A great resource to practice your foreign language learning is online news, especially in a time like right now when many of us are glued to the tv and internet because of the terrible tragedy caused by the tsunamis in Asia. A good source for multilingual news is the BBC - you can choose your language or region's homepage here.

One of the things we are going to be looking at here at eLanguages.info is how people learn best online, and what people seem to enjoy the most. There have been some pretty big failures in online language learning, most notably the folks over at Parlo - who if I recall correctly had some pretty impressive dot.com capital behind them when they launched. Now they are probably lucky to get 3000 unique visitors a day - Alexa has them ranked at 207,200. Not bad if you are a small web entrepeneur like me, but pretty awful if you aimed to be a serious portal 5 years ago. They've also scrapped their formerly aggressive affiliate program, telling me that Parlo is in the tank.

I am not sure exactly how they were/are structured - probably worth taking a look at. Some might say that language learning just hasn't come into its own online - but I have 4500 ezine subscribers to my weekly Spanish teaching newsletter who I think would say differently. It seems that a combination of guided study and self tutoring works best - but I wonder if perhaps you could ramp it up a bit by requiring homework, etc. Not necessarily as structured as a class, but not as loose as an ezine you can take or leave each week.

We'll be looking at what programs are the most effective, in order to build our own offerings with these lessons in mind. A friend of mine in Atlanta named Ricardo Gonzalez has a company called Bilingual America, and he swears by phone tutoring as the single most effective way to teach a foreign language. I'll be putting up a poll shortly so that visitors can have a chance to give us some feedback. If you have any thoughts, give us a shout via the comments bar. Sorry the site is still so empty, but with the holidays and all it's hard to find time to put up all the content!

We will be doing lists of the top 5 websites for learning languages - everything from audio & mp3 downloads, to free quizzes and worksheets, blogs, and even chat. Believe it or not there is a lot of FREE stuff online - it's a language learner's paradise! Not to mention all of the great travel information. Our website is still under development, so check back with us and make sure to email us with any good links.

Thanks for visiting eLanguages.info - we are hoping to build a fantastic site with everything from free language learning articles and lessons to the best products you can buy for you & your family.