This month, in addition to launching our third product English Eruption to complement Mandarin Madness and Spanish Smash, we’re excited to officially announce that we are 10,000 downloads strong!

Want to: (1) learn Mandarin Chinese; (2) learn Spanish; and/or (3) learn English? Now you can, and by downloading our language-learning apps, you will be contributing to the achievement of our next milestone!

Want to learn Japanese or Italian? Keep checking back because we are launching these new products over the next few weeks!

As always, we want to thank all the people who have supported us, assisted us and provided valuable feedback as we went from winning Australia’s first Startup Weekend to exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, to coordinating the launch of multiple product lines so that we can achieve our vision of making language learning as fun, fast and effective as possible.

For those who are currently learning Spanish, Mandarin and English, and have been playing Spanish Smash, Mandarin Madness and/or English Eruption as a companion tool to rapidly learn Spanish, Mandarin and English vocabulary, we would love to hear from you! Just email us at hello@nativetongue.com and let us know what works, what doesn’t work and what you would like to see included in the game!

Arlington Memorial High School is a comprehensive, four-year public school enrolling 114 students in grades 9-12 with an additional 75 students in Arlington Middle School (grades 6-8). The school graduated its first class in 1925, and 31 students graduated in 2010. AMHS is accredited by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges.

Cheryl Cornwell

Tell us a little bit about yourself

I graduated from Bennington College in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Chinese and from The Ohio State University in 2007 with a master’s degree in Chinese.

I have been teaching in Arlington for the past two and a half years. Prior to that, I was a TA at Ohio State and a FLAS fellowship recipient for Chinese.

I speak Mandarin and English and I am in the process of learning Spanish with the hope of becoming a Spanish teacher as well. I have always been a passionate learner of languages and have studied French, German, and a bit of Japanese over the years.

Tell us about Arlington Memorial Middle and High School and what languages are available

Currently Arlington Memorial Middle and High School offers Chinese, Spanish, French, and Latin. We are a small school that serves students in grades 6-12. Despite our small size and rural location, our faculty and administration believe strongly in developing 21st century skills in all of our students.

Language and technology are woven together in our curriculum which means that each language teacher has a Smart Board in her classroom and has taken classes on how to integrate technology into the classroom effectively.

What tools are used at your Arlington Memorial Middle and High School and what have you found to be most effective?

As I mentioned above, language and technology are woven together in our curriculum which means that each language teacher has access to both digital and print materials. Students are expected to utilize blogs, wikis, PowerPoint, Photo story, Voki, and other online resources to complete homework and engage in real life learning exercises.

Homework assignments are authentic and engaging and encourage students to use language in meaningful ways. We also have videoconferencing equipment that we use to connect with students and organizations around the United States. Currently we are working on communicating with our partner school in China via videoconferencing technology.

What are the biggest barriers to learning a language?

In rural Vermont, access to native speakers of Chinese is very difficult. Therefore, it falls on teachers to make learning meaningful to students and parents. We currently offer a trip to China via EF Tours, trips to NYC to China Town and other trips to areas where Chinese is used.

Students have the chance to see what career opportunities are available to them and we hope to soon add AP Chinese to our curriculum.

In an area like Vermont, we really have to work to show students all of the wonderful opportunities they will have to learn and use their Chinese in the future.

A recent graduate of AMHS is currently in China teaching English and putting his Chinese skills to use.

What are the future trends in language education?

I believe that language education will continue to emphasize authentic learning experiences over rote memorization and grammar exercises. Performance based pedagogy, which emphasizes the connection between culture and language, has raised the stakes and is challenging teachers to teach students how to communicate with native speakers in meaningful and appropriate ways.

I also believe that Chinese will become more common in schools and will grow stronger as a result of more qualified teachers and programs throughout the United States. We were awarded a Confucius Classroom grant in 2010 and we have seen our program grow as a result. We have more access to resources and professional development and students are reaping the benefits of our efforts.

This week, the team brings you English Eruption, the English version of Spanish Smash and Mandarin Madness, to make it even easier for everyone to learn English vocabulary.

Available on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, English Eruption follows its predecessors by combining addictive gameplay with language learning to make your experience of learning a language an enjoyable one.

English Eruption also features original artwork and music from the creative team at Native Tongue. For a limited time, we’re giving away our apps at $1.99 so get English Eruption quickly before the price rises.

Got an idea that would make English Eruption even better? Let us know by emailing us at hello@nativetongue.com and we’ll see what we can do.

With French, Japanese and Italian products coming soon, we’re shooting for 50,000 sessions and then the big 100,000! Want to learn Mandarin, Spanish, French, Japanese or Italian? Keep checking back because we are launching these new products over the next few weeks!

We just wanted to take a moment to thank all the people who have supported us, assisted us and provided valuable feedback  as we went from winning Australia’s first Startup Weekend to exhibiting at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing, to coordinating the launch of multiple product lines so that we can achieve our vision of making language learning as fun, fast and effective as possible.

It has been a fantastic adventure so far and we can’t wait to achieve many more milestones and solve the challenges ahead.

Thank-you.

P.S. For those who are currently learning Spanish and Mandarin, and have been playing Spanish Smash and Mandarin Madness as a companion tool to rapidly learn Spanish and Mandarin vocabulary, we would love to hear from you! Just email us at hello@nativetongue.com and let us know what works, what doesn’t work and what you would like to see included in the game!

Fourteen days ago, the team announced the launch of Spanish Smash for Android devices. Today, the team is proud to announce the launch of Spanish Smash, for those who want to learn Spanish, on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Kindle Fire devices.

As always, we love your feedback so just shoot us an email at hello@nativetongue.com if you have any suggestions on what you think works, what doesn’t work, what you think we can do better and what you would love to see included in future releases of the app!

Spanish Smash is also currently available on Android Market.

Soon-after the team behind Native Tongue launched its first language-learning game Mandarin Madness for Android, iPhone and iPad devices, the team have quickly followed suit with their latest offering, Spanish Smash - for all you I-want-to-speak-Spanish enthusiasts - to make the acquisition of Spanish vocabulary fast, fun and effective.

We are especially proud of the music so once you have download the app, sit back and listen to our original soundtrack and bask in the Spanish-inspired music and let the waves of Spanish inspiration wash over you; right before you click the play button and experience the adventure that only gets more hectic!

As always, we love your feedback so just shoot us an email at hello@nativetongue.com if you have any suggestions on what you think works, what doesn’t work, what you think we can do better and what you would love to see included in future releases of the app!

Spanish Smash is currently available on Android Market. The iPhone and iPad versions are coming soon.

Until next time…

Hasta pronto amigos!

12 days ago, Native Tongue’s first language-learning game Mandarin Madness rocketed past 5,000 downloads; far surpassing the team’s expectations and smashing through projected goals.

As the team releases its second language-learning game Spanish Smash this week, we’re excited and even more determined to create an entire suite of language-learning games by the end of next month. Which languages? We’re not going to reveal yet but we do have some big plans up our sleeves. If you visit our the official Native Tongue Facebook page you might even get a sneak peak as to what we have in the pipeline.

On top of this, we’re ecstatic that the secret sauce in our language-learning games are showing effectiveness and rapid vocabulary acquisition rates. While we suspected this all along, it is nice to have our hypothesis confirmed. P.S. Watching children argue over who gets to play Mandarin Madness next delighted the team at the office to no end… should we be worried?

From our recent reviews and editors’ picks:

5/5 stars: Mandarin Madness is anything but madness. It’s quite logical and teaches a very complex language using a fun process. It pairs repetition (a staple for learning) of written symbols with clearly pronounced syllables to learn basic Mandarin. Highly recommended for novice language learners. – Famigo

4.5/5 stars: Mandarin Madness manages to look gorgeous, despite the educational subject matter. The graphics are superb, offering backgrounds the evoke popular thoughts of China. Not to mention the cards, which offer top-notch illustrations themselves. It is an unbeatable value for the language learner with no previous experience in Mandarin. Mandarin Madness is a must-have for the Android-owner looking to learn a foreign language on the go. From the ground-up, the experience is on-par or better than Byki or Rosetta Stone, and we can’t applaud it enough. – Android Apps Review

4/5 stars: I discovered that the learning method in this app seems to be highly effective. I also found that it was engaging, pleasant, and mostly fun. Mandarin Madness is a gem of a learning application, with a  great concept for combining education and gaming fun. I found myself learning Mandarin Chinese rather quickly. – Crazy Mike’s Apps

Thank-you everyone for your support and great feedback so far. The entire team can’t wait to see what challenges await and with the release of Spanish Smash this week, believes it will be speaking Spanish in no time.

Every now and then, a great app comes along that changes the way you do things, and and we think that great app might be Mandarin Madness; an app that changes the way you learn Mandarin Madness by making it fun and painless!

The Native Tongue team is super excited to announce that we are one step closer to our goal of making language learning fun and painless with the launch of Mandarin Madness on App Store for all iOS devices including the iPhone and iPad.

The iOS version joins the Android version already available on Android Market and Amazon Marketplace.

If learning Mandarin Madness was on your new year’s resolutions list this year, give Mandarin Madness a shot and get started today.

Mandarin Madness visits the Great Wall of China

Matt and Kym display Mandarin Madness at the Great Wall of China

Now there are even more ways for citizens of the world to download Mandarin Madness, to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in the context of a fun, fast-paced game.

The next release? iOS for all your iPhone aficionados. Until then!

Matt, Riley and Allen discuss Mandarin Madness at Matt's new digs

Our successes would not have been possible however without the support of our creative team: Antonia Follano, Gemma Golland, Kacey Boxall, Alice Jin and Simon Villani. As we gear up for the official launch for iOS devices, we are consolidating all works and the creative genius of  the creative team will feature prominently throughout Mandarin Madness. (For those who cannot wait… Mandarin Madness can be downloaded now from Android Market.)

Hacking James' laptop: Replacing his wallpaper with Matt

From winning Startup Weekend Australia to launching at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing to moving into our first office space after months of working out of cafes to officially launching Mandarin Madness LITE on Android Marketplace and the subsequent full version, the entire team stands chuffed at hitting our milestones in quick succession: 100 downloads, 200 downloads, 500 downloads, 1,000 downloads, and finally 2,000 downloads.

It’s 2012 now and the entire team are fresh, energized and ready to kick butt. Here’s to a rocking 2012 and beyond.

James and Riley enjoy a beer after a week of scrambling together a prototype

Working out of Inspire9

Working out of Inspire9 (part II)

Tyson from TaskWant shows the team how to perform the perfect head-book-balance

Matt tries his hand at the delicate book-head-balance

Taking over Inspire9's collaborative consumption corner

Matt hard at work whilst we trial a potential new office space

Matt on the plane… ready for departure to TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing