Credit : Corridas de toros by Ariander is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Source: Flickr

At our primary school when I was in Year 7 a curious thing happened; we began receiving Spanish lessons. How Spanish lessons ended up in our curriculum is still a mystery. They were not there a year earlier and had vanished a year later. Legend has it our teacher was a wandering Spanish gypsy. He came, he taught, he vanished.

 

I clearly remember us chorusing ‘dónde está el baño’ over and over until everyone in the playground could point at the toilet block and yell the response back in unison, ‘está aquí’, indicating where the bathroom could indeed be found.

 

Years later at University in an introductory Japanese language class I concluded that instructional techniques had not progressed far. For hours I’d sit with a text book, coaxing unwilling vocabulary into my long-term memory through dull repetition. Arigatou, but no thankyou.

 

Times have changed

 

Then recently while browsing the Apple App Store I came across an app called Duolingo which claimed to be “the most popular way to learn languages”. With equal parts nostalgia and curiosity, I installed the app and, astonishingly, 45 minutes later was still glued to my screen, immersed in a flow-state.

 

Over the next few weeks I found myself whipping out Duolingo to aprender español on the tram, aprender español on the couch and even aprender español in the baño. Worried about what gypsy magic had cast its spell on me, I dug around a little and discovered that yeah, things had changed. I could now learn a language painlessly in 10 minutes a day, and have fun doing it.

 

Credit: One Hundred Day Streak by Dullhunk is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Source: Flickr

 

Language-learning, evolved

 

Today language-learning apps are competing with Spotify, Facebook and other master-architects of attention, for our premium-subscription dollars. It’s not surprising then that Duolingo and others are dabbling in digital dark-arts like gamification and behavior design to harness and exploit our attention.

 

Each day I found myself competing with yesterday’s performance to earn points, unlock badges and level-up my inner Spaniard. Clearly, the centuries-old method of listen-repeat- that powered the previous generation of CD-based courses like Rosetta Stone had gone the way of the dinosaur.

 

How many?

 

Duolingo claims to have attracted 120 million learners to its innovative online platform, and competitor Babbel says it is attracting around 1,300 new users a day. The market is already crowded with dozens of companies offering competing versions of apps containing videos, inbuilt dictionaries, interactive flashcards, text entry and other features, all claiming to be ‘the best way’ to learn.

 

How much?

 

Subscription prices vary but around $10/month will get you premium access to most apps and all their features. Some offer a discount on an annual subscription.

Credit: Weird mouseovers in Duolingo by Dullhunk is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Source: Flickr

 

How realistic?

 

Even the providers of the apps themselves concede that apps will never entirely replace traditional language-learning institutions, but that’s not their aim. Their target consumer is me. I’m interested, I’m willing to try it, and I’ll spend the hundred or so dollars a year they’re asking.

 

In reality, I’m not motivated enough to take learning Spanish seriously. As anyone who’s studied a language knows, motivation trumps all else in the quest for fluency.

 

In the months since I began, my progress has slowed. I’ve turned off the daily reminders to open the app and ‘earn my points’ (the guilt was killing me), and any time I spend studying now is more for entertainment than to attain fluency. It does however stop me entertaining myself is less-helpful ways, such as buying stuff I don't need on credit.

 

And so I’ve become a language-learning gypsy myself, meandering in and out of random lessons, staying a while and then moving on when the mood strikes me.

 

In reality I have no need to learn Spanish and chances are that if I ever find myself in Spain, I’ll make do with the little I know.

 

At least I’ll be able to find the baño.