This is a transcript of one of my YouTube Videos – To keep up with my latest thoughts on language learning, subscribe to my YouTube Channel.

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann. Efficiency in language learning is extremely important. I learned that when studying Chinese 45 or 48 years ago. Because there’s so much time involved, even a 50% increase in efficiency has a big impact. And the faster you can learn the language, the more efficient and the more intense, the better you’re going to learn. That was my experience 48 years ago.

So how do we want to spend our time? I checked out Duolingo. Duolingo is extremely well designed, it’s fun, it’s like a game, so you’re playing a game and at the same time you’re discovering a language. You’re discovering the word for bread, eat, drink and cow, things like this. So is that an efficient way to learn a language? In my view, it has a big advantage in that it’s a gamified approach, it is fun and you do learn something. In terms of time efficiency, it’s not something that I would spend a lot of time with because my feeling is that efficient language learning consists of exposing yourself to word-dense material. The greater the density of words, the better, therefore, I prefer listening audio material to visual videos.

Whenever I’ve listened to a story or a novel in an audio book format and then watched the movie, I find the audio book format, especially if the text is available to me, much more intense and much more effective in terms of building vocabulary because building vocabulary is key. As I’ve said before, you don’t need one or two thousand words in order to speak a language, you need 10,000 words. You need lots of words. Believe me, I’ve been there. I’ve gone to a country with a thousand words and I got nowhere. Couldn’t understand what they were saying and they quickly switched to English on me or didn’t have the patience to stay with me.

So Duolingo, by all means, you should try it and I’d be interested in hearing other people’s impressions. I think it’s a good way to get started in a language, but also inefficient. It’s not only that the high word density material that I listen to and read is more efficient in terms of acquiring the language and getting used to the language, it’s also that it’s so much easier to organize. Duolingo, I have to sit in front of either my iPhone or computer and play that game, as enjoyable as it may be.

However, I have a visitor coming from the Czech Republic and I’ve been reviewing my Czech. I go on the Internet and download __________, some new episodes. I can read them on LingQ. I can listen to them while walking the dog, while driving. It’s a better use of my time. I can do it while doing other things. If I couldn’t simply listen for an hour or more a day, I couldn’t learn all these languages. It’s just the portability of listening that’s so powerful and then you couple it with reading. Here again, all of the material that I’ve downloaded from the Internet in Czech, I’ve now got it ready to go on my iPad so that I can do my LingQ offline on the plane. I should mention I have to fly to Edmonton tonight.

So in terms of efficiency, I see Duolingo as a great introduction to the language. I think the simple fact that books, reading and listing is just the most efficient way and when you have the opportunity you speak, but in the meantime you are able to spend free time, dead time, in a very efficient way simply by listening and reading.

I would look forward to your comments on Duolingo. I’ve only spent an hour on it. I checked some reviews on the Internet, there are people who have been on it for years and have much more in-depth things to say and you can check those out on the Internet, as well.

Thank you for listening, bye.

 

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