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By now you probably know that you can get little doses of a language you're studying through online services like Twitter. For example, as you saw in last month's newsletter, Living Language does two Twitter feeds, Spanish and French, with more languages likely to follow. If you're studying another language, you can of course search for feeds that would be of interest to you. Obviously, the content is limited, but at least it's exposure to the language, some new vocabulary, and probably a few good learning resources. Another online tool that could be made useful to the language learner, with just a little upfront prep work, is a calendar like the one offered by Yahoo! or Google. When you enter an event into the calendar, you have the option of sending yourself a reminder, via e-mail or text message (or both). A motivated language learner might look at these services as tools for custom vocabulary reminders or quizzes. You could take the vocabulary from the lesson that you're studying, enter it in as events on whatever days and at whatever times you'd like, and then have reminders sent to your e-mail or cell phone. You could be at your desk, working on that report, and suddenly get an e-mail that says die Kartoffel. You know it has something to do with food ... carrot? No, that's not it. Beet? No ... but it definitely grows underground. Potato! That's it. And just to double check, you entered the right answer as another event two minutes later, so you get another e-mail that confirms: potato. And that reminds you that it's time for lunch. Tags: calendar, Google, language learning, newsletter, Twitter, Yahoo
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