Linguaphone vinyl German language course, records for conversational travel German, 1930s

Linguaphone is a global language training provider based in London that has provided self-study language courses since 1901. Methodology Linguaphone’s self-study courses follow Linguaphone's in-house methodology of “Listen, Understand, Speak.” Students are encouraged to listen to the language from the beginning, to begin to read as they listen, and only to speak once they have learned to understand the language presented. Linguaphone was established in 1901 by Jacques Roston, a translator and language teacher, born in Poland, (Koło), and they were the first language training company to recognise the potential of combining the traditional written course with the wax cylinder and later with records. At the height of their popularity, Linguaphone was not only a large, international publishing house with many prestigious representative offices (for books, records, tapes and cassettes) but they also ran fashionable language schools in a number of major cities across the world, such as London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. This chain of Linguaphone Institutes could claim to be the second oldest among the international language teaching establishments (the oldest being Berlitz, founded in 1878 and known today as Berlitz International, with the controversial[why?] Berlitz method) and, as such, Linguaphone had, at one time, the privilege of being an almost automatic first choice among the famous of the day, including royalty.