I have mentioned this form of learning in my podcast a few times and in this post I’d like to discuss learning language through an app (for those of you who are visual learners, rather than aural learners). It would not be my usual method of learning, but I thought I’d give it a try after reading about the app in a teaching journal. The language I decided to learn was Japanese. As you may recall, I know a few phrases and some Japanese characters, but not many. I started using this app about six weeks ago.
I’ve never been one for computer games, I might have played Pong or Pac-Man a long time ago, but that was about as far as it went. However, I am a big fan of general knowledge quizzes and have been since I was a child. Stay with me please, this is relevant to the topic. I consider this app similar to a mix between a computer game and a pub quiz machine. I used to love pub quiz machines and often won quite a lot of money on them.
This particular app is free to download, but if you interact with it on your device it gives you a certain number of lives and each time you make a mistake you lose a life. Once you’ve lost them all, you can’t continue until the app resets which inhibits your learning somewhat. However, if you subscribe for a reasonable monthly fee. the number of lives is unlimited. If you access the app through the internet, you don’t lose lives for making mistakes and can continue through the levels of the game. I am using this online version at the moment.
The app has a number of different levels and leagues. I’m in the ‘ruby’ league at the moment. It also has a leader board of the top scorers where I was number six for a while at the lower learning levels of the course. I’m on stage 2 at the moment and my position within the top thirty scorers varies between number twenty-three and thirteen. I’m not sure if I’d reach the top in this leader board as some people have scores which seems to mean they spend most of the day on the app.
The first stage of the course starts with very basic phrases, but at the same time introduces hiragana, katakana and a little kanji at this level. I’ve studied for about two hours a day and can recognise a lot more Japanese characters than I did a month or so ago, I think the interface is very user friendly and it presents material visually and aurally.
As a language instructor, I consider ‘listening’ probably the most difficult skill to master. Sometimes, the app says a phrase in Japanese that you then have to translate into English. The phrase also appears in Japanese script. It does happen occasionally that no matter how often I listen to the phrase, I still can’t quite get it, so I peek at the phrase in Japanese to see if that can help me…and it often does. I actually read the Japanese characters and understand them and know the sounds and pronunciation. I’m quite amazed that I can now do that.
When you complete level 1 of a lesson, other lessons will open up to you. Sometimes, I have days when I seem to find everything quite easy and become bored with the repetition of a lot of the stuff. But, then again if it’s not repeated I probably won’t remember it. On the other hand, I do have days when I have a mental block and keep leaving a character (or more) out of the same phrase and it takes me a while to complete the lesson. I do find that quite frustrating. I think the course is divided into seven parts as far as I can see.
For a couple of weeks, I found things a little difficult. I believe the problem was that I was committing everything to memory and not writing anything down. While this works for a little while, I don’t consider it the best way to retain information.
It also didn’t help that I now had about 500 Japanese words or phrases stored in my memory. The last few lessons of stage 1 were quite a hard slog and I realised that eventually I would need to record the phrases and sentences by copying them down and storing them in a retrieval system. In my case, it was by the old fashioned way of using a well-known Japanese brand of ink pen and a notebook one of my students gave me as a present a few years ago.
On the cover of the exercise book it has a picture of a Japanese woman staring out of the window at the blossom on a tree. It does refer to Madama Butterfly on the cover, so I’m guessing the woman is Cho-cho-san. Sometimes, when people give me really nice looking notebooks as a present, I don’t want to write in them as I think that would spoil them. Luckily, I’ve overcome that now and have used most of them. I’m pleased to say that recording the language in written form has helped me improve my learning and that I progressed from gold league to sapphire league to ruby league, based on the number of points I’m awarded for my answers. I’ve studied for 48 consecutive days now and there isn’t a necessity for me to study any further, but as I have invested so much time in it, I think I will continue to the end of the course. Not sure how long that will take though…I will keep you advised of my progress.
The other thing that appeals to me is that you are notified immediately if you have given a correct or incorrect answer. If you have given an incorrect answer, the correct one will appear at the bottom of the screen. I think that’s a lot better than keep flicking back and forth in a text book.