How to learn those pesky Spanish verb forms

Duolingo Owl

I am having such a great time practicing languages on Duolingo recently that my husband Wayne became curious (he hates to miss out on any fun).  So several weeks ago he enrolled in his own account on the Duolingo Spanish program.  Wayne doesn't admit to being hooked on the program, but I see him working on it fairly frequently on his laptop or iPhone.  And I hear some fairly strong language when the program gives him an incorrect answer signal!

Lately Wayne's frustration with Spanish verb forms have caused me to think about how difficult it is for English speakers to conquer Spanish verb forms.  Why is this?   And what techniques might make learning Spanish verb forms more accessible?

To look at the why question, a possible answer may be the difference in amounts of English and Spanish verb forms.  If you want to say 'talk' in English in the present tense, it generally doesn't matter who the subject of 'talk' is.  It's 'I talk', 'you talk', 'we talk', 'they talk', with the only slightly different forms being 'he talks' and 'she talks'.  So when you speak English, you don't have to pay much attention to the verb form.   Yes, there are some  irregular verb forms, like 'I am', or  'he is', but the regular forms are a piece of cake.

Now enter Spanish, a daughter language of Latin, with seemingly endless verb endings.  More often than not, when the subject changes, so does the verb ending.  To speak Spanish, you have to constantly be aware of matching the ending to the subject.  For the verb 'to talk' in the present tense, the forms are,  'yo hablO', 'tú hablAS' ''él/ella/usted hablA, 'nosotros hablAMOS', 'ellos/ellas/ustedes hablAN. The English-speaking brain isn't used to having to put attention on verb endings.  That's why I believe that Spanish verb forms seem to be a hurdle for English speakers.  We are required to pay close attention to an aspect of language that is not required to the same extent in our native language.

Spanish verb conjugation

Be that as it may, when all of the analyzing and complaining is over,  Spanish verb forms must be conquered in order to communicate in Spanish.  Some English speakers try to circumvent the Spanish verb system by using the main verb form without any endings. So they say 'yo hablAR' (which  translates to 'I to speak"), which sounds pretty strange to the Spanish-speaking ear!

When I first studied Spanish in school (back in the Dark Ages), we were required to write out  full conjugations of Spanish verbs, both regular and irregular, in a seemingly endless number of tenses.  That was the traditional method of making sure we knew which verb forms matched each subject.  I can still remember pages and pages of two-sided notebook paper filled with my handwritten verb conjugations.  We weren't allowed to actually use Spanish for communication until we knew all of those verb forms.  Whew!  Only the most dedicated language students made it through that obstacle course.  Fortunately I was one of them and continued to study Spanish.

Intellectual torture may be good for the mind and soul, but I believe there is a better and less painful way to learn Spanish verbs.   It  involves using the forms for real communication, not just learning the forms in the abstract. So, since we like to talk about ourselves so much, just getting used to putting an 'o' on the end of verbs when using the subject  "I"   would be a good start.  And then putting an 's' on the verb when talking directly to another person might be the next step.  I can imagine lots of simple conversations using just the 'I' and 'you' forms.  Then we could move on to more complicated communication.  Eventually conversational situations could be set up so that all possible subjects could be used.

Would there be Spanish language learners who would eventually want to see a full verb conjugation written out? Possibly, depending on their learning style. But I would like to suggest that the conversation practice should happen first and the abstract learning should follow as a synthesis.

I wish I would have been taught Spanish with a more conversational approach.  My mind gets very tired having to mentally run through a whole verb conjugation to select the right form.  And I know the person I am speaking to gets really tired waiting for me to do those mental gymnastics!  

What's getting in the way of language learning?

Many people say they want to learn another language.  Fewer people ever reach the second language proficiency goal they are dreaming of.  I realize that "there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip," but what does that slip look like in language learning?

Working diligently on Portuguese and Spanish on Duolingo, I've been thinking about one of the main hazards on the road to mastery of another language--overly lofty goals. Here are three of those high-flying goals that you may want to reconsider.

(1) Achieving native language speaking proficiency  Are we ever going to speak another language with a completely native accent?  Only a lucky few of us with special talent and opportunity will probably ever pass for a native speaker.  I think it would be a great lark to fool someone into thinking I come from Mexico or Brazil, but the chances of that happening for more than a sentence or two are (as they say in West Texas), slim and none.

A more practical approach is to be content with communicating well.  If native speakers can understand you speaking and writing in their language, shouldn't that be enough?  Isn't the fact that you, as a non-native speaker, have taken the time and effort necessary to learn another language something to earn you a few gold stars?

(2) Always using correct grammar  Yes, I know that we all want to communicate correctly in our second language.  There is a strong human desire to get things RIGHT.    But if we wait to communicate until we have mastered every nuance of the new language (an impossibility), we will be tongue-tied forever.

For example, I know that in Spanish there are two words that mean 'for', por  and para. I have read the long list of rules for use of each and have done grammar exercises to practice the rules.  And I still choose the wrong form fairly frequently.  As a non-native speaker, can I live with that problem? Probably.

(3)  Thinking language learning happens quickly  There are some life skills that we can imagine mastering, like cooking a great pot of pinto beans, posting a blog, or packing light for an international trip. But trying to acquire another language is a lifelong commitment, somewhat like feeding the stray cat that has adopted you at the back door. 

There will always be more of the language to learn, more words, more sounds, and more grammar. And just when you think you may know it all, language will be shifting under your feet.  The word for 'great' in both English and other languages will probably change every few years.  If you don't track the changes, you may be saying the equivalent of  'groovy' in your new language.

Language learning is not for the faint-hearted, the short-hitters, or the fast-trackers.  But it can be a heck of a lot of fun.

 

Translation is Darn Hard!

I have never taken the topic of translation lightly. When you grow up in a bilingual city like mine (El Paso, Texas), translation of English to Spanish or Spanish to English is a daily need of the population.

And when I say 'translation', I mean it in the broad sense of  'changing into another language'. Oral interpretation takes certain skills and knowledge, while written translation requires others.  Both types make me a little nervous!

When I worked in the administration offices of a local school district, someone was always trying to hunt down another employee who would be willing to do an English to Spanish translation as an "extra duty as assigned".  And these seekers usually thought it would take just a few clicks on the computer to produce a translation that met their looming deadline. I was often the target of those requests because I was in charge of the foreign language program.

The problem was that I am a native speaker of English and had no business trying to translate anything into my second language, Spanish.  Spanish to English would work fine, but English to Spanish?  Oh, the pitfalls that awaited me. My verbs would be well conjugated, my accents would be impeccable, but my word choice, phrasing and idioms would always be those of a second language speaker. 

Maybe my translation wouldn't be quite this bad!

One day I received an even more difficult assignment.  Some poor Spanish-speaking soul was being given a formal hearing at the administration building, and the professional translator had not shown up.  I was tapped to serve as the interpreter, turning the flowery language of the English-speaking lawyer into the more colloquial Spanish of our area.  What a nightmare!  I hope the person being questioned was not convicted on the strength of my translation!

The moral to this story is that a second language learner does not a translator make.  I'm very glad that Duolingo, my latest language learning passion, allows me to translate from Spanish or Portuguese into my native language of English. Now my next decision is this:   Shall I be social and enter into cyberdiscussions with those editing my translations? Translating is certainly not for the fainthearted!

   

The Psychology Behind Duolingo

Duolingo is an online program for learning languages that has been getting great reviews and awards (pcmag). Duolingo takes a new approach to teaching languages, and best of all, it is free. The program involves gamified learning of vocabulary and grammar and crowd-sourcing through translations.

I must admit to being addicted to Duolingo.  I have a 70 day streak going in both Portuguese and Spanish. My husband Wayne, noticing how I was enjoying the program, decided to sign up and expand his knowledge of Spanish. I could not resist hovering as he worked on his computer (I'm a former language teacher).  Then I begin thinking about how Duolingo uses psychological principles to keep learners on track and successful. Here are a few that come to mind:

(1)  The daily reminder.  If you don't log earn XPs (experience points) on  Duolingo at least once a day, you will receive a gentle reminder by email.

You are still in control of the reminders, because you can turn them off in settings or specify what time you want the reminder sent.  But I realized that I need a little push to overcome habitual procrastination.

(2)  Losing hearts.  We humans want very strongly to keep what we already have.  We don't like things being taken away.  Duolingo gives you three or four hearts at the beginning of each exercise.  Every mistake costs you a heart. If you lose all of your hearts, you hear sad music and receive a message that you need to start over.  Drat!  Wayne asked me, "How do I get my hearts back?"  I assured him that he will be given new hearts for each exercise.  And I often use lingots (Duolingo currency) to buy a heart refill, just to take the pressure off.

(3) Competition.  We humans like to get ahead of everyone else.  When I see that one of my Duolingo contacts has pulled ahead of me in weekly XPs, I feel like a teenager at a stoplight who has just been challenged to a drag race.  Win, win, win, against all odds!  

(4) Aversion to rote learning.  Current language teaching methodology reminds us that we acquire other languages more easily by focusing on something other than the language.  That recommendation appears to be counter intuitive, but when Duolingo gets us wrapped up in the game, our mind is free to notice and retain patterns that all languages have. If I am consciously concentrating on earning lingots, for example, my subconscious mind can intuitively pick up grammar rules.

I can hardly wait for Duolingo to publish Irish in Beta form.  I'll be a newbie in Irish, but a planned trip to Dublin, Ireland next year should give me a push.

It isn't the World Cup but...

Duolingo Trophy

Logging into Duolingo recently, I found an unfamiliar symbol at the bottom of the page.  I had been expecting a circle with a new practice topic, like this one.  

Clicking on the new trophy symbol, I found myself congratulated by Duolingo for having completed "the skill tree."  Here is what I read: "First of all, you're awesome!  You've completed the Portuguese skill tree!" Wow!  Little ol' me? 

Duolingo invited me to continue maintaining language skills by doing short exercises. Also, if I wanted to, I could try my hand at translating documents.  I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that offer. 

Translator hard at work

The act of translation has a long history in the field of second language acquisition.  Translation was the traditional method of learning classical languages, like Latin and Greek.  As the interest in learning modern languages, and especially in actually speaking modern languages, grew in mid 20th century, translation was supplanted by other teaching methodologies.  So, to be truthful, I had a bias against the value of translation in helping me acquire other languages.  

The  Duolingo owl beckoned, however, so I decided to give translation a try.

First I was pleased to discover that my task was to translate from a second language into English, my native language, rather than vice-versa.  Big relief!  Also, I could choose a general topic to read and translate as well as other features, such as easy, medium or hard.  But this sentence caused me some thought: "Your progress within each tier depends on the votes your sentence translations receive from other learners in your tier or higher."

My introvert alarm went off.  I was going to have to interact with other Duolingo users?  And be judged by them?  Was my language ego strong enough for this experience?  

I decided to go for it.  I chose travel as the topic and jumped right in.  Thirty minutes later, with Portuguese and English dictionaries spread out over the desk,  Google Translate on my laptop favorites list, and an online thesaurus located, I was ready to submit several sentences. 

Within a couple of days, I  received two email notifications that my translation had been revised! What?  I'm a native English speaker.  How could anyone question my judgment?  Duolingo provided me with the original text, my translation, and the corrected text by my Duolingo peers.  Okay, the corrections were better translations than mine.

As with other features of Duolingo, this "real world immersion experience," as Duolingo calls it, now has me hooked.  I'm just on Tier 1, but at least I have received a few upvotes.

Can my ego hold up to get me to Tier 2?

Is Duolingo real communication?

DuoLingo owl

Okay.  I'll admit it.  I am a Duolingo addict.  I suppose my dream life would be sitting around and playing with foreign languages.   So far, I have ventured into Portuguese and Spanish, both with the goal of keeping up skills in those languages. Surely I can find a "So Many Languages, So Little Time" T-shirt to wear as I am hunched over my laptop, iPad or iPhone, typing in responses.

Each of the electronic devices I use for Duolingo offers slightly different activities.  Recently I discovered two new activities that make me feel like I am truly communicating with someone.  And that someone is not human at all.  It is the DuoLingo program.

First I selected an option for Portuguese called "Play a Bot," available on both the iPad and the iPhone. 

 

Duobot

Duolingo asked me, "Tired of playing your own kind?  Duobot is your new best friend."   I certainly need all the friends I can get, so I clicked on that option. I was given a number of challenges to see if I could beat Duobot in speed and accuracy.

I really am not a fan of doing anything very fast.  "Slow and steady wins the race" is my motto for life.  But as Duobot kept beating me in Portuguese, and I saw a line coming across the page measuring the time I had left to respond, I tried to speed up but kept making errors.  Duobot was the consistent winner.  Not very nice treatment from a new best friend,  I reflected.  Fortunately I decided to take on Duobot  in Spanish, which I can do a bit faster and with less thinking involved. Ha!  I  beat the bot!  

Another option I found on the laptop only (and just for Spanish, not for Portuguese yet) was to speak into the microphone.  Sometimes the task was repeating what I heard, and other times it was translating from English to Spanish. I felt really nervous that my accent wasn't going to be understandable.  Even though language acquisition experts remind us that a perfect spoken accent is not the goal of communication and that few adults can acquire a native speaker accent, I still felt tongue-tied and very worried about rolling my 'r's'.

The first time I tried to record, a message came back for me to speak more slowly.  The next time, I spoke very slowly and tried to enunciate clearly.  As I spoke, each word appeared on the screen. I noticed that I was having to move my mouth a lot more to speak Spanish than I do to speak English.  This time Duolingo understood me!  I was pleased and thought the program was very forgiving. 

The thought occurred to me that the Duolingo speaking task mimics real life, in that once the words leave my mouth, I have no chance to go back and correct them.  

Previously, I had been feeling very comfortable with written Duolingo activities.   I could take as long as I wanted to do them and check every little detail.  Now with the speaking option, I felt some pressure, just as I do when I speak to someone in a foreign language in real life. I did notice that I had the option of not using the microphone and typing the responses instead, but I thought that was the coward's way out.

Technology still can't trump having a real conversation with a real person in another language, especially if that conversation is taking place in an exotic vacation spot.  But with these two new activities, I have the illusion that what I am doing is true communication. 

 I hope I didn't hurt Duobot's feelings when I beat him!   

Do you need a good excuse to learn a second language?

Last month I saw a a flurry of articles in the media about the effects of learning a second language on the aging brain.  That was a topic right up my alley. Isn't it great when you find that something you love to do is actually good for you?   I'm always looking for an excuse to spend more of my day acquiring another language.

Here is what some recent research has to offer us. And I am cheered by the findings!

A study done in Scotland by Dr. Thomas Bak from the University of Edinburgh compared cognitive data on a group of people now in their early 70's to data acquired when they were age 11. He was interested in the question of whether learning languages later in life gave some of the cognitive benefits that had previously been reported for bilingual speakers.  

Intelligence tests had been administered in 1947 to 835 monolingual speakers in the Edinburgh, Scotland area.  262 of these speakers then acquired a second language during their lives. 195 of them acquired the second language before age 18, which we often consider the more desirable time of life for language acquisition.  But 65 of the participants had acquired one or more second languages later in life.  Now here is where it gets interesting.

The intelligence tests given to the 70 year olds revealed that those who had acquired a second language performed better on tests of general intelligence and reading than those who had not.  And it did not matter if the second language had been acquired before or after age 18!

The benefits of second language acquisition on the aging brain are being compared to the benefits of physical activity or not smoking. (Does this mean I can skip my morning walk and practice Portuguese on Duolingo.com instead?)

Why learning a second language has cognitive benefits is a matter of speculation with researchers at this time. Some describe being bilingual as forcing the brain to switch between two different codes, thus providing a "mental workout."  

This Scottish study is being hailed as the first step into research about cognition and the aging brain.  I have lots of questions as you probably do too.  Does only speaking ability provide benefit to the brain, or would learning to read and write in the language have similar benefits? How is "speaking a language"  being defined? There is quite a stretch between carrying on a simple conversation, like ordering in a restaurant, and a more complex task, like explaining to the police that your rental car has been stolen. 

But as it stands now,  acquiring other languages is probably good for my brain.  Now if I could only get those researchers to prove that tacos, chips and salsa, and gelato give similar benefits!

Want to read more?  http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-06-languages-benefits-aging-brain.html