Education Assignment 3 AM

Learning Spanish through language learning apps

Sample Student

Nova Southeastern University

TSOL 520 Second Language Learning: Theory, Methods and Evaluation

Dr. Rashid Moore

February 10, 2023

Learning Spanish through language learning apps

When I was tasked with selecting a language to learn in our TSOL 520 class, it only made sense to pick something that would be practical in my job as a Special Education Teacher. In the South Florida region, Spanish continues to be the most common language. While I encounter students from all different backgrounds, “Latinos are the second largest racial and ethnic group in Florida at 26% of the population” (Ahn, 2022). Latin American countries continue to suffer through harsh dictatorships and the struggle for their basic rights which leads many of them to migrate to a place known for freedom: America. Schools, especially in South Florida, are now full of students from Latin American countries, many of whom have no background in English. There is no doubt that these numbers will continue to grow over the years, which is why it was so important for me to continue learning Spanish.

I took 4 years of Spanish in college and had gotten a good understanding of everything, but I was by no means fluent. I realize now how much I have forgotten already. The first app I used to study Spanish in this class was Duolingo. As I went through it, the language slowly started coming back to me, but this assignment has motivated me to keep learning Spanish so I don’t lose everything I learned. Duolingo was my favorite app, and it has grown immensely since the last time I used it. I especially enjoyed the feature called Duolingo Stories. You could pick from any of the books, and it would read the stories aloud to you and ask you questions about it as you went through it. Through this feature you are able to not only hear pronunciation but also learn new words and be checked on your understanding. I also prefer Duolingo because it allows you to practice actual sentences and vocabulary words that are commonly used in that language. I feel as if it gives much more of a basis for holding a conversation in comparison with my other language app. I like that I can choose categories I am interested in learning and that the questions get harder as I progress through. Furthermore, I think Duolingo is also very beneficial to my learning of grammar. Grammar was always one of my most problematic areas in my learning of Spanish, but the repetition and explanations really help me understand the content and make it stick. Overall, I enjoyed using Duolingo and all of the different features they included to make learning Spanish more fun.

The second language learning app I used was HiNative. This app has a great concept that allows you to connect with people all over the world, but it wasn’t entirely helpful in me learning the language. At the beginning of our language study, I got answers for most of the questions but more frequently I have been getting very few responses. I also felt it was difficult for me to form questions about speaking the language, so it was much harder for me to learn something in comparison to Duolingo. I did learn some interesting things about Spain though and interacting with people from Spain was definitely an experience unlike any other. Truly I don’t think there is any better way to learn a language than learning from people who speak it, but I just didn’t feel like I progressed in my ability to speak the language fluently. I do have a greater understanding of how people are in Spain along with things that are common in their culture so for this reason, I think that HiNative served more as a cultural reference than a language learning reference.

Since small talk in America involves asking things like “how are you?” and receiving the same automatically generated response from everyone which is “I’m good.”, I was curious if it was the same way in Spain. So, I asked what is commonly said in passing or small talk. I got a couple of responses, but the general idea was that most people are genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. From a couple of informants, I gathered that it is most common to talk about the weather and ask about a person’s parents in conversations (See Figure 1). This is a significant difference from America where we don’t expect people to talk about how they’re really feeling in small conversations. From talking with sjv, (personal communication, September 2, 2022) I also learned that people in Spain do not like talking about their jobs due to an abundance of stress from working. They also followed up with that and said that many people are not proud of the jobs they have so they would rather not talk about it (See Figure 2). Phrases like “hello” and “how are you” are still commonly used in Spain, however there is much more intention put into the conversation.

One of the ways that HiNative really helped me was that of understanding differences between both the English and Spanish dialect. I had remembered that the sentence structure between English and Spanish was very different, so I decided to ask a question that I remember being taught in high school. The question I posed was “How do you say the yellow bus in Spanish?” to which pol324 (personal communication, September 22, 2022) responded “El autobus es amarillo.” In this case, we see that in English the adjective, yellow, comes before the noun, bus, while in Spanish it is the opposite (See Figure 3). I found this interesting, so I did a little more research and I learned that this rule is often broken. The only time an adjective goes after the noun is when those words are describing but demonstrative adjectives, possessive adjectives, and numbers all go before the noun, which is the same as the English language (Erichsen, 2018).

Another difference that was taught to me were the rules relating to grammar in the Spanish language. I posed another question asking what one of the hardest parts of learning Spanish was to which aMC_ (personal communication, September 5, 2022) responded that grammar was in fact one of the hardest things to learn since there is a different ending for each person depending on who you are talking about. This also leads to the subject being omitted which is not something that is common in English (Figure 4). aMC_ also goes on to explain a major distinction between feminine and masculine objects, resulting in the ending changing to an “a” if it is feminine or an “o” if it is masculine. These same concepts are also reinforced on Duolingo with some of the first lessons being taught involve grammatical rules and feminine and masculine rules.

While there are many differences between Spanish and English, there are also many similarities that can make the learning process smoother. The first similarity is that they both have the exact same alphabet, with the addition of accent marks on certain letters in Spanish. The letters are not pronounced the same, but the alphabet was something that was rather easy to learn for me. There are also a lot of words in Spanish that sound very similar to their meanings in English which are known as cognates. paellarica (personal communication, September 22, 2022) gives a couple examples as to what these cognates are such as diccionario which means dictionary and panda which is the same in both English and Spanish (See Figure 5). Both languages have a large percentage of roots that come from Latin which is why similarities like these can be seen. They also explain that word order is generally similar when it comes to forming subject + verb + object sentences. Lastly, forming plurals is the same as all you must do is add an -s to the end of the word. These techniques all relate to the foundation of the language which made it easier to learn.

Next, I was curious to learn more about the culture in Spain. I have always thought about taking a trip there to be immersed in the language so knowing more about their culture will be extremely beneficial to me. Religion is something that is important to me, so I decided to ask what the most common religions are in Spain and to my surprise MattChoman (personal communication, September 11, 2022) explained that it was Christian but specifically Catholic, which is what I follow (See Figure 6). After that, I decided to ask and see what was considered disrespectful in their culture to which Blanca342 (personal communication, September 27, 2022) said that included burping, talking with food in your mouth, and interrupting someone when they are speaking (See Figure 7). This again surprised me because these things are also considered disrespectful and taught to kids in the United States from a young age.

Lastly, I wanted to learn more about the school system in Spain and the culture that surrounds it. The first question I asked was about how school was in Spain and whether or not they had programs for special education students. Javier-777 (personal communication, August 30, 2022) responded and explained to me that there are public and private schools that are all equipped to teach special education students as well (See Figure 8). They also added that there are schools in Spain called “concertadas” to which I followed up with a question as to what those were. Javier-777 responded that they are private schools as well that receive money from the government. I also asked a question regarding holidays to make sure I am able to accommodate any students that might miss school for those reasons. The most important holidays that various informants shared with me were Feria, Semana Santa, and Navidad (See Figure 9). After doing some more research on these holidays I learned that Semana Santa is a weeklong celebration leading up to Easter commemorating the Passion of Christ. The week is full of people parading through the streets with large displays and colorful attire. Two weeks after Easter is when Feria starts which is the largest annual party in Spain. It is filled with dancing and drinking, most days staying out late or all night. Lastly, they have Navidad which is Christmas. Religion does seem to have great importance to the people in Spain as many of their most important holidays revolve around it.

After spending some time learning on Duolingo and HiNative I worked up the courage to start answering some questions about Spain myself. FABIANA_OLIVERA (personal communication, September 13, 2022) posted a question to HiNative asking how to say “Como esta tu dia?” in English. I knew the answer, so I was able to help her learn just a small phrase in English (See Figure 10). I also felt more comfortable posting audio after some time practicing so I posted some audio saying “Hola soy un estudiante de primer ano en la Universidad estudiando educacion.” Someone from Spain responded with audio and informed me that using “estudio” was more native than “estudiando” (See Figure 11). Overall, I had an great time learning about Spain’s culture as well as gaining some of my former knowledge of the language back. I found this assignment very interesting because it really immersed me into different cultures and languages. I truly have been inspired to continue my learning of Spanish as I think it will be extremely beneficial to me throughout the rest of my life, especially if I decide to continue teaching in South Florida for many years to come. With the knowledge I have acquired, I feel confident in having small conversations in this second language. Although I am still not fluent, I think parents of ELLs with Spanish as a first language will appreciate any efforts I make to communicate with them in their home language.

References

Ahn, T. (2022, August 17). 15 facts about Latino well-being in Florida. Latino Policy & Politics Institute. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://latino.ucla.edu/research/15-facts-latinos-florida/

Duolingo. (2022). Duolingo-Language Lessons. (Version 6.182.0) [Mobile App]. App store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duolingo-language-lessons/id570060128

Erichsen, G. (2018, December 23). Do Spanish adjectives go before or after the noun? ThoughtCo. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/adjectives-in-their-place-3078145

Lang-8, Inc. (2022). HiNative-Language Learning. (Version 16.6.1) [Mobile App]. App store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hinative-languagelearning/id923920480

Appendix

Figure 1

Insight into Small Talk in Spain

Figure 2

The Topic of Jobs in Spain

Figure 3

Spanish Adjective + Noun Placement

Figure 4

Difficulties of Learning Spanish

Figure 5

English and Spanish Similarities

Figure 6

Religion in Spain

Figure 7

Disrespectful Actions in Spanish Culture

Figure 8

Schools in Spain

Figure 9

Holidays in Spain

Figure 10

Helping a Native Spanish Speaker with English

Figure 11

Audio in Spanish

Learning Spanish through language learning apps

Sample Student

Nova Southeastern University

TSOL 520 Second Language Learning: Theory, Methods and Evaluation

Dr. Rashid Moore

February 10, 2023

Learning Spanish through language learning apps

When I was tasked with selecting a language to learn in our TSOL 520 class, it only made sense to pick something that would be practical in my job as a Special Education Teacher. In the South Florida region, Spanish continues to be the most common language. While I encounter students from all different backgrounds, “Latinos are the second largest racial and ethnic group in Florida at 26% of the population” (Ahn, 2022). Latin American countries continue to suffer through harsh dictatorships and the struggle for their basic rights which leads many of them to migrate to a place known for freedom: America. Schools, especially in South Florida, are now full of students from Latin American countries, many of whom have no background in English. There is no doubt that these numbers will continue to grow over the years, which is why it was so important for me to continue learning Spanish.

I took 4 years of Spanish in college and had gotten a good understanding of everything, but I was by no means fluent. I realize now how much I have forgotten already. The first app I used to study Spanish in this class was Duolingo. As I went through it, the language slowly started coming back to me, but this assignment has motivated me to keep learning Spanish so I don’t lose everything I learned. Duolingo was my favorite app, and it has grown immensely since the last time I used it. I especially enjoyed the feature called Duolingo Stories. You could pick from any of the books, and it would read the stories aloud to you and ask you questions about it as you went through it. Through this feature you are able to not only hear pronunciation but also learn new words and be checked on your understanding. I also prefer Duolingo because it allows you to practice actual sentences and vocabulary words that are commonly used in that language. I feel as if it gives much more of a basis for holding a conversation in comparison with my other language app. I like that I can choose categories I am interested in learning and that the questions get harder as I progress through. Furthermore, I think Duolingo is also very beneficial to my learning of grammar. Grammar was always one of my most problematic areas in my learning of Spanish, but the repetition and explanations really help me understand the content and make it stick. Overall, I enjoyed using Duolingo and all of the different features they included to make learning Spanish more fun.

The second language learning app I used was HiNative. This app has a great concept that allows you to connect with people all over the world, but it wasn’t entirely helpful in me learning the language. At the beginning of our language study, I got answers for most of the questions but more frequently I have been getting very few responses. I also felt it was difficult for me to form questions about speaking the language, so it was much harder for me to learn something in comparison to Duolingo. I did learn some interesting things about Spain though and interacting with people from Spain was definitely an experience unlike any other. Truly I don’t think there is any better way to learn a language than learning from people who speak it, but I just didn’t feel like I progressed in my ability to speak the language fluently. I do have a greater understanding of how people are in Spain along with things that are common in their culture so for this reason, I think that HiNative served more as a cultural reference than a language learning reference.

Since small talk in America involves asking things like “how are you?” and receiving the same automatically generated response from everyone which is “I’m good.”, I was curious if it was the same way in Spain. So, I asked what is commonly said in passing or small talk. I got a couple of responses, but the general idea was that most people are genuinely interested in what the other person has to say. From a couple of informants, I gathered that it is most common to talk about the weather and ask about a person’s parents in conversations (See Figure 1). This is a significant difference from America where we don’t expect people to talk about how they’re really feeling in small conversations. From talking with sjv, (personal communication, September 2, 2022) I also learned that people in Spain do not like talking about their jobs due to an abundance of stress from working. They also followed up with that and said that many people are not proud of the jobs they have so they would rather not talk about it (See Figure 2). Phrases like “hello” and “how are you” are still commonly used in Spain, however there is much more intention put into the conversation.

One of the ways that HiNative really helped me was that of understanding differences between both the English and Spanish dialect. I had remembered that the sentence structure between English and Spanish was very different, so I decided to ask a question that I remember being taught in high school. The question I posed was “How do you say the yellow bus in Spanish?” to which pol324 (personal communication, September 22, 2022) responded “El autobus es amarillo.” In this case, we see that in English the adjective, yellow, comes before the noun, bus, while in Spanish it is the opposite (See Figure 3). I found this interesting, so I did a little more research and I learned that this rule is often broken. The only time an adjective goes after the noun is when those words are describing but demonstrative adjectives, possessive adjectives, and numbers all go before the noun, which is the same as the English language (Erichsen, 2018).

Another difference that was taught to me were the rules relating to grammar in the Spanish language. I posed another question asking what one of the hardest parts of learning Spanish was to which aMC_ (personal communication, September 5, 2022) responded that grammar was in fact one of the hardest things to learn since there is a different ending for each person depending on who you are talking about. This also leads to the subject being omitted which is not something that is common in English (Figure 4). aMC_ also goes on to explain a major distinction between feminine and masculine objects, resulting in the ending changing to an “a” if it is feminine or an “o” if it is masculine. These same concepts are also reinforced on Duolingo with some of the first lessons being taught involve grammatical rules and feminine and masculine rules.

While there are many differences between Spanish and English, there are also many similarities that can make the learning process smoother. The first similarity is that they both have the exact same alphabet, with the addition of accent marks on certain letters in Spanish. The letters are not pronounced the same, but the alphabet was something that was rather easy to learn for me. There are also a lot of words in Spanish that sound very similar to their meanings in English which are known as cognates. paellarica (personal communication, September 22, 2022) gives a couple examples as to what these cognates are such as diccionario which means dictionary and panda which is the same in both English and Spanish (See Figure 5). Both languages have a large percentage of roots that come from Latin which is why similarities like these can be seen. They also explain that word order is generally similar when it comes to forming subject + verb + object sentences. Lastly, forming plurals is the same as all you must do is add an -s to the end of the word. These techniques all relate to the foundation of the language which made it easier to learn.

Next, I was curious to learn more about the culture in Spain. I have always thought about taking a trip there to be immersed in the language so knowing more about their culture will be extremely beneficial to me. Religion is something that is important to me, so I decided to ask what the most common religions are in Spain and to my surprise MattChoman (personal communication, September 11, 2022) explained that it was Christian but specifically Catholic, which is what I follow (See Figure 6). After that, I decided to ask and see what was considered disrespectful in their culture to which Blanca342 (personal communication, September 27, 2022) said that included burping, talking with food in your mouth, and interrupting someone when they are speaking (See Figure 7). This again surprised me because these things are also considered disrespectful and taught to kids in the United States from a young age.

Lastly, I wanted to learn more about the school system in Spain and the culture that surrounds it. The first question I asked was about how school was in Spain and whether or not they had programs for special education students. Javier-777 (personal communication, August 30, 2022) responded and explained to me that there are public and private schools that are all equipped to teach special education students as well (See Figure 8). They also added that there are schools in Spain called “concertadas” to which I followed up with a question as to what those were. Javier-777 responded that they are private schools as well that receive money from the government. I also asked a question regarding holidays to make sure I am able to accommodate any students that might miss school for those reasons. The most important holidays that various informants shared with me were Feria, Semana Santa, and Navidad (See Figure 9). After doing some more research on these holidays I learned that Semana Santa is a weeklong celebration leading up to Easter commemorating the Passion of Christ. The week is full of people parading through the streets with large displays and colorful attire. Two weeks after Easter is when Feria starts which is the largest annual party in Spain. It is filled with dancing and drinking, most days staying out late or all night. Lastly, they have Navidad which is Christmas. Religion does seem to have great importance to the people in Spain as many of their most important holidays revolve around it.

After spending some time learning on Duolingo and HiNative I worked up the courage to start answering some questions about Spain myself. FABIANA_OLIVERA (personal communication, September 13, 2022) posted a question to HiNative asking how to say “Como esta tu dia?” in English. I knew the answer, so I was able to help her learn just a small phrase in English (See Figure 10). I also felt more comfortable posting audio after some time practicing so I posted some audio saying “Hola soy un estudiante de primer ano en la Universidad estudiando educacion.” Someone from Spain responded with audio and informed me that using “estudio” was more native than “estudiando” (See Figure 11). Overall, I had an great time learning about Spain’s culture as well as gaining some of my former knowledge of the language back. I found this assignment very interesting because it really immersed me into different cultures and languages. I truly have been inspired to continue my learning of Spanish as I think it will be extremely beneficial to me throughout the rest of my life, especially if I decide to continue teaching in South Florida for many years to come. With the knowledge I have acquired, I feel confident in having small conversations in this second language. Although I am still not fluent, I think parents of ELLs with Spanish as a first language will appreciate any efforts I make to communicate with them in their home language.

References

Ahn, T. (2022, August 17). 15 facts about Latino well-being in Florida. Latino Policy & Politics Institute. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://latino.ucla.edu/research/15-facts-latinos-florida/

Duolingo. (2022). Duolingo-Language Lessons. (Version 6.182.0) [Mobile App]. App store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duolingo-language-lessons/id570060128

Erichsen, G. (2018, December 23). Do Spanish adjectives go before or after the noun? ThoughtCo. Retrieved September 28, 2022, from https://www.thoughtco.com/adjectives-in-their-place-3078145

Lang-8, Inc. (2022). HiNative-Language Learning. (Version 16.6.1) [Mobile App]. App store. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hinative-languagelearning/id923920480

Appendix

Figure 1

Insight into Small Talk in Spain

Figure 2

The Topic of Jobs in Spain

Figure 3

Spanish Adjective + Noun Placement

Figure 4

Difficulties of Learning Spanish

Figure 5

English and Spanish Similarities

Figure 6

Religion in Spain

Figure 7

Disrespectful Actions in Spanish Culture

Figure 8

Schools in Spain

Figure 9

Holidays in Spain

Figure 10

Helping a Native Spanish Speaker with English

Figure 11

Audio in Spanish