The Elusive Goal of Knowing Other Languages

"I would love to speak _______ (fill in the blank with any one of the world's approximately 6500 languages)" is a phrase I hear often, not only from other people, but also in my own head.  Few of us would pass up the opportunity to know another language if it were offered on a silver platter. But the road to language acquisition is not, in most cases, an easy one. Blessed are those who have the opportunity to learn more than one language in childhood, for they will not suffer!  Most adults, however, do find it difficult to navigate the world of foreign language learning.

How can we make language acquisition a more realistic goal, one we can reach and feel good about? Here are three suggestions.

Get more specific about goals. What do you mean when you say you want to learn Russian, for example?  Most people will answer the question by naively stating, "Well, everything." In the real world, that's probably not going to happen.  More doable goals may sound something like these:   learning enough Irish Gaelic to read signs on dreamed of vacation to Ireland, maintaining Spanish speaking ability to navigate hotels and restaurants in Mérida, México, getting one's ear attuned enough to French to enjoy all that Canadian train travel has to offer, or improving grammar knowledge of Portuguese as an intellectual activity.  (You may have already guessed that these sample examples come from my personal experiences.) 

Match goals to learning activities.  Once you have a specific goal in mind, the next step is to wade through the plethora of books, workbooks, CD's,  formal courses, online courses, social sites, and commercial learning packages available.  And the advice here is caveat emptor. 

I would be very wary of claims like this one!

  
I speak from experience because I am probably the world's greatest sucker when it comes to foreign language materials, always hoping to discover THE ONE.  Recently I have enjoyed using Duolingo, an online language learning program which is completely free.

I have lots of praise for Duolingo because, first of all, it is fun and easy to use.  And more importantly, it is motivating.  I am currently on a 770 day streak of getting points on Duolingo every single day.  I find the program great for language maintenance, which keeps me from experiencing "language attrition." in languages I have studied previously.  But for learning a new language from scratch, I feel the need to supplement the program with other materials.

   

Be realistic about spending time and money.  Take a close look at time commitments and budget to decide how much of each you are willing to devote to language study. A short study session every day is preferable to a longer session less frequently.  I spend about 30 minutes every day on Duolingo, working in four languages.  It has become part of a daily life routine. However, I have been less successful finding a good fit for a supplementary program in Irish Gaelic.  The books I have found on Kindle were not inspiring because I didn't want to wade through a lot of pronunciation and grammar rules at the beginning.  I did sign up for a free trial of an online Irish program, which looks promising, but I haven't yet decided if I want to spend the time and money to enroll.  

The experience of learning another language can be a disappointing failure or a transporting life experience, or anything in between.  I am inspired to continue with language acquisition  by the words of Nelson Mandela:

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!   

Something new in language learning!

In last week's post, I traced the arc of my lifelong goal to acquire the Spanish and Portuguese languages. Unfortunately, that arc is now at its nadir because I haven't been using those languages.  The dreaded condition of language attrition is starting to take its toll on my hard-earned foreign language fluency. I need a new approach!

Fitness experts say that a person needs to vary an exercise routine to achieve maximum results, don't they?  I wish I could confirm that recommendation, but right now it's my mind rather than my body that I feel is in need of attention.  I've studied languages through various approaches - grammar-translation, audio-lingual, and communicative, but I want a fresh approach that will keep me on task.

I decided to investigate a web based program called Duolingo (http://www.duolingo.com). I don't remember how or when I first heard about it, but somehow yesterday I found myself staring at my laptop computer screen and reading the motto "Free language education for the world."  Hmm, generous and ambitious, I thought.  I googled Duolingo to learn more about the program before I went through the sign-up procedure.

Here's what I know about Duolingo so far.  The five languages offered in complete form are Latin American Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Brazilian Portuguese.  That suits me fine, because at the moment I want to maintain Spanish and Portuguese (maybe French for later on if all goes well).

There is no cost to the program.  That raised a red flag in my jaded mind.  I was suspicious of the claim until I read about the Duolingo business model. Because it is a crowd sourced text translation platform, income is generated by charging organizations that want their web site or other documents translated.  Crowd sourcing!  Doesn't that sound hip and modern?

Duolingo has other modern features that may provide a partial solution to my nagging fear that the world of technology is leaving me behind.  Duolingo  is available on the web and also on both Apple and Android devices as a free app.  I have dreams of putting it on my iPad and iPhone so that I can play around with a foreign language in my free time and anywhere I choose.

After the simple sign up procedure on Duolingo, I tested my Portuguese language abilties.  I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just followed the simple instructions.  I was asked questions using various language skills, translating from Portuguese to English, translating from English to Portuguese, multiple choice grammar questions, audio bites to write in Portuguese (with a slow down feature, fortunately), and even remarks like "watch your accent marks"when I failed to do so.  It was absorbing and fun.  I was given a chance to further practice my skills , which I did.

It will take some time to fully understand the program, I know.  The practice structure is described as  "gamified", which will be a real challenge for me, because I have never played a video game in my life.  And this morning I received an email from Duolingo, gentle chiding me for not practicing yesterday and reminding me that learning a language requires constant practice. Everyone needs a little nagging now and then.

My main impression of Duolingo  at this early stage is that it is new and challenging.  And best of all, I am looking forward with great anticipation to continuing it.  Language study has now moved from my "have to" list onto my "fun to do" list.

I'll keep you posted!