麻豆传媒

IT WAS time to say tawa pona, or farewell in a language most of us had never heard of 48 hours before. I had joined a group of 17 language enthusiasts who signed up to learn a new way of communicating in just two days. It seemed a lofty goal, but by the end of the experience, we were all reasonably fluent.

As someone who flunked French and German in my teens, the idea that I could pick up a new language so quickly was a revelation. I had labelled myself a lifelong monoglot, and, like many others who never took to languages at school, was discouraged by the idea that once the precious easy-learning window of childhood has passed, the task of mastering a new language becomes an uphill struggle.

Research has now dispelled that notion. The brain does get rewired as you age, and kids do grow up surrounded for much of the day by the language they want to acquire, but being an adult does have advantages when it comes to learning. One of them is probably in your pocket right now.

鈥淭echnology is really the way that learning is going,鈥� says , who studies memory and learning at University College London. Gone are the days of parroting stock phrases from a chalkboard. Mobile devices and the internet are offering us adaptive, personalised ways to absorb more information and make the most of every spare second. 鈥淟earning is coming out of the classroom and into the big wide world where people are much more in control,鈥� says Potts.

The idea that technology can fast-track us to fluency during stolen moments in our busy lives is an attractive one. My two-day boot camp to learn an artificial language called Toki Pona made use of an app called Memrise 鈥� a kind of intelligent flash-card deck that taps into the latest findings in cognitive science to make learning vocabulary easier. It bills itself as 鈥渢he ultimate memorisation tool for language鈥�, and has 5 million users. Another language app, Duolingo, one of the most popular, has accrued 105 million registered users since it launched in 2011, and there are many other similar tools out there (see 鈥�Teacher in your pocket鈥�). Such is their popularity that several of the companies behind the apps are now hoping to get their tests approved as recognised language certificates. But does the technology work, and can people really multitask their way to being multilingual?

Listen to Hannah speaking Toki Pona and see if you can recognise the phrase:

It鈥檚 no secret that children tend to find it easier than adults to pick up language skills. Part of that is because children鈥檚 brains are tuned to discern the sounds of any language, allowing them to develop the right accent. But that ability doesn鈥檛 last forever, and later in life clumsy accents are hard to shake.

That doesn鈥檛 mean we should lose heart. There are other reasons why children are quick on the uptake, and insights into the way adults think and learn can help technology recreate the benefits. For a start, kids have adults correcting them whenever they err. Adults are more likely to learn new words through study, and tend to rely on self-testing instead.

This is one area where technology can step in. Testing not only helps us find out what we don鈥檛 know, but is itself a good way to make words stick. Without a top-up, the strength of memories can halve within a day or two of learning something. After this we continue to forget at a less dramatic rate for some time.

But when is best to test yourself? Test too soon and the benefit might be wasted; too late and you鈥檒l have to do some relearning. In 2008, psychologists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, put testing to the test. They found that each exam gives your memory that weakens over time. For optimal learning, you need to be tested soon after first studying, and then at carefully timed and ever expanding intervals (see graph). Using this knowledge, the team developed algorithms for optimal test scheduling.

Several companies are trying to capitalise on this idea. Memrise, for instance, shows you a word, then immediately tests you on it. The app also sends notifications to tell you when to practise to boost your decaying memories.

This kind of regular testing was a key part of our first morning learning Toki Pona. But while such drilling certainly gets some words stuck in your head, we still spent much of that time getting things wrong. Toki Pona only has 120 words 鈥� creator Sonja Lang designed it to simplify her thoughts 鈥� but getting to grips with even a simple language is a tall order before lunch.

Memorable mistakes

Unknown to us, making mistakes so soon might have been useful. The accepted wisdom suggests that getting things wrong hinders learning. 鈥淲rong answers can be quite deleterious for memory because you run the danger of storing them,鈥� says Ed Cooke, co-founder of Memrise.

But it鈥檚 time to rethink this idea, says Potts, whose latest research implies that we鈥檇 do well to err more often. Her team asked people to guess the meanings of Basque words. None of the participants knew the language, so their guesses tended to be wildly wrong. However, in a subsequent test than a group who just read translations of each word.

鈥淎s long as you get feedback then there doesn鈥檛 seem to be any harm in making errors, and in fact it鈥檚 probably better for memory,鈥� Potts says. She reasons that a desire to know the right answer after making a wrong guess means people pay more attention to the feedback, which creates stronger memories.

鈥淭here鈥檚 no harm in making errors 鈥� in fact it鈥檚 probably better for memory鈥�

The potential embarrassment of messing up renders many adults mute when abroad. But testing yourself with an app, chatting to strangers over social media or using a foreign language blogging platform like Lang-8 鈥� where native speakers correct your errors 鈥� all provide a non-judgemental environment for making mistakes.

Our Toki Pona learning marathon rivalled another advantage that children ostensibly have over adults. Kids spend lots of time immersed in a new language. The turning point for us came on the second morning, when we banned English. There was awkward silence at first, but we soon began to venture phrases and were forced to get creative. Coffee was 鈥渢elo pimaje wawa鈥�, which means powerful dark liquid.

But according to Katie Nielson, chief education officer of Voxy, which has a digital tool for English learners, immersion might not be ideal for adults. 鈥淚t鈥檚 impossible to learn a second language the way you learn a first language because your brain is structured differently,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f you take adults who don鈥檛 know anything and you put them into an environment where everyone is speaking this new language, they鈥檙e not going to learn it. They need to have it offered to them at a level that they can understand.鈥�

Part of the reason might be because adults can think about their use of language in a way that children can鈥檛. This helps with learning vocabulary. Children are learning new concepts at the same time as they鈥檙e learning how to express them. For adults, when it comes to learning the word for love, say, in another language, there鈥檚 no need to build the concept of love from scratch; you just attach a new label to your existing association. Love is still love in Sweden even if it is called 办盲谤濒别办.

Listen below to learn some basic phrases in Toki Pona

But too much thinking about language can make learning a new grammar tougher. In one recent study, researchers asked two groups of people to listen to an artificial language. One group was told to pay attention to the words. The other was given tasks like colouring as a distraction. Although both groups picked up the rules governing word order, those who had working out which out of three categories a novel word would belong to.

All this hints that the best approach might be a combination of techniques. If there are some aspects that we pick up more easily without overthinking them, apps that allow you to learn passively 鈥� for instance by watching a foreign film 鈥� could be just the ticket. When it comes to grammar, some digital tools can make learning more implicit.

Estonian physicist Mait M眉ntel was working at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, when he realised he wasn鈥檛 interacting with his French colleagues. But learning French was a daunting prospect. To make the task more manageable, he wrote algorithms that would adapt to his strengths and weaknesses as he learned. The system starts off with simple sentences, getting you to fill in easy nouns or basic present-tense verbs, but gets more challenging as you improve, adjusting the example sentences to make you practise the things you鈥檙e worst at more frequently. 鈥淚t constantly calculates in real time what you should do to be most efficient,鈥� says M眉ntel.

The method worked for him. 鈥淚 learned for a couple of months, then passed the national examination of French that usually people take after learning for 10 years in school,鈥� he says. M眉ntel is now one of a team developing the program, called , promising to get people speaking French in 200 hours or less.

So, app-based learning can be effective, and what鈥檚 more, it鈥檚 enjoyable. Our Toki Pona marathon proved the power of games in language learning. How do you describe a spider in a language that only has 120 words? We played Pictionary, hangman, charades 鈥� anything we could think of that might help. That interaction and competition was a boon, so it comes as no surprise that many apps use levels and badges to keep learners keen.

Research suggests that , but with games specifically designed to teach language, the bells and whistles can be distracting. In one study, people who watched an interactive language game being played than those who actually played it. The cognitive burden of playing and learning was too great.

But what of other games? Dionne Palmer of the University of California, Davis, looked at whether it would be possible to use the online multiplayer game World Of Warcraft to learn Spanish, just by changing the location settings. After 370 hours of playing over eight months, she improved her Spanish literacy skills to an extent equivalent to two academic terms of classroom instruction, or roughly 200 hours. It鈥檚 a major time commitment, but if you are playing anyway, just switch your settings and learn.

Enjoyment can also come from tapping into the endless online content aiming to give learners a choice of relevant material. Nielson says this maintains motivation because the learned skills seem relevant, and providing people with material tailored to their interests can also help them decipher unfamiliar words.

With so many factors influencing how we learn, it鈥檚 not easy to identify the best mix of tools to suit a learner鈥檚 needs. 鈥淲e tend to study techniques in isolation and we don鈥檛 know the effect of combining them,鈥� says Potts. But with millions of users, apps provide a mine of information about what works.

Listen to Hannah explain how to get creative when using Toki Pona:

Memrise recently launched a competition to figure out the most effective way to use a single hour of study time. And Voxy has begun a partnership with the University of Maryland, using tests to measure learners鈥� working memory and preferred learning styles in order to better personalise instruction.

The big question is whether the skills gleaned from digital tools translate to the real world, or whether people鈥檚 language scores improve simply because they get better at using the technology itself. That鈥檚 hard to test, and so far relatively little research has been done. One way is to pit the technology against traditional standards. Last year, Roumen Vesselinov of the City University of New York and his colleagues showed that, on average, Duolingo users took 34 hours to cover the material needed to pass one semester of a . 鈥淲hat seems to matter most is not how much you do, but how regularly,鈥� he says. The team is now conducting studies on other apps.

鈥淲hat seems to matter most is not how much practice you do, but how regularly鈥�

This kind of independent evaluation is important not just for casual learners, but also because the technology is catching the eye of formal educators. 鈥淚 am constantly getting questions from school district representatives looking to buy language apps,鈥� says Vesselinov. 鈥淎ll of them want efficacy measures for the most popular apps.鈥�

Companies behind the technologies also want to establish their credentials by having users gain recognised language qualifications. Duolingo, for example, has set up a paid-for testing service, and Voxy and another popular platform called Busuu have deals with Pearson, a company that sets one test for English as a foreign language, accepted by governments and universities.

From personal experience, I can say that digital tools are making language learning fun and engaging, and that they can give you the confidence to at least give it a try. I gave up learning Toki Pona (along with my fears about remaining a monoglot), and applied the same tools and techniques to Swedish.

By swotting up on vocabulary on my commute, watching subtitled Scandinavian dramas in the evening, and writing on my Lang-8 blog, I managed to surprise my Swedish-speaking partner by holding court on Valentine鈥檚 Day, just three months later. There鈥檚 no better way of showing your 办盲谤濒别办 than that.

(Images top to bottom: Gon莽alo Viana; Hiroko Masuike/New York Times / Redux / eyevine)

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟ive and learn鈥�