In a desperate attempt to improve my Spanish, Toni has introduced me to the addictive delights of Duolingo, the free (though it tries its insistent best to make you part with money) app to improve your chosen language skills.
Toni, of course, is using the app to learn French and Italian, to add to the three other languages that he already speaks, and his frenetic efforts are stimulating mine in a more structured way than heretofore.
The basic structure of the app is fairly simple, relying as it does, on repetition and short chunks of aided learning to consolidate the lessons as you listen, write, and speak to get your way through.
The clever bit is found in the structure around the lessons.
As you start off you have a number (5) of hearts which are your lives. You lose a life if you answer or respond in a faulty way, and if your lives run out, the lesson ends unless you buy (with real money) replacement lives or, you do a practice lesson which will give you a ‘free’ life and you can get another ‘free’ life if you watch an advert.
If you want unlimited lives or advert free learning, then you can upgrade your experience of the app by paying for such delights.
But it is constantly emphasised that you are part of a learning community, with Spanish there are (according to the app around 450,000 other learners working along with you.
You are placed in a group and your progress as you gain crowns and gems, and points is to try and get to the top of your league so that you can be promoted to another division. You start in Bronze, and I have worked my way up to the Silver Division and, if I keep up my work level, in the next few days, as long as I am in the top 15 people in the league, I can be promoted to the Gold Division.
Along the way as you accrue points, or learn new words, or come top of your league, you are given bonuses, so there is a constant sense of achievement and of competition.
I have to say that it is well worked out and, even as I recognize that I am being manipulated, I am willingly and enthusiastically accepting the stimulants that the app provides.
There is also a certain amount of ‘heart’ in the attitude of the assessment of right and wrong, as sometimes you will be given the benefit of the doubt and be marked correct, when you have a ‘typo’ in your answer. And, at the moment, the app does not mark you down for omitting accents, though they do point out when they are missing, and I fear that such indulgence will not last for very much longer.
However cynical I am about the essential expectation that eventually the learner will tire of adverts and losing lives because of slip ups with tired thumbs and writing ‘an’ instead of ‘the’ in a translation, I have found myself spending more time working on my Spanish than I have in the past.
Goodness knows how long such dedication will last, but this first free week has been, if not exactly pleasant, then at least acceptable, and the work rate in terms of time and accessibility, has been acceptable.
I will bow before the power of one of our family sayings and agree that “Anything is better than nothing” and carry on!
“The Ten Books That Everyone Should Read” as a civilizing concept outlined by Suzanne, continues to reverberate in my mind, and I have asked a multi-lingual polymath of my acquaintance to try and write his own list of ten books.
I think I might extend the request to a wider group of friends and see what they come up with. If nothing else, it could suggest a range of writers that might be worth exploring!
My poetry has stalled. I have a number of attempts that are looking wan and broken on their sheets of A4, and it is about time that I revisited them and decided if they are worth salvaging in some way or other, or whether they should be ‘filed’ under ‘oblivion’. Though I do find it hard to actually throw away anything on which I have spent a reasonable amount of time. I am a great believer is the ‘there must be something lurking of worth somewhere’ in what I write, even if it doesn’t quite work out!
