[2022-11-23] 100 days of learning
Today, I reached 100 days of using Duolingo to learn Brazilian Portuguese. Also this week, I finished in the top 3 in the Obsidian League and reached 750 Portuguese words learned. That's pretty cool.
Learning Portuguese is just as interesting today as it was on the first day I started back in August. One reason is that Duolingo is highly gamified. Gamification is "the process of turning an activity or task into a game or something resembling a game."
In Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World, game designer and researcher Jane McGonigal writes that "A game is an opportunity to focus our energy, with relentless optimism, at something we’re good at (or getting better at) and enjoy." Duolingo includes lots of repetition, which not only makes it possible for me to retain what I'm learning but also to get better at completing the challenges and earning rewards.
McGonigal explains that all games—regardless of genre or technological complexity—have four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.
- "The goal is the specific outcome that players will work to achieve…. The goal provides players with a sense of purpose."
- "The rules place limitations on how players can achieve the goal…. [T]he rules…unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking."
- "The feedback system tells players how close they are to achieving the goal. It can take the form of points, levels, a score, or a progress bar.… Real-time feedback serves as a promise to the players that the goal is definitely achievable, and it provides motivation to keep playing."
- "Finally, voluntary participation requires that everyone who is playing the game knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback…. [T]he freedom to enter or leave a game at will ensures that intentionally stressful and challenging work is experienced as [a] safe and pleasurable activity."
Duolingo presents many goals: finish a lesson, finalize a unit, maintain a streak, earn points and gems, climb the leaderboard, stay within the promotion zone to advance to a higher league, compete against or collaborate with friends, fulfill daily quests, acquire badges, complete challenges, take advantage of double-point periods.
Icons at the top of the app show me my streak of consecutive days of completing at least one lesson (currently 100), the number of gems I've acquired (currently 4199), which are needed to attain the highest level in each unit, and the number of lives I have (I try to maintain the maximum number of 5, practising to regain lives I lose each time I make an error). Tabs at the bottom of the app show me where I am in the learning path (currently Unit 24), my position relative to other learners in my league (currently 17th in the very competitive Diamond League), my profile (whom I follow and who follows me, my total points, and my achievements), my performance in various challenges and my badges, and a news feed from which I can share my achievements (such as finishing in the top three in the Obsidian League and learning 750 words).
The rules of the app are fairly consistent and increasingly predictable as I advance in my learning, making my voluntary participation safe and pleasurable.
Another reason learning Portuguese is rewarding is that I have been able to use it. I'm using it to communicate with my neighbour across the street, who comes from Brazil. We've developed a habit of writing completely bilingual, usually English first followed by Portuguese. This allows me to understand the communication and then to grasp the Portuguese. And although our verbal conversations are primarily in English (since her English is better than my Portuguese), I'm able to use the vocabulary I have, limited though it may be, when we do speak face to face. As well, I had a lovely conversation with my next-door neighbour, who also speaks Brazilian Portuguese. And I exchanged a few words in Portuguese with the woman who drew my blood at the cancer centre a few weeks back.
A shared language allows us to deepen our connection to others. Back in the early 2010s, I attended an international conference, meeting delegates from many countries. The representative from Chile spoke a little English, lots of Spanish, and a fair amount of French. So he and I spoke French, which enabled us to relate to each other in ways that would have been impossible with only English in which to communicate.
The article Top Ten Reasons to Learn Languages presents a number of arguments in favour of learning a language, the most compelling of which is to deepen your connection to other cultures.
Language is the most direct connection to other cultures. Being able to communicate in another language exposes us to and fosters an appreciation for the traditions, religions, arts, and history of the people associated with that language. Greater understanding, in turn, promotes greater tolerance, empathy, and acceptance of others—with studies showing that children who have studied another language are more open toward and express more positive attitudes toward the culture associated with that language.
I find this fascinating.
Learning Portuguese has been an enriching experience, one that I hope to continue.
