Tutorial Transcript

Hello and welcome to the France Show 2018. Today, I have the honour to be with Mark. Hello Mark. / Hello. And I would like to know, Mark, the reason why you are here at the France Show today. So, every year, we come to the France Show to speak with people, to get to know people and to share our enthusiasm for the French language and for learning French. But what is the company called? The company, let’s say the company is called Radio Lingua. But our product, our French course is called Coffee Break, Coffee Break French. Well, I know Coffee Break very well, because you are, you were podcaster… And, still, still [are]… And when did you start? So, we started with Coffee Break Spanish in fact, in 2006, at the start of podcasting. So the podcast, it was [all really started] in 2005. So we started with only Coffee Break Spanish, and then with Coffee Break French in 2008. And tell me, how does it work, then, your lessons? How… Is it necessary to subscribe to your lessons? How… how do you sell your lessons? So there is already the podcast, and the podcast can be downloaded for free from the Internet, from our Web page and of course, from iTunes or Apple podcasts or whatever. And then, there is a whole range of audio series that can be downloaded for free. However, there is also a course. The course is audio content, video content, text, document content and so, with the course, one can go further, let’s say. So, it is…this… this helps you learn French more in depth. And in these lessons, do you give live sessions? How… How does it work? How in fact do you manage to track the progress of your pupils? So, we track the progress of our pupils with, for example, our Facebook page and also, with all the social media such as Twitter, such as Instagram and so on. But, for the pupils, they can share their progress on our site. So, if they are members, if they have bought the Premium version of the course, they can download that, they can use our site and post comments, use the chat features in the system and so, with that, we can speak with our students, and our students can ask questions for example in our system. It is a very good system. I have a personal question. How is it that you are speaking French so well? Well, I don’t know exactly. That is, I studied French at university. Your accent is very very good. That’s kind of you. I also spent a year as an English assistant in a very beautiful town, a town called Menton in the South-East of France, near the Italian border. And then, I spent quite some time in France. I am, let’s say, surrounded by French people because we work every day with the French. Was there… Were you working as a teacher before Coffee Break? Before setting up your own business, company? What was your job? So, that’s correct. I was a teacher in various… various schools in Scotland. And then, yes, I spent four years in a school, and then, then eight years working in different schools on projects with new technologies and languages. And so, it is then that I started thinking about the possibilities of podcasting to promote learning and to spread enthusiasm for this way of learning languages. “And the rest is history” as they say. “Le reste c’est l’histoire”, no, I don’t know if we can translate this idiom. Anyway. So, thank you very much Mark. In fact, I am very happy to have spoken with you because I know Coffee Break very, very well, and I know that you have millions and millions and millions of downloads on podcast. That’s it. In fact, it is more or less like 7 million downloads every month. So, and we also have Spanish, Italian, German and Chinese. That’s incredible. Thank you so much. Goodbye Mark. Thank you, goodbye and all the best. If you want to know a little more about Coffee Break, of course, it is CoffeeBreakFrench.com, and that’s it. CoffeeBreakFrench.com. That's it for me, goodbye, see you soon, kiss kiss.