Things that have helped me on my learning journey Learning a new language can be very challenging. I'm just grateful that over the last 5 years many new resources have become available which have made things easier and which have reduced the reliance on text books. My greatest allies on my learning journey have recently become my Kindle and Audible. From Audible I have been able to download books (that I have previously read in my own language) in the language I am learning and put them onto my iPod. I then listen to them in bed for half an hour before going to sleep. Sometimes I fall asleep before I turn them off and I am then immersed in the language for several hours into the night. It is my hope that even though I am sleeping, my unconscious mind is still listening and learning. This seems to be true, because sometimes during the day while I am driving or doing something else a phrase will pop into my head. I also find that new vocabulary sticks in my mind better because of its association to a particular book. I can never hear the word "chouette" without thinking of Harry Potter! And I have great fun when I listen while following along in a book - mimicking the pronunciation and refining my accent. Although sometimes it all goes horribly wrong and I get my tongue in a twist :) The Kindle allows me to download many free books in the language I am learning, from amazon. I can then mark each word I come across that I don't yet know. The satisfaction I feel when I finish a book and discover that there were only 182 words I didn't know in the whole book, or when I pick a book on a new topic (such as a medico-legal thriller) and learn 50 new words related to that theme, is well worth the effort and time invested. What are your favourite language learning tools and why?