Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

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emk
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Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby emk » Fri Oct 20, 2017 2:25 pm

Normally I wouldn't post an article promoting a new language-learning course, especially not a course I haven't tried! But this article by Scott Chacon has an unusually realistic and sober take on the language learning process:

Scott Chacon wrote:The rare ones that did succeed under these circumstances were often found in the polyglot communities. Nearly everyone I read about (Benny Lewis, Gabriel Wyner, Luca Lampariello, Ashwin Purohit, etc) cobbled multiple tools together on their own. Even Duolingo’s own CEO, Luis von Ahn, recommends piecing together multiple tools when asked how to actually learn a language.

Not only that, but contrary to enthusiastic advertising and breathless blog posts you may have seen, it takes hundreds of hours of practice speaking with real humans to get to the point where you feel comfortable having normal conversations with native speakers.

Language learning is a marathon.

Like a marathon, if you have a coach and a plan and a team to help you, it’s not impossible and nearly anyone can do it. However, also like a marathon, there is no way to shortcut it. You can’t learn to run a marathon in a week if you don’t normally run. You have to physically change your body (in the case of language, your brain) and it’s not possible to do in less than several hundred hours. Not one of the famous polyglots in the world has ever figured out how to get to real fluency in less than that, and unfortunately you won’t either. If they’re fluent in three months, then invariably it means they’re practicing hard for 8 hours a day, every day.

Apparently he wants to make a single course that cobbles together all the resources you'd need to make it make it to B1 (or maybe a bit higher), without having to scrounge around like most of us do. I have no idea whether he's actually succeeded in doing that with Chatterbug, however. Still, it's a pretty interesting article and I'm happy to see that at least some online course creators understand the problem and speak about it realistically.
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mihaivancea
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Re: Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby mihaivancea » Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:06 pm

I'm currently using Chatterbug to learn German and I have to say I 'm quite happy with the results so far. The best thing is the brilliant way in each your individual study is complemented by the live lessons with native speakers. It's not cheap (https://chatterbug.com/en/learn-german), but to me it's worth it.
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Re: Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby Kraut » Wed Nov 15, 2017 11:23 pm

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mihaivancea
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Re: Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby mihaivancea » Sun Nov 19, 2017 2:42 pm

I asked their support, and they will introduce Spanish and French early next year.
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Re: Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby reineke » Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:52 pm

I would be wary of "tools" and convenient metaphors.

GitHub’s scandalized ex-CEO returns with Chatterbug

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/21/chatt ... -learning/
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mihaivancea
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Re: Creator of Chatterbug writes about language learning

Postby mihaivancea » Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:08 pm

reineke wrote:I would be wary of "tools" and convenient metaphors.

GitHub’s scandalized ex-CEO returns with Chatterbug

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/21/chatt ... -learning/


You have some doubts about the method used?
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