Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

It's hard to believe another year has passed already. It's been another big year for Linguisticator. We've launched new courses, improved old ones, developed new projects, and switched all our programs onto a new platform.

In 2015, we started by switching all our courses onto a new platform, run by Teachable, which has cut down our online administration and made the courses more easily accessible to users around the globe. Videos play better and are easier to access from multiple devices. Switching literally thousands of video and audio files over to the new platform was no small task in terms of organization, but I'm pleased it's so far proved worth the risk.

Next, we launched our Memory Course, which is now such a foundational component of all our language courses. It makes the complexities of our language maps accessible and manageable without require years of drilling or expertise as a linguist. This has been a huge success for us, and the feedback from users has been heartwarmingly positive and encouraging.

Spring was dedicated to working on Arabic, the single largest project I have ever had the pleasure of working on. But first, we launched another important course that facilitates learning a language online: Time Management for Language Learning. This free course explores the meaning of fluency - and the different types of “fluencies” - and how understanding this can help us create objective-driven language training. Knowing what you want to do in a language first should shape what and how you learn.

In the summer, we launched our full program and map for MSA. What a beast! A real groundbreaker, as there are far fewer resources available for Arabic than for our other languages. For advanced study of Arabic, you are usually confined to university or private tuition - our online program covers all the complexities of Arabic grammar that typically take years to complete. The visualization of the verbal system is particularly compelling, as it can otherwise be overwhelmingly difficult to understand how all the pieces come together.

Late summer we launched our Castilian Spanish map. While we don't yet have all the instructional videos and audio materials for Castilian as opposed to Latin American Spanish, we do have a complete map available from our online store.

Around the same time, we switched our English language program, ELT Tiger, onto its own Teachable platform, organized by native language of those learning English.

Finally, we took all the feedback from the previous year of running our courses and worked it back into each, making significant additions and improvements to our French, German, Spanish, and Italian programs.

In October, we exhibited at the Language Show Live in London, where we were overwhelmed with the excitement and enthusiasm of our visitors. A few very long and exhausting days left us hoarse and tired, but inwardly excited and recharged. We made a lot of new connections and friends in those days.

In addition to all this, we have been working on the materials for new languages and another exciting project or two…

So, what's on the docket for 2016? Well, we'll soon be announcing an exciting collaboration with Cambridge University, so that's one thing. We'll be working to finish up programs for new languages, like Russian, Farsi, and Portuguese, which are all fully drafted. We'll also be adding significantly more to this blog, so stay tuned!

Finally, I'd like to welcome onboard two new members of the Linguisticator team: Harriet Cook, who will be helping with company administration and marketing, and Dr Euvian Tan, who will be coordinating a series of events over the coming months. Harriet graduated with a first in French and Spanish from Cambridge, then did her masters at Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where she was top of her class. Needless to say, she is very bright! Euvian is an old friend from Wolfson College, Cambridge. Euvian's background is in science, holding a PhD in Biotechnology from Cambridge. For the last several years, however, she has been working in business in London. She's left her consulting position to pursue work of greater personal interest, including in education. I've asked her to come onboard to help us get better known both in educational communities in the UK, as well as among corporate entities in London.

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