Coffee Break Spanish uses a relaxed and non-threatening approach to introduce Spanish to learners around the world. Participants download and listen to a weekly 15-20 minute Spanish lesson during which teacher ‘Mark’ teaches student ‘Kara’. The podcasts are available free of charge and in essence work like a radio show teaching Spanish to adult learners.

Covering both Spanish and Latin American varieties of Spanish, the programmes give listeners access to the language needed to become confident in a range of situations commonly experienced by travellers. Listeners then interact with each other through a web-based forum to practise their new language skills.

The concept of podcasting allows students from as far away as China and Australia and the UK to learn together and feedback to the producers to affect the future content of the podcasts. Since the launch of the series there has been in excess of 4.5 million downloads of the show, and coffee break Spanish has been in the top three educational podcasts in the UK, the USA and Canada on itunes.

Language(s): Spanish

Radio Lingua Ltd is a small company based in the West of Scotland set up to manage the podcast. The success of Coffee Break Spanish across the world shows that podcasting can promote language awareness and competence regardless of geographical location.