be purchased as a “Season Pass”. For Show Time this Season Pass offers a full transcript of all the Spanish used in the text, lesson notes, and bonus listening materials which provide extra practise of the language covered in each lesson. We offer Season Passes at £47.00 GBP (+VAT for EU customers) for Season 1 (lessons 1-20) and Season 2 (lessons 21-40), and for the first time today we’re introducing a Complete Show Time Spanish Season Pass (lessons 1-40) for £84.00 GBP (+VAT for EU customers). Please click on the links for each pass, or if you’re an existing customer, log into your Control Panel and add the pass to your membership.

¡Enhorabuena, España! To celebrate Spain winning the World Cup we’re extending our sale on our Spanish courses until Wednesday 14th July. To benefit from this special offer and get 20% off our Spanish courses including Coffee Break Spanish, Show Time Spanish, TwitterLearn Spanish, and News Time Spanish, simply use coupon code campeones at check-out.

So, you’ve been learning Spanish with Coffee Break Spanish, and perhaps you’ve been extending your knowledge with Show Time Spanish. Today we’re delighted to introduce a new show to help you build your vocabulary and develop your listening skills even further.

News Time Spanish is a new weekly show from the Radio Lingua Network aimed at intermediate to advanced learners of Spanish. Each week we’ll be bringing you stories from around the world in short reports, written especially for learners. We’ll be reporting on current affairs, sport, culture, technology and lots more, so News Time Spanish will be an excellent way to increase your Spanish vocabulary and build your range of expression.

The first season of News Time Spanish begins today, 17th May 2010 and you can listen to episode one on our site, or subscribe in iTunes, as usual. Each episode comes with a full transcript of the report, vocabulary and exercises, and there’s even a second version of the audio file which has been digitally slowed-down to help you understand the episode.

Find out more about News Time Spanish on the product page for the show.

The final episode in the series of Show Time Spanish includes episode eight of our soap Verano Español. Just what will Laura say to Ángel and Fiona after discovering them together? And will Ramón finally have the courage to tell Laura how he feels? Find out in the long-awaited final instalment of the telenovela.

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2009 has been a fantastic year for Radio Lingua and we’d like to thank all our listeners for your support and enthusiasm over the past twelve months. To celebrate the end of 2009 and a new year of language-learning just around the corner, we’re delighted to announce our Holidays sale and give you some exciting advance notice of our plans for 2010. Read on!

No festive period is complete without a sale, and we’re offering you 25% off all our courses right through until 31 December, midnight GMT. If you’ve been thinking about taking your language-learning more seriously next year, perhaps now is the time to jump on board and purchase one of our Season Passes. We’re delighted to be able to offer free language-learning materials to hundreds of thousands of listeners around the world, but you can take your learning to a new level with our premium materials which include lesson guides, extra listening materials and exericses for each of our courses.

To receive your 25% discount, simply use the coupon code holidays09 (lower case) at checkout when you’re buying one of our courses. If you’ve not purchased an item from us before, you can view our full range of products here, or visit the appropriate store front for Coffee Break French, Coffee Break Spanish, Show Time Spanish, One Minute Languages, or School Run French. When you complete the form, make sure you enter holidays09 in the coupon code area at the bottom of the signup page.

Please note that the 25% reduction will be applied at checkout. EU customers should be aware that the prices quoted on our signup pages do not include VAT. If you use the coupon code then the 25% discount will be applied and then 17.5% VAT will be added to the total cost. It’s worth also pointing out that as of 1st January 2010, the VAT charges will have to increase to 17.5% in line with the Inland Revenue arrangements in the UK.

Please remember to use the coupon code as you’re purchasing: no refunds will be given on any materials purchased at full price if the coupon codes have not been used.

Would you like to purchase a gift membership? If so, please contact us at support@radiolingua.com and we’ll get things set up for you. Let us know what product you wish to buy and the email address of the recipient. We’ll process your payment and send the gift membership invitation in time for Christmas. Please note that the deadline for any Christmas gifts is 17 December.

New for 2010: the Radio Lingua Club. We’ve been listening to comments from our existing premium customers and one of the most common requests is for more help and advice for learning languages. We’ve decided therefore to create a ‘club’ around this. Membership to the club will last 12 months and during this time members will receive the following benefits:

1. Weekly podcasts in a brand new “how to learn a language” series featuring tips, tricks and advice on learning language. We’ll also be including interviews with language learners from all walks of life who will share their learning tips. The course will feature tips for beginners and for experienced learners and we’re sure that everyone will be able to benefit from this course, regardless of the language they are learning.
2. Reduced prices on all our content. Members will have access to a special discount rate for any purchases made within the membership period. At certain times we’ll also offer special discounts on certain products.
3. Refer-a-friend refunds. Members of the Radio Lingua club will be able to introduce a friend to Radio Lingua courses at a discounted rate, and receive an affiliate payment. So if you’re a Coffee Break Spanish Season Pass holder and you introduce your friend to the show and they purchase the show, you’ll receive a special payment from us to say thanks.

The Radio Lingua Club will involve a monthly payment of just £4.00 GBP. Alternatively you can purchase a twelve-month subscription for £36. The club will launch on January 1st 2010 with our first weekly language-learning tips podcast. We’re offering a special early-bird purchase offer where you can get 25% off the twelve-month subscription: for just £27 you will get access to a full year’s worth of podcasts, you’ll access the reduced prices throughout 2010, and you will be able to use the refer-a-friend refund too.

Please note that the Radio Lingua Club is no longer available, as of July 2011.

If 2009 has been a big year for Radio Lingua, we’re really excited about what’s coming in 2010! Our Coffee Break French listeners will be aware that we’re moving into lessons 71-80 of Coffee Break French, and we’re often asked about “what happens when Coffee Break French finishes?” Well, we’re busy planning new content for intermediate learners at the moment, and we’re sure that everyone will enjoy what will come after our existing course content.

This year we introduced our first experimental video show – Walk, Talk and Learn French. We were overwhelmed at the response to Walk, Talk and Learn, but as a small company we’ve been limited in terms of the time required to produce more shows. Fans of the show will be delighted to know that we’ve filmed a second series and are working on the content at the moment, ready for launch early in 2010.

We’re a couple of days away from releasing the last ever episode of Show Time Spanish, which has developed into one of our most popular shows. As we’ve explained to listeners, Show Time took an enormous amount of work to produce each episode and we feel that we can’t continue the show in its current format. However, we are sure that Show Time Spanish listeners won’t be disappointed with what we have planned for release in the new year. We’re working on new content which will continue to feature native-speaker conversations and in-depth study of the language. We can’t say too much now, but we’ll be making some announcements early in the New Year.

If you’re interested in languages other than French and Spanish then we’re very pleased to announce that 2010 will bring more content for Italian and German learners and that we’ll continue to increase our range of One Minute Languages.

Last, but by no means least, since September we’ve been working in conjunction with schools in the UK through Radio Lingua Schools, and we’ve been involved in several projects involving languages and creative technologies. In 2010 we’re going to be looking more at the resources side of Radio Lingua Schools and have started work on a major new course for children, due to be launched in August 2010.

Of course, as we’ve said many times, we’re still a small company and we’re doing our best to continue to produce high quality, engaging materials. We hope that 2010 will bring further opportunities for new projects, collaboration and new ideas!

Of course we have lots of ideas as to our new developments, but we’re really interested to hear about your ideas. To this end, we’re asking for 10 minutes of your time and we hope that you’ll be willing to share some of your thoughts about language-learning and your next steps as a learner.

We’ve devised a survey and would be very grateful if you would tell us a little about your language-learning and your experience using Radio Lingua materials. You can give as much or as little detail as you wish, but obviously it’s extremely useful to us if you can provide as much information as possible. There are different sections of the survey, depending on which language(s) you learn with Radio Lingua, and on whether you listen to the free content or use our premium materials. You’ll be guided through the survey and we’ll try to explain why we’re asking what we’re asking.

If you complete the survey you’ll be invited to enter a prize draw – there’s an iPod Touch up for grabs along with five platinum season passes to a language course of your choice!

To start taking the survey now, click here.

All that remains for us to do is to wish each and every one of our listeners and friends a very happy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous 2010.

We’re delighted to be joined once more by Alba in this special episode of Show Time Spanish. It’s the last ‘normal’ episode in the series: next week we’ll have the eighth and final instalment of Verano Español, so lesson 39 is the final ‘normal’ episode in the series. We find out what Alba has been doing since before the summer and Mark takes the opportunity to test listeners on some of the phrases learned earlier in the series.

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It’s that time of year again, and we’d like to say thank you to all our listeners! We’re offering a 35% reduction on all our Season Passes over this weekend. Until Monday 30th November you can buy any one of our courses, including Coffee Break Spanish, Coffee Break French or Show Time Spanish at a hugely reduced cost. Please use coupon code bf09 (lower case ‘b’ and ‘f’, then zero – nine) on the signup form.

If you’ve previously purchased a membership or product from us, log into your Control Panel and add the relevant product from the drop down menu. Enter bf09 in the “coupon code” box.

If you’ve not purchased an item from us before, you can view our full range of products here, or visit the appropriate store front for Coffee Break French, Coffee Break Spanish, Show Time Spanish, One Minute Languages, or School Run French. When you complete the form, make sure you enter bf09 in the coupon code area at the bottom of the signup page.

Please note that the 35% reduction will be applied at checkout.

EU customers should be aware that the prices quoted on our signup pages do not include VAT. If you use the coupon code bf09 then the 35% discount will be applied and then 17.5% VAT will be added to the total cost.

Please note that no refunds will be given on any materials purchased at full price during this time if the coupon codes have not been used.

In this episode Mark is joined by Sofía from Argentina and Ana Isabel from Ecuador. Language points discussed include the difference between si no and sino, using hace with a time phrase, and voseo, the use of vos in Rioplatense Spanish.

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This weekend (Friday 30th October – Sunday 1st November) the Radio Lingua team will be at the Language Show in London’s Olympia. We’ll be talking to language learners, answering questions, and offering visitors the chance to win a new iPod nano (the cool one with the video camera!) pre-loaded with a premium language course of your choice. There are free tickets available for the show from the official website and we’ll be among hundreds of companies and organisations involved in language learning who will be exhibiting.

Come along and chat with Mark from Coffee Break Spanish/French and Pierre-Benoît from Walk, Talk and Learn French. If you’re a teacher you can find out more about our education workshops and products through Radio Lingua Schools, and take advantage of our show offers (40% off any subscription when bought at the show). We’ll be tweeting from the show about interesting language-learners we meet, so make sure you’re following @radiolingua on Twitter if you can’t attend.

We’re at stand 33, to the left as you enter the main entrance. If you’re planning to come and say “bonjour”, “hola” or whatever other language you’ve been learning with us, do let us know by posting a comment below, and we’ll look out for you. There may even be an exclusive Radio Lingua free gift for you!

This week Mark returns with Loreto for the second of our Chilean episodes of Show Time Spanish. In episode 37 we learn a  bit more about Chilean culture and Loreto teaches Mark some Chilean expressions.

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¡Estamos de vuelta! It’s been a few weeks since our last episode of Show Time Spanish, and this has been the result of major server problems. We’ve completed a migration of all our content to new servers today, and we’re delighted to be back with a new episode of Show Time Spanish in which Mark is joined by Loreto, from Chile. In this first of two episodes with Loreto, we learn about the geography and culture of Chile.

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In this week’s show we’re returning to our telenovela, Verano Español. It’s the morning after the night before when Ángel arrived drunk at Iona’s party. Needless to say Laura’s dad isn’t very impressed with Ángel! Laura’s friend Fiona arrives from Scotland and the love triangle threatens to become a square! As usual, in Act II, Mark will help listeners understand the story by working through a series of questions and answers about what happens in this episode.

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