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Bilingual Books, Inc. is a privately held publishing company that develops foreign language learning products. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, the company publishes interactive computer software, books, audio programs and phrase guides for 20 different languages.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Languages ) Retrieved 5 April 2011.〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Catalog ) Retrieved 5 April 2011.〕 == History == Bilingual Books, Inc. was founded in 1981 by Kristine K. Kershul,〔 a language scholar and teacher planning a career in academia and working towards a doctorate in Medieval German Languages and Literature. While teaching at the university level, she observed that the majority of her students were learning a foreign language for personal reasons such as an upcoming trip abroad, researching family history, or dating someone who spoke the language. Seeing that the traditional academic methods, designed for those majoring in the language, were not best suited to help her students achieve their goals she decided to develop a way to learn, in a short amount of time, practical and relevant conversation skills they could use.〔Luce, Beth. "Do you speak...? Language books translate in to success", ''Costco Connection'', June 2004.〕 Kershul authored her first book, ''German in 10 Minutes a Day'', with the intention to return to her academic career, but the success of the publication became the catalyst for more books in other languages and within a year, the Seattle company began worldwide distribution with five titles, adding French, Italian, Spanish and Chinese.〔〔〔Gulick, Alan. "Unknown to many, Bilingual Books is worldwide operation", ''Ballard News-Tribune'', 3 April 1985.〕〔Rumley, Larry. "Linguists have quick method to improve Americans' image", ''Seattle Times'', January 1982.〕 The company was sold to Sunset Books and Magazine in 1988 and seven years later, in 1995, Kershul reacquired it.〔 In 1999, the first Language Maps were published in Spanish, French, German and Italian, as an alternative to traditional phrase guides. In 2004, the company continued its expansion by publishing audio programs for its Spanish, French, German and Italian titles. Beginning in 2007, Bilingual Books developed computer software as a complement to the 10 Minutes a Day books. By 2011, the company had published more than 50 titles in 20 languages. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bilingual Books」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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