There are 1.8 billion people in the world right now trying to learn another language, are you one of them?

So how's it going, are you fluent yet?

Odds are you probably have tried in lots of different ways (high school, college, Duolingo, Rosetta Stone, etc) but it hasn’t worked out so far.

You still aren’t fluent! How tiring…

Why is it that you can remember some grammar rules or some vocab but not actually use anything in conversation?

Why is it that you can write better than you can speak?

And finally, why do you always say that you want to learn another language but you think you just haven’t tried hard enough yet?

It’s not your fault! We believe that traditional second-language teaching (in classrooms, virtual and in-person) as well as the new apps on the block have ultimately failed you on three fronts: Communication, Retention, and Motivation.

Problem 1: Communication

This is learning to actually speak and interact in the target language.

Everything available to you right now does not focus on this, simply because it’s easier not to. It’s easier for teachers and AI to assess how you’re doing if things are written.

This is why on Duolingo it’ll take you a while into learning anything to even begin talking so you’ll see forums like this: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/17907081/Do-I-Ever-Start-Talking-in-the-Language-I-am-Learning

But language is mostly spoken, so how are you supposed to learn a language without speaking?

Problem 2: Retention

You have to remember what you’ve learned! There is a not-so-secret secret to memory... context!

Hebbian learning tell us that if you learn something in a specific context, you will later remember it only if you're in that context again. That means that decontextualized learning will be useless to retrieve right when you need it while talking with someone! So what contexts does language happen in? Socio-cultural ones.

That means stories, people! Narratives! Rich, dramatic, social interactions! Think Euphoria or think of the complete opposite of Duolingo’s example sentences that occur in narrative black holes:

Who is this girl? Why does she have so many spiders? In what situation would you realistically need to say this? Other than absurdism for absurdisms’ sake, how are you supposed to remember this?

Problem 3: Motivation

Language is a big, complex, messy thing to acquire, so whatever you use to get you use to get it has to keep you motivated for years.

Have you ever downloaded Duolingo? Sure, lots of people have! But have you ever finished an entire language tree? Nah, this is reserved for the extremely self-motivated few.

For the rest of us ... we need to be tricked, and focusing on language learning instead of scrolling on instagram or twitter has to be some addictive-level trickery.

Your attention has to be won. And it won’t be won by boring translations or rote memorization of conjugation tables, even if they are gamified.

So why take only aspects of games to the learning sphere if they are so addictive and motivating...

why not just make a game? ; )