Third Language Blog

Duolingo the free language course

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:15:32 +0000

Learn a language for free. I’ve been waiting since December to get involved with this Project and finally I got my invitation. Duolingo is the brainchild of Luis von Ahn you can see his TED presentation where he explains what it is all about. The idea is that you study a language and it costs you nothing except for your time and effort. In return you contribute to the task of translating the Web from Spanish or French or German, into English.

The process has been made fun by using clever images and points reward systems and I find it quite addictive. If you already know a little or a lot of your target language you can fast-track by taking tests. At any stage you can review lessons and do a sentence or two of translation, it all accumulates points.

The system is described as beta, because it is still being worked on and tweaked. The interface is clean and doesn’t require too much scrolling. There are no distracting images just a friendly cartoon owl that looks sad when you fail a test and happy when you do well.

Here is a screenshot of the home page. You can see some of the stepping stones that you work through on the main screen, at the top there is a menu bar that offers “translations” (see pic 02), “questions” and “follow people”. On the top right you are shown your current level of progress along with “skill points” and “sentences translated”. There is a suggested order for tackling the lessons but it is quite flexible.

Once you are in the lesson there are options to study, translate and if you feel you already know the material you can take a test. Within the test there are no helpful hints. Very occasionally I was marked wrong for an answer that I believed to be correct or a valid alternative, when this happens it is easy to report (although you don’t get the mark awarded). You are tested on translation both ways and various grammar points, it is very unforgiving on typos. You might get away with the odd missed accent but that’s about all. I particularly like the option on the listening exercise where you can slow down the speech; it makes it easier to catch the endings eg nuestra vs nuestro.

There is an option of using a microphone that I haven’t tried.

Here is a screen shot of a typical translation exercise. At the moment the degree of difficulty seems random but that could change as the program develops. One nice feature is that you can hover over a word to get an instant (robot) translation. Some users complain about the small choice of subject matter but I haven’t found that to be a major issue. I will read just about anything!

If you have a competitive streak you can follow your fellow students on Twitter (it makes it easy to do this) and your progress is automatically displayed for your friends to see. I am not sure whether this is a help or a distraction in my case, too early to be sure.

A limited review, I know but I am only three days into it and so far only Spanish. I will probably try French next, time permitting. Overall: very impressed and I would recommend Duolingo to any keen language learner. The sooner you get on the waiting list the better.

Words are like delicate plants, they need to be nurtured

Bill Ferguson — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 22:30:50 +0000

Here is a new website (new to me anyway) that I have been playing with for a couple of weeks. It is called Memrise and it makes vocabulary memorising into a game. You are presented with a garden for each language and invited to plant 5 seedlings (words) that you then have to water (practice) at intervals until they are ready to harvest. The program suggests mnemonics that are sometimes helpful in remembering new words. If you forget to water your seedlings you get an email reminder that they are wilting (shades of Tamigotchi). You can plant new seedlings in groups of 5 whenever you want, it depends how much time you want to spend on it. Above is a screenshot showing some seedlings ready to water.

You sign up for free and select what language/s you want to study. I chose Spanish, French and Hungarian (don’t ask). Here is my dashboard showing my current status.

It is a type of spaced repetition drill but the graphics and the garden game make it fun and keep you coming back for more. Each time you water your plants you get points for correct answers and the total is added to your profile. It was encouraging for me to go from a ranking of 12,050 to 6,800 (in the world) in about half an hour.

The graphics are simple and quite engaging. When you click on a word you are supposed to hear it: this doesn’t always work. Sometimes the pages are slow to refresh. Apart from that no gripes, its free and it makes studying fun. Give it a try and tell me what you think of it …

Turn your novel into a multi media experience

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 14:20:48 +0000

I just finished reading a book called Dark Tangos, by Lewis Shiner. I enjoyed the story, without spoiling it is set in Buenos Aires and is contemporary. The thing I did that was different was to follow up on some of the references to music, places and themes that I met while reading the novel. For example when he mentioned a tango by Caló called "que falta que me haces" I went to YouTube and found a recording of the music. When he mentioned Lezama Park I went to google maps and found a slide show. I was able to follow his journeys through Buenos Aires with google maps (disappointingly without streetview – yet!). And thanks to google maps I now realise how close Buenos Aires is to Uraguay.So this has become my "must share" idea. Grab a novel set in a country of your choice. Follow up on any references to places and journeys with google maps and get some music from YouTube. Simple I know but this is the first time I have done it …

Almost forgot to mention that Dark Tangos is available as a free pdf. Download it here

Open University: learning a foreign language – is the OU better than evening classes

Bill Ferguson — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 17:49:59 +0000

Question from a reader

"I hope you don’t mind my contacting you. I have read your interesting blog. I came across the sentence "the OU is trundling off in its own direction and making it hard for students like me to stay with them.".

Can I ask you how/why you feel this way? Is it expense, or quality of teaching, or what? I am seriously thinking of embarking on one or two language modules with the OU, and am interested in your views on whether they are as good or better than the conventional evening classes or even just ‘teach yourself’ books. I should add that I do have (ancient) O level passes in the languages I’m interested in, so I will not be a complete beginner…well, maybe not! Thanks for any help you can give."

Forgetting a language

Bill Ferguson — Wed, 25 May 2011 17:31:11 +0000

I enjoyed reading this blog post from Benny who is an expert on language acquisition and an inspiration to anyone who follows the polyglot trail.

I found myself nodding in agreement at several points. The languages that stick are the ones where you have emotional investment, that is why I have "forgotten" Norwegian, Italian and Welsh but so far, clung onto French and Spanish: they are the (only) languages that some of my friends speak. It’s obvious really, but for me seeing it written down made me realise it for the first time. So the message is clear, having got to conversational level I need to speak, read and think in English, French and Spanish every day, and all will be well.

Excuse me did I hear you speaking Spanish

admin — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:31:58 +0000

One of the first things my new Spanish teacher said to the class was that we should always try to start a conversation whenever we heard someone speaking Spanish in a shop or on a train or wherever. I thought at the time that sounded like a good idea, in principle! This topic has just been aired on the "about Spanish" group and the consensus is … well see for yourself.

Most people seem to agree that its a good idea to initiate a converation but like most things in life, a smile and a bit of humility will go a long way when talking to strangers.

Why our education system fails for language acquisition

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 22:28:44 +0000

Watch this recording of Ken Robinson on his favourite topic: "Do schools kill creativity?"

I think he makes some good arguments and asks some searching questions including "what is education for?" His suggestion that our education system is designed to produce university professors makes a lot of sense. He suggests that formal learning does not teach creativity, in fact it tends to stifle it.

Applying this idea to language learning helps me to understand why I felt something was missing from my recent Open University courses. The grammar and other "facts" about Spanish was there in bucket loads but the opportunity to get creative and have fun with using the language was almost entirely absent.

I remember at school learning French, the old fashioned way. To me French consisted of lists of verb conjugations that had to be memorised and then regurgitated for exams. I don’t recall ever playing or having fun with the language. At the age of 16 when I first went to France I was tongue-tied, unable to have even a basic conversation. It was only 10 years later, as an adult that I went back to studying French and starting learning how to communicate.

In academic study mistakes are discouraged and punished by poor marks, this discourages the student from taking risks and makes the study a chore instead of a delight. Making mistakes and laughing about them should be part of the fun of learning. My reason for learning a language is to have fun using it, not to write learned essays with every comment carefully referenced and scanned with anti-plagiarism software.

The menú del día (menu of the day)

Bill Ferguson — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 22:15:28 +0000

One of the benefits of learning a new language day is that you can explore new cuisines. Spanish is particularly good for this and I often order things that I have never tried before either on the waiter’s recommendation or just bravado. A good way to get into this habit is to select the "menú del día". There is an unwritten rule that the lunchtime menú del día, for normal work days should be tasty, nutritious, filling and cost less than 10 euros. Usually it will be 3 courses and include some wine or beer and water. Fantastic value.

Today in Arrecife in Lanzarote I had "marmite", a soup with big lumps of potato and fish in a consommé base. Next was braised lamb, again with potatoes. I could have had dessert but I chose cortado (a small coffee) instead. The cost was 9 euros and that included a glass of house wine and bread. Typically Sunday menú del día is slightly more expensive – this week it was 14 euros and the quality was superb.

The biggest surprise is that a tip is not expected, most people leave 20 – 50 cents but if you leave nothing it’s no big deal. My Spanish friends tip normally around 5-10% in the evening but at lunchtime it is not done, or expected. An excellent reason to choose Spain for your holiday instead of USA.

Typical Sunday Menú del día first course – paella

Typical Sunday Menú del día – main dish

Typical Sunday menú del día – main dish

Choose coffee or dessert with menú del día

OU Results L140

Bill Ferguson — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 10:55:48 +0000

At last the results have come out for L140. Sadly none of my group of "study buddies" or me, made distinction level (85% or better in each component) but we didn’t disgrace ourselves and we all passed. Here is my long awaited letter from the OU:

Open University L140 Results letter

Strangely I didn’t feel like celebrating, maybe because the gap between end of course and results was so long. The other reason is perhaps a sense of disappointment that the OU is trundling off in its own direction and making it hard for students like me to stay with them.

Here is my summary of my OU Spanish experience after 2 years

L194 is excellent – it takes you from nothing to better than most ex-pats in a year, it was fun to do and a little bit of work each day kept me up to date. My tutor, Gemma was exemplary, even gave out her personal mobile number.

L140 is a good course, apart from the eluminate online tutorials which were unhappy events. It’s a bit heavy on old fashioned drills and exercises even though they are done in a modern way with CD-ROM. Once again I was lucky to have a good tutor, thanks Laura! so I could get help by email when I needed it.

The biggest problem, that I keep harping on about, is lack of conversation practise. I think it should be an intrinsic part of the course. Talking to other students this was a common criticism and probably part of the reason that hardly anyone intended to continue to the next level with OU. Maybe a tie up with a Spanish institution who teach English would be possible, one-to-one "intercambios" between students on Skype, half an hour a week might do the trick (wish I’d thought of that sooner).

No matter how well you can conjugate irregular imperfect subjunctives, when someone grunts and mumbles something to you in a noisy bar it is a good idea to have a phrase or two ready in response. I feel poorly equipped with "Spanish sounding phrases " for daily use "on the street". I intend to work on this on my next trip to Spain, I want to take all the podcasts from Notes in Spanish with me, and try out some of the phrases that Ben suggests will make me sound "like a local".

To finish this post, here is a link to a catchy piece of Spanish music that I like.

December update

Bill Ferguson — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 16:05:15 +0000

Resumé: its now 2 years and a week since I started learning Spanish and it isn’t getting easier or harder. It feels like swimming in the sea, if you try to go too fast it’s dangerous because you get tired and out of breath, plodding along is safest, and I can’t risk stopping because there isn’t anything solid to hold on to yet.

I have some new resources to share:

Notes in Spanish is very good www.notesinspanish.com , they offer three levels; beginner, intermediate and advanced. If you are a complete beginner the intro level is probably a bit advanced although it would augment any other course that you might be doing, there are some lovely colloquial phrases that will raise eyebrows from your Spanish friends. Intermediate is just about possible for me to follow and I haven’t yet dipped into Advanced.

The podcasts are about 20-25 minutes long and are free to download. If you want the transcripts and grammar exercises you have to pay a small amount. There are also some YouTube clips (which is where I originally found Ben and Marina, the presenters), just search for "Notes in Spanish".

Next resource is www.meetup.com ; I got in touch with a local group (25 miles away) who meet monthly and I intend to be a regular attendee next year. Here is the link to the group if you are near Kent, UK www.meetup.com/Kent-Spanish-Language-and-Latin-American-culture. This group meet socially to speak in Spanish and share resources. The local organiser Viviana told me about a movie on YouTube, called "Ilona llega con la lluvia" and it even has subtitles, I liked it but didn’t expect the ending …

Here is my Spanish "diet", I choose a little from each group every day. Watch some TV, online or satellite. Read some El Pais, online and free. Read some Spanish literature on the Kindle. Self test on vocabulary. Listen to some Spanish music, YouTube has huge selection. If I hear a good phrase or a new word I write it down and look for it later in the dictionary – today’s word was "acudir". I am not talking about hours of study. Five minutes on each is painless and it keeps the stuff dripping in to the brain.

My Adult Ed course is going well, this week it was cancelled because of bad weather. Full marks to Juliette Negri who made sure I was called early enough to tell me the centre was closed. I missed one when I was in Barcelona but otherwise I’ve been to every class. The teacher is great; she makes us work for the full 90 minutes and English is forbidden in the classroom. I am still suffering from what I see as the major weakness of OU – lack of conversational practice. I can do the written work and the reading comfortably but when it comes to speaking without prompt or preparation I struggle. If only I could have Michel Thomas in my ear saying "how do you say – ‘is it ready for me because I need it tomorrow?’"

I feel that French has really slipped although I can still read and understand it without too much trouble, in conversation I lapse into some sort of hybrid language that only makes sense to me. I have a notion to try the 80/20 principle so that my "language time" divides into 80% Spanish and 20% French – probably a project for 2011.

I’m still waiting for my OU results, L140 seems like a long time ago. They are so slow at getting results back. How long does it take to mark an essay and an oral exam?