Apps and Online Tools

Introduction

Some years ago when I first embarked on this project I gave a paper about the usefulness or otherwise of apps. At the time there wasn't much available for Portuguese, now there are a few more. This post will not assess all of them, merely provide a taster and sampling of what is out there and my reflections on those I have used. There are broadly four different categories: beginner, grammar, vocabulary and those designed as travel aids for tourists. I have tried out various apps and will review three that I have found most useful, here.

Verbs, tenses, conjugations

Many apps have a certain amount that is free and then ask for payment for more content or greater interactivity. I understand this. It takes skill and time to generate these tools and such effort merits payment. One of my consistent weaknesses has been memorising verb endings. Therefore, I decided to go in search of apps that aid in this. The first is LearnBots. It has a clear, clean and colourful interface. 

VerbTrainer glimpse at exercises

LearnBots lists

The free version has a comprehensive list of verbs listed in different tenses that, when you click on them gives you the word pronounced by a native speaker (from where it does not say). This is all good and useful. However, it's not clear what you get when you upgrade. I would like tests and exercises that help me revise. This may be what's there, but I don't want to spend money not knowing what's available. I use it as a reference, a pretty booklet of verb conjugations, but no more. The second is Verb Trainer. They've gone for a copybook look to their site, which is cute, but lacks colour. You get a list of verbs and their conjugations for free. You have to pay for audio and there is a glimpse at an exercise, but you cannot try it out. Not shelling out for that either. I want to be able to trial a little. So, both are a disappointment.

This search led me to Duolingo, which, in turn, led me to a project in The Guardian. On the21st of February 2014 The Guardian asked three individuals to learn languages using purely online tools, variously Duolingo, Rosetta Stone and an online tutor. This is part of a wider project about language learner with interesting reflections on the joys and pitfalls of language learning on The Guardian website that is worth checking out. There is a great range of bloggers and reflections on their page. I want to comment on my experience of two of these tools: online tutor and Duolingo. I've never been convinced enough by Rosetta Stone samples to spend the money on their product. 

Online classes

My one-to-one classes in the same place have turned into Skype classes, of late, because my teacher has moved. These have had some technical glitches (fade outs in sound, calls dropping and poor signal), but, have mostly flowed well. There has been a greater formality to the classes, though. Previously, the class was preceded by more chat over coffee, it now is more curtailed. This has more to do with being both time poor at present than technology. Although, I suspect that location influenced the more convivial atmosphere of previous classes. She sends me material that we work through each week for an hour. I write a short essay that I email her. She gives me feedback on this. The class is conducted entirely in Portuguese and is a mix of reading (and necessarily listening) comprehension, grammar exercises and much conversation around a particular topic. This are interesting, varied and include material that is a mix of applied information on cultural context (for example, how women's rights have evolved since the dictatorship in Portugal) to more broad based vocabulary (for example, veganism as a celebrity fad). The continuity and discipline of the classes work well for me.

Duolingo

Student's personal homepage

sample exercise

sample exercise

As part of The Guardian's project Alan Haburchak was given the task of learning with Duolingo.  His conclusion so far has been that he finds it a useful tool for learning vocabulary, but an inadequate one for learning grammar. I agree with him insofar as it has been a great tool for supplementing my learning and reinforcing knowledge gained elsewhere. As a tool for explaining grammar it is entirely lacking. For me, that is perfectly fine. For grammar, I use other resources, such as the free verb tables in Verb Trainer and LearnBot as well as multiple texts and the classes I take. For practice, Duolingo works excellently. The emails encouraging me to 'keep my owl happy' by reaching my self-designated goals (the owl encourages you, gives you feedback and can be dressed up using the lingots you earn on the way), the multiple short exercises built around specific skills, grammar areas or vocabulary are very productive and the variation and repetition built into the patterning of the tasks, are all very welcome.

Keep your owl happy

What's more, it's all free, so far. I'd highly recommend it. It has made me think about how motivation works and how short term success keeps me going through the frustrations of language learning that I and others have written about. When I feel like I'm stumbling in classes or making the same silly mistakes in my writing, Duolingo has functioned to help me over the slump, it also makes me methodically go through vocabulary and grammar fields ensuring I get my spelling right, and, as an added bonus, keep my (currently bling tracksuit wearing) owl happy.

I am on the same page as "[Donavan] Whyte [vice president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA)] and [Kevin] Chen [italki's chief executive, who] agree that online tools are going to be most effective when used as onecomponent of a bigger arsenal of learning tools". Online tools are supplementary to the offline books and people that are necessary for language learning.

Back into the fray: teaching and learning

Over the last couple of years, I have let this blog go fallow and my endeavours to learn Portuguese have stalled. This was, in part, as a result of the paradigm shift that I wrote about previously. I set up this blog to try and work through what it means to me to learn a new language and to share these in order to see whether broader lessons could be teased out for language learning in general and for Portuguese learning in the UK and Ireland, more specifically.

Having recently taken up a new post at the University of Liverpool and moved back into a languages' department, I feel renewed motivation to learn Portuguese and to return to this project. Evidently, motivation is a complicated beast, which I have written about previously on many occasions, so I will not rehearse those again, here. But I have had a few realisations in the gap since last writing. A part of my desire to learn Portuguese is an intellectual endeavour, which compliments my own language teaching, as evidenced in my return to this now. Additionally, now that I have returned, I am reminded of the personal reasons for language learning as well as the simple fact of enjoying the process of connecting intellectually and emotionally with a new language and the cultural complexities it carries with it.

I had reached a kind of plateau with my learning because I was totally reliant on books, the Internet, apps and audio-visual media (dvds for learners, films, an old BBC series, and cds/downloads). These were good foundational tools, but lacked the need for spontaneous understanding or production. This has meant that I would learn a grammatical element/set of vocabulary, but then not use it regularly enough because I had done that chapter and the book and I had moved on to the next task, so I'd forget.  Most beginners' books do not have summative tests nor do they build on prior learning sufficiently. This became a frustrating cycle. I was feeling like I was getting through material and only able to measure my progress in terms of what tasks were completed. I lacked an easy way to test my own development as a learner. Also, there were several doubts I had or uncertainties (especially syntactical and grammatical) that the books did not sufficiently explain and I found myself blocked by these areas of miscomprehension. I felt I needed someone at hand who I could query about usage, would correct any errors or bad habits (false friends from Spanish, mis-pronunciations, mistaken verb endings, and so on), and with whom I could practice what I had learnt. In sum, I needed a teacher.

Therefore, a significant element in the change in my current circumstances is access to a Portuguese teacher. I have no plans here to name or review my teacher other than to say that she is a highly experienced professional native speaker who is patient and extremely helpful. The fact that she speaks Spanish is also proving very helpful. It is one-to-one and therefore is quite bespoke and quite unlike how it would be to learn in a group (there are advantages and disadvantages to both). In place of reviews of the teacher, I will continue to reflect on my progress and on the process of learning.

Already, having a teacher is helping me to keep my focus, not least because I have to prepare for classes each week, and also to motivate me to return to this blog as a reflective project.

I have had Daniel Tammet's Embracing the Wide Sky (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009) in my bedside reading pile for a a few months now.  I have picked it up on those those days that I prefer to read fact rather than fiction before I sleep.  It's an easy read, but has made me pause and think a lot, which explains the slow pace, and the fact that there are several fiction books competing for my attention.  Tammet is an autistic savant, a term he uses to describe himself, which, in his case, means that he has an extraordinary memory.

The book is subtitled, "A tour across the horizons of the mind".  He is largely interested in exploring memory as a way of explaining his own skills, but also of exploring what others do.  The book is full of surveys of scientific literature regarding the mind, critical assessments of the most recent research, interesting insights into the strengths and weaknesses in the research carried out on other savants, and personal anecdotes.  He is largely concerned with language acquisition, but does explore other skills, such as mathematics and visual memory, and explores the dubious history behind IQ tests.

He explains that there are three major memory systems:

• "Episodic memory refers to recollection of particular episodes in one's life connected to times and places"
• "Semantic memory describes our ability to remember more general information such as words, facts and ideas," 
• Procedural memory involves our ability to learn skills and acquire habits" (62).

He then continues to discuss how subjective memory is, changing as we gain new experiences whereby our memory of an event becomes altered by our new experiences.  Thus, our present constantly changes our past.  Given that "there may be as many ways to remember a piece of information as there are rememberers" (67) we need to find multiple ways to remember.  As a result, "the single most important part of improving your ability to remember effectively is to encode a learning experience deeply by attending to its meaning" (67).  Helpfully, he provides an example.  If you want to learn the word 'spider' considering how it's spelt isn't useful, it "induces a shallow, non-semantic encoding" (67). Whereas, if you relate it to prior knowledge or reflect on its meaning by asking questions such as, "Is spider a type of animal?", "constitutes a deeper, semantic encoding" (67).  This then "produces high levels of memory performance - an elaborative encoding that allows the person to integrate new information with pre-existing knowledge" (68), and thus improving the recall for that word.  Therefore, sitting in front of that list of vocabulary, spelling the words, rhyming them off is pointless.  What you need to do is engage with their meaning, figure out how you can create an elaborative encoding that links it what you already know and thereby build it into your memory system.

Later on he talks about second language acquisition among adults, which he recognises as more difficult than for a child.  However, he is reassuring in his assertions that there are many ways to do so and to gain fluency.  Interestingly, he cites studies which maintain that early language acquisition is different because the brain treats all languages as one, whereas later learners store the information in separate parts of the brain, and, therefore, requires "different strategies" (110).  Alongside many recent studies that can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3739690.stm and here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/feb/18/bilingual-alzheimers-brain-power-multitasking, which discuss the long term value of learning a language, Tammet tells us that "learning a second language is good for you" (111).  He goes on to describe the benefits for adult and child learners.

Knowing the benefits, he then gives some strategies that we need to employ to get beyond our weaknesses as (adult) learners.  One of these is explaining how to master sounds.  Problems are caused when we "transfer", that is the "interference by previously learned knowledge of new information we acquire" (113), or pronouncing the new language as if it were our first.  As he is not prescriptive, but descriptive, he is telling us what he does.  That is, to make up sentences that repeat the same sound in a sequence, listen to songs, analyse the rules and work them through logically, and parsing the words and combinations for their internal logic (113-4).  His advice is to tackle learning as a task that has to be engaged in logically and using a variety of techniques, which does not mean it cannot be done quickly and efficiently.  He gives multiple examples of how he has learned languages speedily.  It is nonetheless rigorous and demands much imagination, lateral thinking and multiple approaches.

Tammet gives useful examples and explores the area from multiple angles.  This book talks about more than just language acquisition, but for those wanting to learn a language it is very useful.  Additionally, it debunks the idea that a good memory is something that we either  have or don't have, and that his ability, while remarkable, is not superhuman.

Paradigm shift

Or, what happens when you started a project with a specific end and the messiness of life intervenes?

This blog was set up to track my progress as a language learner, to reflect on how and why I learn a language, and as a project to think about motivation and language acquisition. When I started I was employed as a language lecturer in the University also teaching aspects of Latin American culture including literature, film and cyberculture. In September, it was mooted that I move from my languages' department to Media. This changed things dramatically. No longer did I need to learn Portuguese and continue this project in order to figure out how I learn to therefore better understand how students learn. So it has lapsed. For that reason, and because much of my energy was expended on adapting to my new circumstances and learning the modus operandi of my new role. The change means that I have to consider what *my* motivation is, why do I now want to learn Portuguese, and for whom is it useful. In addition, I have to think through whether I need to be pure instrumentalist about this, ie if it works for work do I do it?, or does it have a greater/wider good?, will my learning help others?, and is that good enough. This is where I return to motivation and something I need to reflect on at length, as well as simply get myself back on the wagon (so to speak), and back into the books/websites/blogs/cds/dvds/apps that have proven useful tools for my learning.

How babies learn language

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies

Fascinating talk about language acquisition in babies. All us adults can feel better about speaking another language with a foreign accent:

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies | Video on TED.com