Happy New Year! I hope 2012 will be as exciting for you as it is set to be for earworms. The news here is that we have just ended 2011 on a high by winning the Small to Medium Sized Business Award at the International Trade Awards 2011.

We set out to develop a better way for people to learn languages, winning business awards was the last thing on our minds. But in December there we were at the House of Lords receiving our award from Lord Green, Minister of Trade.

earworms language learning receives UKTI award

Receiving the award was an amazing experience, and the time and effort we have put in to developing our language courses felt more worthwhile than ever.

One of the reasons I was so thrilled by the award is because it shows the level of support for our rapid language courses. It proves that lots of people agree with us that language learning should be fun and natural.

We also know our method works – in classroom vocab tests, 90% of the class remembered using the musical method, compared with only 40-50% working from a book.

The award was also about export success, and we sell our language courses around the world. To quote one of the judges: “Despite turmoil in global markets and the credit crunch, excellent companies, such as earworms, continue to show the country, the media and our political masters that UK business and industry are still world-beaters in many fields.” 

Our apps have been a success too – look out for earworms in the Apple and Android app store.

It’s a great boost as we head into 2012 with ambitious plans. We’re also extending the range of courses, including some for schools. Imagine how much more fun school would have been if you could learn languages to hip hop. Well that’s what we’ve got planned.

When I was living as a student of Russian in southern Russia for six months, I really wished I had a better accent -  my trip would have been so much cheaper! Earworms didn’t exist back then, but if it had, I’m sure my accent would have been much better! As soon as a foreign accent is detected, the price of, for example, fruit on a market store, goes way above even the Western prices we are used to paying.

I was staying there with a Finnish friend who had a much better talent for accents than me and we used to get her to do all the talking so our food bill for the week would be significantly less! The same particularly applied to the clothing stalls where an accent would double the price. It’s very hard to get hold of native speakers when you’re learning rather obscure foreign languages like Russian, so having an Earworms app, where a native speaker “speaks” to you constantly, does wonders for your accent.

There were many occasions when I wished I’d had a better accent, but one in particular sticks out – when we went to a restaurant with live music. As soon as they detected a foreign accent, we were given a different menu which was much more expensive. At the end, we were charged several pounds each for the live entertainment, which we refused to pay on the grounds that we weren’t warned we would have to pay – and the musicians were miming anyway! The management didn’t take kindly to this and shortly after leaving the premises, mafia types with large dogs and guns gave chase! Needless to say, we didn’t get very far and quickly gave them the money they wanted.

Just days before this incident, the vice-president of the university I was teaching at had been shot dead in front of his children, supposedly by the families of some children from breakaway states who had not been granted places at the university. So we decided not to put up a fight. The moral of the story is that – being able to hide the fact you are foreign can save you so much money and might save you from a sticky situation!

“Life was very different for teenagers back in the nineteen thirties and forties.” 

If ever an inkling of doubt about the veracity of that statement raises its head, I just have to spend a couple of hours with my Dad.  At the age of fourteen he left his small Scottish coastal village, (where everyone knew not only everyone else, but everyone else’s cousins, aunts, uncles and all their dogs as well), and took the “Paddy” to London.  The “Paddy” was aptly named, being the steam train that picked up mainly Irish workers from the nearby ferry ports and spirited them off into the “Big Smoke” of London, there to put their hands to pretty much anything that paid enough to send back to their families, (after lodgings and a stout or three were taken care of).

However, the long journey south to the clickety-clackety Irish Jig of the “Paddy” was, for Dad, just the first step of many as he joined up to take his chances on the High Seas, where, instead of a Nintendo Wii or a Blackberry for his fifteenth birthday, he got to harpoon whales in the South Atlantic.  Okay, okay, I know it’s not a very eco-friendly thing to do, but at least the whale had a fighting chance in those days.

Having “seen that, done that, got the bag of whales teeth”, it was on and off merchant ships at exotic, (and some not so exotic), foreign ports, all the while harvesting and storing up memories that he would, years later, enthral us open-mouthed, snotty-nosed kids with.  Like how, in some Spanish seaport – the name of which I can’t for the life of me recall – he and his shipmates casually asked the Spanish stevedores if they could have “a couple of them oranges”, crates of which were stacked as far as the eye could see and almost as high, only to be told “no, no, and hush, the Generalissimo has ears everywhere”.  No sun, sand, sangria or free oranges here, just the uncomfortable murmur of how it must have felt to live under the dubious shelter of a Fascist regime.

Anyway, I digress, (just as Dad does even now when telling his tales).  What he always found remarkable was how some of his crewmates seemed to have no great difficulty in communicating with the dockers and port-labourers of these far-flung, (and not so far-flung but still very foreign), ports and parts.  For example, apparently Gaelic – which many of the crew could speak, given that a disproportionate number of them hailed from the Western Isles of Scotland and, incidentally, were all, (according to Dad), called, “McLeod” – had, and still has, I guess, much in common with Dutch.  Oops, there I go, digressing again.  Must be hereditary.

One of the most amusing recollections in this rich vein was the tale of when, again in some Spanish port, one of Dad’s young shipmates decided that, as the taste of fresh duck had become something of a distant memory, he would purchase one of the unfortunate birds from a port vendor who had plenty of them, all squashed into a rather rickety cage like Japanese commuters into a rush-hour train.  Now, not wishing to appear stupid in front of the vendor or his peers, young McLeod – okay, I’m guessing his name – sought out any of his crewmates who could speak Spanish and would oblige by conducting the business on his behalf.  Step forward one of the old hands, (in reality, probably in his mid-twenties), who was quite matter-of-fact in his claim to have mastered the predominant tongue of the Iberian Peninsula and much of South America.

“Ask him how much first”, was the prospective purchasers opening request for translation.  The gathered crew fell silent as the ships premier linguist cleared his throat and spoke the now, (in my family, anyway), immortal words:

“Quanta costa quack-quacks wi’ the flat feet?” 

Young McLeod got his duck, though.  Adapt, adopt, communicate, eh?

Donald Farrell

I was amazed to discover an unexpected bonus whilst listening to my German Earworms app at the weekend. My children started speaking English in proper sentences!

I was ill and lying on the settee in the living room while my husband played with my twin sons Daniel and Joseph. My German Earwoms app was running in the background. I knew I was going to have to ring Germany for work this week and wanted to get into “German mode”.

Joseph was really enjoying the music and dancing. But after about 20 minutes, Daniel, who has been a bit behind with his speaking (prefering to use “me” to “I”, eg “me want a drink”) started saying “I would like a coffee with milk” and “I would like to go to the city centre”!

I was amazed! Soon Joseph was joining in. The improvement in their speech was astounding. Not only that, my husband was also picking up German! No one was deliberately concentrating on the Earworms app – they were all preoccupied with playing. Yet they seemed to be taking so much in subconsciously.

Perhaps we should make an app for toddlers and young children to help them speak English!!

Alex Seber

The Music, Mind and Brain group at Goldsmiths, within the psychology department of the London college, is investigating the concept of the ‘musical mind’ and its influence on language learning and memory.

A DJ on Radio BBC 6 has long been intrigued by the idea of earworms – tunes that get stuck in your head – and for some time he has been asking listeners to send in their nominations for most persistent. 

Vicky Williamson at Goldsmiths has been analysing this data to identify what causes earworms and the difference between and the relative impact of intrinsic and extrinsic triggers. Intrinsic triggers are those within the music itself, such as the melody or the rhythm, and extrinsic triggers are those caused by the environment such as the mention of lyrics, the sight of an artist or repeated playing on the radio.

The objective is to understand the science behind the earworms and ways in which the science can be used to make information more ‘sticky’ to aid learning, memory and recall of information.

In one study, Goldsmiths compared tracks – of the same music genre, date and given the same airplay – for the features that make some songs ‘sticky’. It has determined 4 musical features that make songs stick, with a prediction accuracy rate of 72%.  Further work rerunning the model has increased this to 80%.  Watch out Simon Cowell!

They are also investigating the triggers which stimulate an earworm. Goldsmiths have analysed over 1000 reports of earworms and categorised the triggers. The most common were: recent or repeated exposure such as ‘heard it on the radio’; recollection or association with something such as a phrase or visual clue; affective state or mood i.e. romantic, happy, sad; an emotional state e.g. triggered by stress; and finally altered mind which could be bored or a day dream.

Most interesting for language learning is the association, the prompt which triggers recollection of a word or phrase.

Myself I have a skiing earworm.  When looking down a steep slope that looks as though it is covered in ice, I stop myself going ‘oh no I can’t do this’ by humming a song that makes me relax, this year it was a Beach Boys number.

It comes spontaneously without conscious effort rather like ‘Ich möchte’ which is the only bit of German I know.  It is in the first section of the earworms ‘Rapid German CD’ which I listened to for all of 5 minutes before leaving for the slopes. It is a phrase that when accompanied by a hello, and a smile, has come in really useful when ordering in mountain restaurants and usually pops on to my tongue without effort. Now that is a really useful earworm!

So there I am, sitting at a pleasantly-rustic table in one of our favourite eateries in Cyprus, having asked for “a table for two” in my best recently-acquired Greek.

I was pretty confident, let me tell you, (although I had pointed to a “table for two” to ensure no dubiety).  Hadn’t I soaked myself – consciously and subconsciously, and was game to go for “unconsciously” if I’d thought it would help – in earworms “Greek Volume 1” for the previous three weeks?  Yes, confidence was high, and I felt ready to discuss philosophy with the great (to the power of 78) grandson of Socrates, if he happened to frequent this quaint and authentic Cypriot taverna.  “Bring him on”, I thought.  “I’ll give you, ‘Be as you wish to seem’, young Socrates junior, m’lad”.

As it was, however, I would have to settle for deeply impressing my long-suffering spouse by engaging the smart and attentive waiter – hovering nearby like some kind of smartly-attired hummingbird – in casual banter and repartee, all in fluent Greek, of course.  His opening gambit was the tried and tested, “Something to drink, sir?”

“This is way too easy”, thought I, clearing my throat and grandly announcing that my wife and I would have a carafe of dry white wine, savouring each syllable almost as much as I anticipated savouring the wine itself.

Well, the waiter could not possibly have furrowed his brow any deeper had he driven a Massey Ferguson dragging a particularly efficient six-tine plough over his forehead, and the quizzical expression he pulled would have made Jeremy Paxman on Question Time look like a favoured and gentle old uncle enquiring how much pocket-money your Dad gave you.

By this time I was more than aware of the other, thankfully few-in-number, patrons stifling sniggers and donning their best, “No-one likes a smarta*se”, expressions.  Something had to be done, and done quickly.  Unfortunately, the best I could come up with at short notice and under increasing pressure was to rather haplessly repeat what I had already said, and, just for good measure, inexplicably applied even more volume than the first time.  Not for the first time in my life my erstwhile missus came to my rescue, ordering in English whilst simultaneously shooting daggers at me and smiling at the grinning waiter.  (How do women do that?)

From the corner of my eye I thought that I saw a crack appearing in the floor, but unfortunately it was a figment of my imagination, so no escape that way.  No, manly pride dictated that I forge ahead, and this standpoint was bolstered by the carafe of wine which duly appeared, (and, I admit, the other two which joined it during the evening).

So, what had been my downfall?  Why did I have to spend the evening tentatively testing the waiter with the odd Greek-ism, instead of regaling him in grand style?  And what kind of idiot orders a Cypriot Meze – twenty-odd dishes – thus ensuring that the evening on which his linguistic skills publically crash and burn will be one of the longest ever spent over one meal?

I’ll tell you what kind of idiot … the kind who can’t tell a Greek Cypriot waiter from one who has freshly arrived from Bulgaria.

Donald Farrell

A few years ago I had to move to Morocco due to my husband’s work. I did some reading about the country, its people and their customs, but nothing prepared me for the amazing cultural and linguistic trip I was to embark on, for the next three years.

The mixture of Berber, Arab, Spanish and French heritages and the fascinating cultural diversity offered me an unforgettable experience. It felt like I was sent back in time, to another century, to a way of life unadulterated for thousands of years.

During my first week there, my husband suggested I go to the local souk (open air market) to get a taste of the local life. I was glad he did as it was quite an experience. The first thing I noticed was the exuberance of the place, bustling with life.  I read somewhere that asouk is ‘all things to all people’, selling anything but offering much more than a shopping experience.

I started to walk around enjoying the pungent smells and vivid colours of the spices, when it dawned on me that people were staring. I suddenly realised that I was the only foreigner in that market.  I could not speak a word of French or Arabic if I needed to exchange a few words. I was fluent in three other languages but those languages were of no use to me in this situation.  I felt out of place and for a moment I considered leaving when an elderly man dressed in a whitedjellabah (traditional dress) approached and started talking to my son in Arabic. It looked like my son understood him (but how could he?). When I asked him he shrugged his shoulders and said that we should follow him. I noticed that people were stopping to greet the man and were respectfully addressing him as Haji (Arabic term of respect for someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca).

I decided to trust my son’s instinct and we followed. He showed us around the market talking in Arabic while pointing at things. Now and then I thought I recognized some words. In the end I gave up trying to understand. I wished I had familiarized myself with some French or Spanish words. It would have made the trip to the market more fun, interesting, and I would have been able to bargain for my shopping over a cup of mint tea (considered the national drink). Also I would have been able to thank the elderly man for his kindness. The word for thank you in Arabic isshukran.

When I did learn French and some words in the local dialect, my favourite sport became bargaining and my favourite drink, mint tea.

by Angela Kontos
Earworms language consultant

This time last year I spent the whole day in my pyjamas, but I did at least work on my language skills. It was the 3rd leg of my journey on the Trans-Siberian railway and I took 36 hours to travel from Yekaterinburg to Krasnoyarsk.

In the entire trip I never got bored on the train, and this leg I was kept busy by the lively Russian couple in my compartment. In 2nd class, each compartment has four bunks in. I was in with my travel companion Suzannah and some Russians travelling east to visit their daughter.

We struck up a good conversation – they had a few words of English, we had a few words of Russian, we had plenty of paper to draw pictures on, and lots and lots of time. We drew out our lives (I found ‘I am a biologist’ challenging with a biro on a moving train) then moved on to a bit of language learning. They helped me with my pronunciation, something I really struggle with, and I added some words to the vocab book I keep clipped onto my backpack.

The rapport we’d built up did, however, come with a downside. At lunchtime we stopped for 20 minutes in Novosibirsk, which was pretty miserable – only later in the journey would the rain turn to snow. Our new friends got out to buy a large smoked fish from a trolley on the platform. The smell filled the compartment and our lunch was served. The fish was dry and chewy on the outside and raw on the inside, and to be honest I’m not too into roe.  Even the lemon beer that accompanied it wouldn’t take the taste away. But we didn’t want to be rude so our only option was to say ‘Spasiba’ and grin and bear it!

If you’re contemplating travelling the Trans-Siberian – definitely, definitely say yes, I mean ‘da’!

Rebecca Nesbit

earworms blog

Hi, my name’s Mark Clarke,

I’m Creative Director here at earworms mobile, the outfit responsible for bringing earworms to your Apple iPhones and iPods.

My first experience with earworms was a few years ago, I had been chattering with someone  online and had asked that always wonderful question.. “We really should meet up for a coffee, Where in the world are you?”

The response was Rome, Italy, which surprised and pleased me – in my earlier days, I’d spent many weeks travelling in Italy as part of my love affair with a Moto Guzzi motorcycle and had fallen in love with the place, the hospitality, the madness of the place which appealed to my Irish side (Did I mention I was half Irish?).

This time however was going to be different, this time I was out to impress, so this time it would be in a smart suit and polished shoes, unlike a few years ago when I was dressed in motorcycle leather and covered in road dust…  Oh, and this time I would really do my best to be able to speak at least a little of the language…

I really had no idea where to begin, I’d looked at some of the language tutors on the marketplace in the past but had been put off by the sheer bulk of them, not to mention the price so I took a wander to my local bookshop to explore the options.

Cue – one copy of Rapid Italian Volume 1, which was soon installed on my iPod and I heard the words “Relax,  listen, soon you will be in Rome”. An amazing coincidence!

Now came the amazing bit, after the 1st track I was thinking to myself, my word! I’ve cracked it, I really can speak Italian!! but where to practice??

A quick walk up the road and I found myself in my local Italian coffee shop asking for a coffee, with milk and sugar, and yes, you guessed it, I actually got the coffee and a big smile from the owner for making the effort and making him laugh with my London accent…

Quite apart from earning a free cappuccino, I was soon being given lessons in the multiple varieties of coffee, please, thank you, and all the fun parts that quite apart from making my life a little easier, gave me the confidence to keep it up.

I never dreamt I’d be working with this product a few years later but I do remember the “eureka moment” and I do enjoy hearing other people’s variation on the theme.

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