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Have you
ever noticed that when you talk to someone about studying a foreign
language, they invariably pop out that old piece of wisdom, "If
you want to really learn another language, you have to
go to the country where it's spoken." Well, the best way
to learn to dive is to become a Navy SEAL, but for most of us,
that's not necessarily the most convenient way to go about it!
Some
of the more popular (convenient!) methods used to tackle another
language are private tutors and those intensive "total immersion"
language classes. Both of these methods offer great potential
for results, but they have their drawbacks, too. Needless to say,
they're both very costly ways to learn, and there's little material
to go back to once the student is on his or her ow.
Another
method is to take language classes at a local college. Good luck.
Not really that expensive, the pace is so slow! If you're really
gung ho about learning your language, you'll find yourself slowed
down badly, since the class can't progress faster than the "slowest
commom denominators" in the class.
Finally,
there's the tried and true audio-cassette course, which, we feel,
is in many ways is the superior method from a financial and practical
point of view. Your cassette player becomes your own "private
tutor," available at your beck and call to tirelessly teach your
language to you with perfect native-speaker fluency. You can speak
along to perfect your accent, and you can go back and review the
material until you know it inside and out. Or you can play your
tapes in the background as you go about your daily routine, subconsciously
absorbing the rhythm of the language. Given
the superior results available from audio-cassette language courses,
it should come as no surprise to you that the business of providing
these courses is booming. And there's no shortage of audio-cassette
courses for the language student to choose from!
Interestingly
enough, one of the most prolific producers of foreign language
cassette courses in the world is the U.S. Government! This fact
may surprise you at first, but actually, it makes perfect sense.
Every year, Uncle Sam sends millions of people to every corner
of our globe, in all different capacities. The language proficiency
requirements of these folks range from the "just getting by" level,
all the way up to a very high degree of competence. The
Government produces its own courses to train these personnel,
and considering the fact that the U.S. Government spends whatever
needed to get the job done, little expense was spared in getting
these courses right the first time around!
If you've
already been shopping for an audio-cassette foreign language course,
you've undoubtedly noticed one thing right off. They're expensive!
As an example, you can expect to pay over $200 for a basic Pimsleur
or Sybervision course consisting of around 15 cassettes. Are they
worth the cost? Apparently so, since $15 to $20 per cassette is
pretty much the norm when it comes to audio cassette language
courses; and even NTIC charges $8 apiece for the Government courses-
and over $50 for the accompanying texts! And that's where we fit
in.
The
Language Warehouse offers the same exact courses produced by the
U.S. Government, but at a fraction of the price.
As a matter of fact, you will find nobody, anywhere, who offers
the "bang for the buck" that The Language Warehouse
offers. Wherever we can, we offer links from our course to the
U.S. Government page so that you can compare your savings.
One of
the primary differences between The Language Warehouse
and anything else you've seen, is in our texts. Providing books
with a language course costs money that any company would love
to avoid spending, if possible, and most try to handle this problem
in one of two ways. Some provide a small "bare bones"
pamphlet to accompany their courses. And some (especially with
the Government courses) reduce the original texts to such a small
size (again, to save costs) that you have to view them in "squint-o-vision."
We decided
to handle this text issue in a completely different way. We
offer all of our texts online! You can view and print our
texts out right from your computer screen. And the fact that we
offer the texts for all of our courses online means several major
benefits for you.
First
of all, our texts are free. That's right. Free.
They're all right here, available at the click of your mouse.
The only cost you will uncur is when and if you decide to purchase
the cassettes to accompany these texts.
The second
major benefit of being able to check out our texts online is that
you get an idea of what the course will
be like before you buy it. In the world of mail order and
making "sight unseen" purchases, we try to take the
edge off that "unseenness."
And finally,
since our texts are in a 100% electronic format, each and every
character has been individually digitized. What does this mean
to you? It means that "It don't get no better than this!"
You'll always get beautifully crisp,
clear texts that look even better than the originals!
So go
ahead and check out our texts. Print them out if you like. If
you decide that you want the cassettes to go along with them,
just give us a call at 1-386-672-7431
and we'll send them to you Priority Mail. You'll like the prices
on our cassettes, too.
And in
the event that you're not pleased with one of our courses, we
offer an unconditional 60-day money-back policy. Just send
it back for any reason and you'll receive a same-day credit.
Simple. Many companies, including the Government, have an "all
sales are *final*" policy. How's that for taking care of your
customer!
The bottom
line is that we love studying and learning foreign languages.
We have made it our goal to use the immense power of the internet
to make it easy and affordable for you to do the same!
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