September Challenge Day 1: Learning Spanish Challenge & Performance (01/09/22)
+ Musings on My First Time Using Duolingo & Gamified Learning
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My report for how I implemented my ‘curiosity call’ challenge on Thursday 1st September, and some general musings & reflections about performance, life, business, relationships, health, etc.
My Experience (Thursday 1st September 2022):
Reflections on My Learning Spanish Challenge:
Doing Unit 1 lessons on Duolingo
Did an initial test to gauge my Spanish level - actually scored quite high due to some good guesses and intuition (scored 35/38).
Decided to ignore their recommendation and start on Unit 1 anyway.
Did Lesson 1 out of 4 for Introduction, Phrases, Travel, Restaurant, Family, Shopping
Time Spent: 34 minutes
11 minutes for quiz, remainder on lessons.
Fun new words I hadn’t come across before:
Cerrado (closed)
Una tienda de ropa (a clothes shop)
Yo necesito (I need)
Una maleta (a suitcase)
Mistakes:
Order of words different to English
Should be ‘una camisa azul’ (literally ‘a shirt blue’), not ‘una azul camisa’ (literally ‘a blue shirt’.
Should have remembered this from French :P
Listening more closely for ‘o’ (which means ‘or’ in English).
Reflection On Our Call & Question for You
Musings on Duolingo & Gamified Learning
This was my first time using Duolingo.
Initial thoughts: it’s really good to get you started!
UX: Super easy to use, really good app design.
Actual content: Good use of repetition of phrases, and combination of ‘fill in the gaps’ (multiple choice), ‘write actual words in the gaps’, listening and speaking exercises.
Progress: You feel like you’re making a lot of progress very quickly. You probably aren’t actually learning it as well as you think you are (that takes time and repetition), but perceived progress is rewarding, and makes us want to come back for more!
This said, I had 2 small qualms with it:
It’s almost too gamified. After any activity, there’s a bombardment of experience points (reminded me of Pokemon), then an option to use experience points on a harder quiz, a bunch of other things you gain, and an option to gain hearts by watching an advert…
The adverts on the free version are long. So long. So, so long. I know it’s all pushing you towards a paid version, and it’s only fair that they do this. But still, I’m allowed to complain ;)
On the gamification note, I have to say that I’m not a huge fan…
Weirdly enough, when it comes to learning, I don’t particularly like gamification.
I think gamification is good when someone has resistance to learning something - e.g. every student in school doing any subject…
But in this situation, I want to learn Spanish. I’m doing this out of my own volition…
…and all these distractions with experience points and hearts and things is just making me a bit confused.
Similarly, I don’t need a little cutscene to someone giving me praise for every 5 answers I get correct.
Again, I understand that this does help some people - but it really just gets in my way.
I like to acknowledge my own wins, not have someone tell me when I should be acknowledging them.
Perhaps limiting praise messages to when you correct your mistakes at the end of an activity, or when you finish a module would be sufficient.
Don’t get me wrong - I think the way the app teaches the language is very good.
Interactive fill in the gap options, writing in answers every now and again, listening to some audio and selecting the words in order as they’re spoken, and occasionally speaking into the mic are all very good ways to learn when done in combination.
It’s just the excessive gamification around getting answers correct/wrong that isn’t really up my street.
I will use Duolingo for as much of this challenge as possible, as the inertia to doing it is so little!
I even found myself going on it during a 5-minute break, instead of watching a video on YouTube!
The length of each lesson is perfect, and you can make progress very quickly.
I’m not sure going through it quickly will necessarily be conducive to learning.
But if there is enough repetition throughout modules, there’s no reason why the things you learn in the short-term can’t be translated to long-term memory.
During this challenge, I may do a day of doing verb endings & conjugations by myself without the app.
Weirdly enough, I enjoyed that side of German and French…
…I wasn’t great at it, but I liked learning the patterns.
And I found irregular verbs fun, not tedious.
But for now, as a whole, I’m really enjoying the Duolingo experience.
They’ve made the barrier to learning really low through their brilliant app and lesson design.
As such, it feels like you’re making progress quickly, which makes you want to continue learning more…
I don’t know if one can attain fluency just through these apps (without practicing with native speakers), but you can certainly get to a pretty good level.
Reflection for you:
If you had to learn any one language, what language would you choose?
We’ve made it to the end of Day 1 of our September Challenge! Thank you so much for reading - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hope that you have an amazing weekend ahead!
Until tomorrow,
Kam