“Learning New Languages”- Stepfan Hospedales

This creative activity I decided to do was really because of this recent coffeehouse prompt. Thanks to Professor. Scanlan mentioning his own creative activity , I decided to try my hand in duolingo to learn a little of Spanish and Japanese. Duolingo is a wonderful, free app that offers lessons of  many different languages in a interactive way. The app challenges you in a creative way, in sense that you want to really think about the language you are studying. You have a limited number of hearts, and every time you get a wrong answer, you lose a heart. When you are out of hearts, you can either buy more hearts with these special gems(acquired by completing the lessons), buy the unlimited heart package, or wait until it refills. It also gives different variations of questions for the same word. I personally like that, because it helps me understand the word, to the point I know what it is if I were to hear or see it somewhere else. 

The reason I specifically choose to learn about Spanish and Japanese because I’m always immerse in those two languages daily. I listen to reggae-ton  music a lot, and I always found it weird that I could like something that I can’t understand. Additionally, I wanted to learn Japanese because I watched these Japanese cartoons(commonly known as anime) also daily , and I just feel if I can learn it I don’t have to look at the subtitles 24/7.  Duolingo, as great as it is isn’t going to help me learn these languages fully, but it will definitely make the process easier, and fun.