Category: Free Inquiry

Overall, I believe my Free Inquiry on learning the basics of Spanish went alright. I started off strong with a couple weeks straight of achieving my daily goal. I was doing well at matching English and Spanish words together, speaking Spanish, and translating sentences. My biggest challenge  was writing in Spanish. I am not surprised about this because this is my weakest skill in English and French. To work on my spelling I would text my brother in Spanish and he would respond. I was pretty good at translating his sentences because of my minimum knowledge in the language and my knowledge in French. I would often have to go back to the app to ensure I spelt the words correctly. Unfortunately the week before reading break I had a lot of work to do for my other classes and my Spanish learning decreased drastically. I would go a couple of days without going on the Duolingo app. After this period I decided to start researching about the Duolingo app and its pros and cons rather than write my blogs on my progress.

I learned many things during this project. I have always been told that Spanish and French are similar but I did not realize how similar they really are. I also realized that the daily goals I set were too difficult while being a student. If I did not have the work load of five course, I believe I could have obtained my goal. This will be good to know for the future if I chose to learn a new language or learn more Spanish. Furthermore, I learned the pros and cons of Duolingo and compared it to Rosetta Stone. I became more familiar with these two language apps and came to the conclusion that I would use Duolingo again in the future rather than Rosetta Stone. The main reason is money, I do not have a couple hundred dollars to learn a new language.

The main advice I would give to someone starting a similar inquiry would be to set realistic goals. You will not have the motivation to learn the language at all if you set expectations that are out of reach. Another piece of advice I would give is to research which language software would work best for you. Depending on your wants and needs, a different language software may work better.

For this week’s blog I have decided to discuss my overall thoughts on Duolingo and my learning on the basics of Spanish thus far. Duolingo has many positive aspects like having different subjects (intro, phrases, travel, restaurant, family, etc). I also think it is beneficial and important to work on reading, writing, and speaking which this app does. I believe Duolingo is a great way to learn a new language if you are learning from the basics and have no previous knowledge with the language. The app makes you start at the beginning of the basics; therefore, if you already have some knowledge in the language, then it can become boring because you are not learning anything. I also believe that you will only be motivated to keep up with this app if you are learning the language for a specific use, for example a trip. You need to use a language in order to keep the knowledge. My biggest challenge during this inquiry project is that I enjoy learning new languages but unfortunately I do not have someone to practice with frequently; therefore, the motivation lacks greatly. My learning began strong, I completed my daily goals frequently and enjoyed learning. When school became busier, I found myself losing motivation and practicing less frequently. 

Overall, I enjoy Duolingo and believe it can be effective for some people but unfortunately I lost my motivation throughout the term and was not as committed as I had hoped. For the last part of this term, my goal is to go on the app everyday and complete a few questions. I believe making a more realistic goal will make it more successful.

For this week’s blog, I have chosen to compare Duolingo and another language program called Rosetta Stone. Each of these language programs have their pros and cons; therefore, it depends on your personal interest to which program will work best for you. Both of these language programs are available on IOS and Android devices. 

The largest difference in my opinion between these two language programs is the cost. Duolingo is free as Rosetta Stone can cost between 80 to 250 dollars. Free does not always mean better but you may want to consider how dedicated and motivated you are to learning a new language because you do not want to be spending that much money for a few lessons. 

Rosetta Stone offers 28 languages and Duolingo offers 21; therefore you may pick the language program depending on which language you want to learn. You may also pick which program based on how you learn best. Rosetta Stone’s approach to learning is “Dynamic Immersion.” Its focus is “less gamified but presents sounds, words, phrases, sentences, and dialogues.” The lessons include lots of matching pictures to words / sentences and only focuses on the language you are learning. Duolingo focuses on teaching the basics of the language by using more translation. Duolingo is commonly known to be easier to use than Rosetta Stone.  

When deciding which language program to use when learning a new language, it is important to consider what each program offers to pick the one that best suits your individual needs. 

The websites I used for this blog post: 

https://lifehacker.com/language-learning-showdown-rosetta-stone-vs-duolingo-1790938306

https://preply.com/en/blog/2018/12/13/language-learning-apps-duolingo-rosetta-stone-review/

https://www.alllanguageresources.com/duolingo-vs-rosetta-stone/

For this week’s blog on Duolingo I have done some research on the effectiveness of this app for learning a new language. The study I looked at was done over the course of 8 weeks. These users were done on users who were studying Spanish, were at least 18 years old, and English native speakers. The results showed that users who are learning Spanish for travelling are more successful than people who are learning for personal interests. Also, Duolingo is more effective for users who are beginners compared to users with previous knowledge in the language. The report stated, on average, 34 hours of work on Duolingo would cover the same amount of material in a first year college course. In my opinion, I believe a first year course would cover the basics of Spanish; therefore, in order to meet my goal for this term, I would need to spend this large amount of time on Duolingo. I believe this is accurate but I am unsure how much time I have spent on this app and how much I know of the basics.

I agree with this article because I believe I would be more determined to reach my goal if I had more of a reason than personal interest. For example, going on a trip. I believe this because having a strict deadline would be more motivating for myself. Personally, I believe Duolingo is effective as long as the user is motivated. 

The article: 

http://static.duolingo.com/s3/DuolingoReport_Final.pdf

If I am being honest with my learning of Spanish last week, my motivation has decreased drastically. I lost my streak and have only been doing my lessons every other day at the most. I believe my motivation decreased last week because I would often do my Spanish for the day right before going to bed but last week I was preparing for a swim meet that weekend so I was trying to get a good night sleep. Instead of doing my Spanish, I would go straight to bed and this quickly became a routine. 

I did an online Spanish quiz yesterday to see what I remember. The link to the quiz that I used is provided below. I scored 93% which went better than I thought. Some of the words I knew in Spanish but I also relied on my knowledge in French. To figure out a word in Spanish, I thought of the word in French and took an educated guess.

My goal for this week and reading break is to get back in the routine of doing my Spanish daily. During  the reading break, I will have more time for work; therefore, I should not have an excuse to not do my Spanish lessons daily. The only time I know I will not be able to do Spanish is next week from Thursday to Saturday because I have Nationals and will be at the pool from early in the morning to late evening with only a few hours in between for time to recover, sleep and eat. I will do more Spanish before and after these days to ensure I do not fall behind. 

https://www.thequiz.com/hola-who-thinks-they-can-ace-this-basic-spanish-quiz/

I continue to learn Spanish and personally, I believe it is going well. Today was my 13th day in a row of completing my daily goal on Duolingo. This process is definitely going way better than I thought. I was unsure about teaching myself Spanish at the beginning because languages can be challenging to learn and easy to give up on. I do think that the reminders on my phone and the motivation to continue my streak is why I continue to do it on a daily basis. I also know that if you do not use the language, you lose the language and I do not want to lose all the hard work I have already done.

On Duolingo, I am learning more words and complex sentences. When I do not know the meaning of a word or which word to choose, I try to figure it out by using my knowledge in other words to see what the sentence is trying to say. I am still not strong enough in Spanish to speak some simpler sentences but hopefully I will be soon. I find that I know what the words look like in Spanish when it is in a list right in front of me but I am unable to think of the word without seeing it. I believe this will change as I get stronger and more confident with the language. 

The more I learn Spanish the more I cannot wait to travel again. I hope someday (soon) to go to Spain and use the Spanish that I am learning.

I believe my Free Inquiry project on learning Spanish is going well. I am doing exercises on my phone daily and I think I am learning at a good pace. I have reached a level where I am now being tested on my pronunciation, word choice, listening skills, and translating. My knowledge in French is really helping me chose and remember words. Later on, I believe I will be tested on my spelling and I am worried about that.

I have also been texting my brother in Spanish. My sentences are very basic like I am a girl, you are a boy, I drink milk, I drink water, etc but he responds in a few sentences. I find it challenging at times but I break up the sentence and use my knowledge in French to figure out what he is saying. I will attempt to translate it and send it back in English to see if I was correct. Overall, I have exceeded my expectations at this point in time.

My next steps are to continue doing my daily exercises on Duolingo. Every day these exercises become more and more challenging and work on different words/sentences for different situations. So far I have worked on introduction, simple phrases, and travel phrases. In my future exercises, I will be learning words that will help me in different situations. These situations include restaurants, family, shopping, school, and people.

I have just started to learn Spanish and it is going well so far. I believe this is a good topic for my Free Inquiry project because I am passionate and motivated to learn. I have downloaded a language app called “Duolingo” and it is very simple to use. I am using the app to get a beginning knowledge of the language because it has different levels and becomes more challenging as I progress. I have set up to receive notifications every day as a reminder to work on it for 10 minutes. Setting a small amount of time aside every day to work on Spanish is a more realistic goal for me with my busy schedule. It is more likely for me to keep going with this daily goal when I can do it anywhere at any time.

So far I have enjoyed the app. It reads the sentences to me so I can hear the proper pronunciation and tests me on my translation from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. In today’s lesson I learned how to say “I am a woman,” “I am a man,” “I am a girl,” “I am a boy,” and “I eat apples.” Thinking back to the lesson I know what the words look like but if I was tested right now I would not succeed. Hopefully, with more practice, I will remember more of the words and sentences I learned that day/lesson. The only concern I have about this app that may change in the future is that it does not test my pronunciation/speaking skills. If the app does not have the ability to test my speaking in future lessons, I may have to download another app.

I have learned one lesson already from this app. This lesson is not to pick my answer based on the picture or character they provide. I was tricked many times for example it was asking me what is “nina” in English (which is a girl)  but there is a boy character that read the word to me. This will help me actually learn the words and not rely heavily on the characters and pictures. I have hopefully learned my lesson and will not proceed to fall for their tricks.