Originally posted November 11, 2012
 
 
I started thinking about this post today when I decided to play hooky from work on this sunny Seattle afternoon – a rare phenomenon – and turn on some music in my backyard for myself and my young daughter (don’t tell my boss). I wanted to hear some French music and reminisce about my summer in France, so I returned to TuneIn Radio; an online radio station that offers innumerable languages, topics of interest, and music from around the world to anyone who has an internet connection and speakers. Check out this blog post for ways to use this resource for your language learning. Happy learning!
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My French has been getting pretty rusty of late,…  read more

It’s time for more fun with idioms!
There are a handful of English idioms that use words and terminology from the world of food; most of which have nothing to do with gastronomy or comestibles in any way. If you regularly read this blog, you have certainly come across one or more of the following sayings before. Here is what we were meaning by them.

 
We can start with the egg category:
To have egg on one’s face

Conspicuous embarrassment caused by one’s own indiscretion or faux pas.

To lay an egg

To fail wretchedly.

To walk on eggs

To act with extreme caution.

 
Eat your words
To accept publicly that you were wrong about something you said.

Hard to swallow
If something that someone says is hard to swallow, it is difficult to…  read more

Guest post by Miranda González

I still remember a time in high school when our Spanish teacher popped in a video of a Spanish version of Blue’s Clues (an American children’s television show) during class. We all rolled our eyes, half of us feeling like our intelligence had been insulted and the other half annoyed, thinking that our teacher had been too lazy to plan a lesson for that day. But as the little blue dog moved across the screen and the show’s host asked us questions, I realized that I wasn’t straining to understand what was going on; in fact, you could say that I was a master of preschool-level Spanish!

Later, and perhaps to prove a point, our teacher…  read more

If you are a Livemocha community member, you will agree that our community is one of the most important aspects of what we do. And because of that, we want you to know that we are here to help, support, and encourage your language-learning journey.

There is a lot of talk in our social media channels about the upcoming changes to Livemocha, which will be fully released this summer. Some of what is being said is true: some, not so much. What is wholly true, however, is that you, our community, are passionate about our product and love what we have been doing. (Thank you!) That’s why we invited you to contact us directly, and ask that you continue to…  read more

Guest post by Luke Rudge

Let’s set the scene: you’ve been studying a language for a few years now. You’ve got all the books to teach yourself, several dictionaries – including that one completely in the target language – and enough written resources to make even the most hardened of grammarians do a double-take. You eat, sleep and breathe the language you are learning, and your proficiency exams are a walk in the park!

Now let’s take you out to a country where, luckily, there just so happens to be a large proportion of people speaking that language you’ve been learning. But what’s this? Native speakers are having a hard time understanding your tone and you can’t quite pick up the…  read more

We shared this article on our Facebook page challenging our English language learners to read the following poem aloud. The article starts like this:

“If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

“After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.”

What do you think? Can you do it?
Many people on Facebook took the challenge and succeeded, but many others in the community said that it would be helpful to hear the pronunciations spoken. So, here’s the challenge for you:

Read the poem aloud.
Then, listen to the video below while re-reading it to see how you…  read more

Gemütlich – what?!
When I was in Germany, I picked up a few words. The one that has always stuck with me, though, has been Gemütlichkeit, which has no real translation in English, but means a situation that induces a cheerful mood, peace of mind, with connotation of belonging and social acceptance, coziness and unhurry.

In preparation for a long weekend here in the States, I posted an iconic (albeit a wacky representation of a hair-sprayed era gone by) song on Facebook that inspires Gemütlichkeit in me. I then asked our community if there were iconic song in your language that made them think of spending time with friends and family.

Here’s what they shared.

Enjoy!

 
Let’s start with Madonna’s Holiday (My guilty-pleasure-music pick)

 
Milton Nascimento – “Canção da América”

 
Håkan Hellström -…  read more

There have been lots of questions so far about the new Livemocha experience – and we’re so thrilled you guys are asking! We’re steadily adding new features and lessons that will engage and support your language journey and we can’t wait to share.

 
Coming soon to the new Livemocha
Chat
You will be able to communicate with native speakers in both guided audio chats and open-ended text conversations with your language exchange partners.

Language Exchange

How does it work?

You can practice native speakers in a back and fourth audio dialogue based on a short conversation guide in your lesson
You can elect to be a helper, which means learners will be able to invite you to be a chat partner and you can help…  read more

Originally posted on July 13, 2012

By Miranda González

As a teacher for LiveEnglish with Livemocha on Facebook, I usually like to start my class with a warm-up question like “What do you like to do in the summer?” or “If you had a million dollars, what would you buy?”

These warm-up questions serve two purposes:
1) Students get a chance to practice their writing and
2) They get to share their interests with people from all over the world.
These LiveEnglish students come from distinct nations and speak many different languages, but they make a lot of the same mistakes when writing in English.  How can this be?  English is tricky, and some parts are trickier than others, so to help you out, I’ve compiled…  read more

Guest post by Luke Rudge

If you’ve ever learned a language, or are in the process of doing so, then chances are that you’ve been subject to learning the perils of a little thing known as grammatical gender. Native speakers of a gendered language make it look easy, but for non-native learners, especially if English is your Mother Tongue, then the challenge begins! You are dropped into the middle of a sea without any apparent rules, until you reach a land where everything and anything seems to come with a set of XX or XY chromosomes.

Stay strong! It is possible to conquer the apparent mountain of mass confusion that is grammatical gender, and this post aims to give you a little more…  read more