Hey guys, it’s ye boy langblr trash back at it again with another neat and nifty post on tumblr dot com.
My language learning journey has taken me to Germany, where I am currently an exchange student. Here I met another young polyglot who’s got a pretty cool idea for a new language learning app centered around finding cognates in your target language based on languages you already know. It’s called Rootify and it’ll be launching in beta soon!
I managed to hop on board the team for this thing and I wanted to do my part by spreading the word around to people like yourselves who may be interested. This seems like a great way to get a speed boost for part of your study of a new language. It’s all free too!
You can sign up for the beta here https://www.rootify.me/ and follow the official instagram and facebook for more updates
I’d also really appreciate giving this a quick reblog so more of the langblr community can see it! I think I may have been offline a bit too long to know a lot of the new members!
Annotated screenshots from Memrise’s Pronunciationmode.
I don’t know if this feature is available for both iOS and Android, and I don’t know if it’s exclusive to premium membership. However, before I had premium, I remember the Memrise app would kind of cycle through the different premium exclusive modes sometimes, so even if you don’t have premium you will get access to this feature on and off, I think.
So, quitting happens because of missing plans, structure, goals and rewards. I’ve been to Italy quite a few times (around 30 times to be honest) and I’ll be there in 2 months again. I want to make the best out of these 60 days, so I can use the language as much as possible. But first, I need a plan!
I should mention I’m not a fan of exact numbers like 10 minutes this, 40 minutes that, a 15 minutes break here. Simply because I never stick to it, then I’m getting frustrated, stop for the day, forget it on the next day, want to start new next week, don’t do that and quit it completely. Not just for learning languages, I’m just like that in general. If I want to start at 6 pm but start at 6.15 pm I’m already mad at myself.
__________________________________
What are my resources?
Babbel - it doesn’t make as much fun as Duolingo, but I’m NOT going to use Duolingo. Like I said I want to get the most out of these 60 days and I like that Duolingo is fun but… it’s not really productive. First because the sentences are often non sense (what I usually like because it’s funny), second the progress is slow (the slowest I know) and even if you’re done with a tree you don’t really get far with it compared to the time you put in and where other apps get you with the same amount of time. Babbel is not nearly as cool as Duolingo because it’s way more like “sit down and learn this shit” but in the end this method is faster. I studied 2 different languages with Babbel and the structure (especially for grammar) is the best I know when it comes to apps / websites.
Memrise - I think I don’t have to say much about it… build up vocab as fast as possible.
Beelinguapp - It’s an app with audio books. You choose your target language and a book. While reading it you listen to the audio version of it and if something is unclear you have the translation in your native language below.
Italienische Verben - a collection of Italian verbs and their conjugation. And if you didn’t notice by the name it’s a German app but I’m to 99,99% sure there is something like that in English (or other languages).
Habitica - a to do list in rpg style. Actually I use this anyway, even without learning a language haha ^^ but I’m a really competitive person and you can join guilds (groups for everything you can imagine), so I joined a few language learning guilds to attend challenges. There’s also a guild chat for exchange and many more things you can do. :) Warning: if you don’t do things on your to do list, your character will lose health. :p
Deezer and Pi Music Player - music players for… well I guess you know.
Tandem - an app for language exchange, finding an exchange partner or even a teacher. If you click on “community” you see native speakers of your target language learning your native language. Already with the topic they want to talk about. You can decide between (video-) call or messaging them. Warning: you maybe have to wait to get in, because they want to keep it balanced between different countries. GIGANTIC plus point for girls: this way it’s impossible to get hardcore spammed by men from… specific countries asking you to marry them or who are sending you photos of their tiny wiener. I’m serious this app is PERFECT for girls. Almost all people are just there for language exchange and not to find a girl of the country they want to move to.
HelloTalk - also a nice language exchange app but I prefer Tandem.
Google Translate - well… duh. Why do I even mention it.
__________________________________
What are my study plans?
find a language exchange partner as friend (with Tandem and HelloTalk)
learn as much vocab as possible (with Babbel and mainly Memrise)
much practice of listening skills (Memrise for the native speaker option, Babbel for the dialogues between people at real life situations, Beelinguapp for audio books, Deezer and Pi Music for listening to music in Italian)
practice writing (Babbel, Memrise and chatting with native speakers on Tandem/HelloTalk)
practice speaking (a little bit with Memsie and Babbel but mainly with native speakers from Tandem and HelloTalk)
practice reading (Beelinguapp, chatting with native speakers on Tandem/HelloTalk, Babbel)
learn basic grammar (with Babbel)
study as much as I can do per day but at least 30 minutes every day NO MATTER how busy I am
have a small basic conversations with my language exchange partner (who will probably speak extra slowly and clearly, because they know your language level) after one month
__________________________________
What are my goals?
have small-talks with native speakers in Italy
get around without using German or English at all. The worst part about this will be that they always start speaking German or English with me (I guess I don’t look Italian at all but you can see my profile picture soooo yeah I don’t know) and I have to tell them to stop trying to have a normal conversation with me so I can make the situation awkward and hard to understand for everyone with my broken Italian. :D Embarrassing moments I’m coming for you!
set my smartphone on Italian and actually understand the most of it
get a diary and use it in Italian without a dictionary
understand a few songs I like (going to learn a little bit vocab from my favourite songs to make it easier)
play a game like Sims and understand most of it (I wanted to use Skyrim but I guess everyday life vocab will be more easier to understand than the vocab about potions, killing dragons, magic spells, being a dragonborn, etc.)
I said I was going to use Memrise but I ended up using Duolingo for Turkish.
I am so excited and overwhelmed at the same time!! The blocks that duolingo prepares seem random but I’m actually able to form sentences within minutes of using the application.
In comparison to Memrise: Memrise presents information in a similar manner, the main difference is that Duolingo separates vocabulary from phrases. Memrise presents them both in the same bracket (level).
Also memrise repeats the vocabulary/sentence after you proceed to the next slide and Duolingo doesn’t. As an auditory learner it hinders my ability to retain what i just learned.
Lastly, the basics. Duolingo starts you with basic words - which I totally appreciate - however when memrise gives you the basics they start with letters and pronunciation. To me the latter is more helpful because I am able to read and pronounce more accurately.
I chose Turkish for my challenge language. I have no background in Turkish but I am starting to recognize grammar patterns and sentence structure.
So far the first three hours feels like the first week of the quarter. We’re on the right track I guess.
If you’re looking to practice a bit and remember your target language better… here are tons of free worksheets/workbooks for 34 languages (Japanese, Spanish, Korean, French, German, etc, etc.)
upfront & obvious disclaimer: account required
It’s the same type of “fill in the blank” workbook across all of their languages but the magic in actually rewriting things over and over is that the words end up sticking. Plus, there are English sections where you’ll have to force yourself to remember and write the word/phrase in the target language - which is even better for your memory (called active recall - forcing yourself to remember). I’m personally a big fan of this approach and I’d do similar to pass vocab quizzes in my HS & uni language classes.
because that app is so underrated and simply amazing for real life target language content practice! let me know if you’re interested and ill make an in depth post!
I received an ask requesting I check out the Memrise Korean course, so today I’m happy to bring you guys a review of their set up. :)
For those of you unfamiliar with Memrise, it’s a website (with iOS and Android app equivalents) that teaches mostly languages–though other topics can be found–using memory exercises and “gamification” to make learning fun. Memrise employs the use of mnemonics or “mems” to help the user learn and memorize words and phrases. In simpler terms, it’s just another SRS (spaced repetition software) program. There are no ads and all courses are free to use, but the user does have the option of upgrading to a “pro” account in order to access some specialized features. In addition to the official Memrise designed/curated courses, users can create their own courses/lists/mems for any topic they’d like. The official website is here: https://www.memrise.com/
This review is of the course as presented through the iOS app.
I actually quite like Memrise as a SRS program. I’ve had a pro account for years and I made use of the ability to create your own courses and use other users’ courses quite heavily. However, before today I never actually took a look at any of the official Memrise created language courses.
The description for the official Memrise Korean 1 course is as follows: Part 1 of the complete and inspirational mission to Memrise Korean. Learn to read the Korean script - perhaps the most perfectly satisfying writing system ever devised. Introduce yourself in Korean, get around Korea, and learn a bunch of useful colloquial Korean expressions to make people smile!
So I knew very well going into this that the course is not designed at all to teach you actual Korean grammar and how to use it. This course is to teach you vocabulary and useful phrases.
This is readily apparent once you get to the level selection screen. Curious, I clicked on a random level just to check and:
Yep. Phrases.
Starting from the beginning though the course begins by teaching the user Hangul. They use romanization, of course, but in conjunction with both a male and female speaker to do all of the audio. This is a good thing–I find that courses with audio generally have either a male or female voice, not both. Being able to hear the differences when using the same words/phrases is definitely a good thing. The other thing that struck me as odd with the course was the order in which they choose to teach the letters to the learner. Generally courses with start with either basic vowels that move into alphabetical order consonants, or they simply start with the letters in alphabetical order. There’s nothing wrong with learning the letters in any order you’d like (and I have yet to meet more than a handful of foreigners who actually know Korean alphabetical order off the top of their heads), I just found it strange that of all things, they chose to lead with the letter ㄹ.
But besides the audio, the way the course is designed around teaching Hangul isn’t that great. There’s no explanation that the letters are letters or how to put them together to form words. There’s no indication about needing to use ㅇ for singular vowels. In fact, the vowels are introduced on their own (eg: ㅏ, ㅗ, ㅡ, etc, without the null entirely). This is particularly frustrating as one of the first actual words the course teaches is “예”, immediately following the letter “ㅖ” and there’s a confusing muddle for a couple audio questions where the learner is asked for the meaning of “예” but the multiple choice answers contained both “예” and “ㅖ” so one was left to guess which one the audio was referencing.
As far as the course exercises go they’re pretty standard. There’s many different types of multiple choice questions including audio ones, but the exercise that stood out to me the most was the video audio questions:
Different native speakers come up in these videos and say a word or phrase, which the user then has to select from the options below (either in English, or Korean, depending on the exercise). This is great because it really gets the learner listening to various voices of people of different genders and ages. Varying the input means the learner gets used to the different ways people talk much faster.
The exercise I liked the least was the “fill in the blank” questions. I generally use Memrise on my computer, where the fill in the blank questions require the keyboard and are timed with a short countdown for the user to fill in the answer before it’s automatically marked wrong. This I feel is much better than the fill in the blank questions on the app:
On the app, the user is presented with preset keys to select the answer from. This isn’t the greatest because it becomes too easy for the user to rely on sight recognition instead of active recall–filling in the blank yourself helps you remember the answer better than just selecting it from a list of preset choices like this. There is an option to switch to the keyboard, but it’s way up at the top of the screen on the upper right and I can’t imagine a whole lot of people will be looking up there when the question and the answers are at the bottom of the screen.
After learning Hangul and some short phrases, I was introduced to my first important grammar point: the sentence particles -은/는. The app handled that pretty much exactly as I expected–with no explanation:
But Memrise isn’t designed to teach grammar and usage. Memrise is designed to teach you vocabulary words and everyday useful phrases. So I can’t exactly fault them for it.
My last point is actually a very important one: Memrise’s course doesn’t make distinctions for politeness levels of the words and phrases it teaches. For example all the phrases I was taught were in the informal-polite (verb/adjective conjugations ending with -요) but the first word it teaches for “I” is “나”, which is informal. And perhaps the biggest issue with the entire course: it teaches the user the word “당신” for the pronoun “you”. Don’t use 당신 when speaking to other people unless you want to offend them. There are times when using 당신 is appropriate, but just avoid using it if at all possible.
So to sum: Memrise’s course is not going to teach you Korean grammar, or how to speak Korean. It will do a poor job of teaching you Hangul, however it will do a better job of teaching you words and (reasonably) useful phrases but only if you already know enough Korean grammar to weed out the mistakes/faux pas contained therein.
If you want to learn grammar and how to actually use Korean instead of parroting sentences, check out an app like Lingodeer, or a coursebook like Korean Grammar in Use.
If you’re a beginner and want to learn more words in conjunction with your other learning, you can definitely use Memrise, but I would recommend finding a “Level 1″ course for one of the more popular Korean universities (Ehwa, Sogang, Yonsei, etc) and start learning vocab there as it’ll be geared more towards a beginners level.
There are also a number of user made courses on Memrise for idioms, slang, and so on for users of higher capabilities. :) So definitely check those out!
That’s it for this review! If you have any questions or want me to review something else, send me an ask!
