I started finding languages cool when I was forced by my mechanical engineering core curriculum to take a coding class. It was crazy to think that, with some semantic and syntax rules, a language could be understood by both me and a computer. I find it funny because I had taken four years of Spanish without much interest, but then a short summer coding class got me hooked on languages.
Since then I have pretty religiously done Duolingo and Mango, taken courses with instructors through Preply and the City of Minneapolis, and tried immersing myself in the cultures (you know, listening to the music, traveling to the countries). I've also tried picking up Japanese, which has proved a lot harder, but I have always been fascinated by Asian languages and how different they sound from my native language, English.
While traveling I have grown so envious of Europeans and other nationalities who were raised in polyglot households. How cool to know so many languages from such a young age! I wanted to move my language progression along and see what the most effective way for adults to learn new languages is. Here is what my research and personal experience have yielded.
Spanish: travel, tutors, and talking
When I tried to pick up Spanish again after high school my efforts were sporadic. I did Duolingo a few times a week, but found it better for vocab than for gaining actual conversation or conjugation skills.
Then I started traveling and went to several Spanish-speaking countries. I felt so much growth from hearing Spanish around me, reading Spanish menus, and conversing. In Colombia I learned the phrases "que chimba," which is similar to "that is too cool," and "¡Qué gonorrea!" Gonorrea means gonorrhea (the not-so-nice STI), and this phrase indicates something is unbelievably frustrating, kind of like "damn it."
However, travel is such a privilege, and I find it fun to know the fundamentals before I am faced with a foreign language in a foreign country. So I started taking Preply lessons and found an amazing instructor. She gave me homework, which I almost never did, and eventually we drifted pretty far away from the curriculum she had originally outlined. Instead, we mostly talked about our day-to-day lives in Spanish.
This greatly expedited my learning because I find it much easier to speak and listen to grammar than to read grammar. I can tell when I am conjugating something wrong because I can hear how what my teacher says differs from my own speech. I was also pleasantly surprised by how much vocabulary I could dredge up from my high school courses. I recently watched a video saying that you only need about 1,500 words to hold a basic conversation and sound like a native speaker, and 5,000 to sound fluent.
Stories stick
Having a tutor was really fun, but expensive. I cancelled the lessons until I could afford them again and started listening to Duolingo's podcasts. I loved them because they do a great job storytelling. Here was another valuable lesson: it is so much easier to remember things in the context of a story.
Countless studies have shown our memories are very fond of storytelling. One example is from Bower and Clark, who had people study 12 lists of 10 unrelated nouns. One group was asked to study the lists while the other was asked to create a story from the words in the given order. Both groups were asked to recall the words immediately, and then once more after all 12 study/test trials were completed.
Regardless of the learning method, everyone was able to relatively easily remember the words when asked to recite them immediately. After a delay this task became much harder for those who simply studied the words. The median percentage of words recalled in the correct order was 13% for those asked to study and 93% for those asked to create a story. There were other findings in this study that I found super intriguing, like how those who created a story were less likely to make up their own words.
The takeaway: stories are a great way to learn.
Japanese: how not to learn a language
Switching topics a bit, I've also discovered how not to learn a language. With Japanese, I got into the show One Piece thinking that if I listened to it in Japanese it would strengthen my vocab and grammar. 500 episodes later, I have learned "kaizoku" (pirate) and "mugiwara" (straw hat). The show is about a group of pirates who call themselves the Straw Hats. Not the most useful words either.
YouTube was a great and not-so-great resource for me. I started with Japarrot, which looked too "cutesy" to contain helpful information, but there are so many gems in that series! I also watched a bunch of clickbait "learn hiragana in 1 hour" videos. (Quick sidenote: Japanese has three alphabets, one of which is hiragana.)
I did most of this while folding laundry or walking on the treadmill at the gym. I think if I had sat down with paper and a pencil I would have absorbed more, but it definitely helped me grasp pronunciation and some foundational concepts, like "desu ka" being a question.
I started using the app Mango around this time, which makes you actively recall words and learn new vocab. For some reason this app scratched my brain in a new way, even though it isn't as conversational as the other things I was doing.
Where I am now
After assessing my learning tactics and where I stand, I would not say I am fluent in either language or close to it. My Spanish is way better than my Japanese, but I took an extended break from Spanish to study Japanese since I was going to Japan.
Moving forward, the plan is to step away from the passive anime marathons and add in Mango, engaging with the language more through active recall. For Spanish I think returning to lessons once a week, or splurging on Duolingo Plus for those "video calls" that simulate real conversations, is what works best. Obviously I will be keeping my Duolingo streak. They have gamified the app too well for me to stop.
Other to-dos
- Check out this polyglot's YouTube channel.
- Read Through the Language Glass, a book I just read.
- Learn more about learning through storytelling.