Welcome to the language jungle, friends. Raven and I, as some of you may already know are foreign language junkies. Between the two of us we are dabbling in all the languages I greeted you in above. See if you can guess them all before you get to the bottom of this post where I'll list the answers.
During college I majored in languages and learned to near fluency both Russian and Spanish. I have been out of college for more time than I care to admit now and most of my Russian is gone. Thankfully a 6 month immersion in a Spanish speaking country has paid off for me and my Spanish is still near fluency. But it can be hard to maintain vocabulary and comfort in a language when you don't speak it much. The practice I get these days is minimal so I was looking for a way to keep in practice and maintain my vocabulary.
Turns out there are a million apps for that and thanks to Crow I have access to a tablet so I can download all the apps. I get to spend a few minutes every day going through a lesson and reviewing vocabulary for Spanish. I also, of course, found a whole bunch of new languages to experiment with. Though I know studying multiple languages at once isn't the way to get fluent in any of them I am hopeful that I can at least get to a conversational point in a few of them (especially the ones that are closely linked with Spanish).
Even if all I do is learn a few new words and get to see the way other languages are constructed that will be enough for me. It is enough to stay engaged with learning for the moment. If any of you know any good apps for language learning please share them with me! I would love to have more ways to learn.
Raven and I have also been brushing up on our geography skills through apps. Turns out we're both pretty okay at world geography, but we have some definite problem areas... like most of Africa. And a good chunk of central Asia. It's pretty sad how little I know about both areas, but I have to start somewhere and knowing where I need work is the first step.
What are some areas of world history or geography that are a blank for you all? How many countries do you think you could fill in on the map? Half? Two thirds?
Here's that list: Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, German, Swedish, and Irish.
I've been playing the freerice.com quizzes for countries and flags, which had been super helpful. They have works capitols too, and I wish they did one for heads of state, though that's have to be updated more frequently.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had much luck in finding a language app that actually make me feel like I'm improving/maintaining any of my languages... Everything's either for complete beginners or sick behind dubious pay walls. Any suggestions?
I do like freerice!
ReplyDeleteI actually talk a bit about this in my latest post. If you're looking for apps for Chinese specifically, that's a bit harder, but I'm using something called ChineseSkill. Creative name, right? It's the one with a panda icon, in the app store. So far it's not been bad. -Raven
I've been fooling around with duolingo and tried out ChineseSkill. Thanks so much for mentioning them! I'd forgotten how much I miss languages. I'm now stalking all of you on Duolingo.
DeleteChineseSkill has been pretty good for review so far, not sure how well I'm retaining the new vocabulary, though. I guess there's only so much you can do with like 15 minutes a day.