The older we get, the more challenging it becomes to learn another language. Some scientists claim the human brain is only built for learning language when we are young. Others state the way we learn in our young years does not cater toward our adult learning patterns.
Connections in the Brain
Scientists at the Society for Neuroscience study and analyze why some people are able to learn a second language in adulthood, while others have a difficult time or simply cannot accomplish the task.
They also found that learning a second language depends on the strength of connections in the brain.
What if one person discovered a way for adults to learn a second language?
Gabriel Wyner launched a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign this past Tuesday to help fund the development of a language-learning app entitled Fluent Forever.
The Kickstarter Campaign
The campaign has already broken fundraising records on the Kickstarter website. Mobile apps are typically challenging to crowdfund; only 10% of apps on Kickstarter successfully reach their funding goals.
The Fluent Forever app became the second most funded app of all time within seven hours of launching, passing $200k and eventually raising $266k by the end of its first day. It is projected to become the most funded app of all time within its first week of funding.
Gabriel Wyner, The Creator
Mr. Wyner has a relatively unusual educational background. He received Bachelor Degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Opera Performance and went on to pursue a Master's Degree in singing in Vienna, Austria. He ended up focusing on language learning while pursuing his opera career. Classical singers are encouraged to learn French, Italian, German and Russian.
In 2010, he began developing a novel language learning method for his own private use, starting with pronunciation training and then using computer programs to create and schedule immersive, audio-visual flashcards. He used this method to reach fluency in French in five months, and then again for Russian, reaching fluency in that language in ten months.
He now speaks eight languages: English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian, Hungarian and Japanese.
He wrote a book about his methods entitled Fluent Forever (Penguin/Randomhouse, 2014), and then founded a company to create pronunciation-training tools. He’s been running the business for the last three years, and moved to Chicago last year when his wife began medical school.
About the App
The Fluent Forever App is a mobile app, designed to train users how to think in a new language and reach fluency.
It automates the methods found in his book, which, judging by the written and video testimonials on his Kickstarter page, are quite effective. Over the last few years, many of Mr. Wyner’s readers have become fluent in new languages using his methods.
In the app, users start by learning pronunciation and training their ears. The app displays videos that explain the consonants, vowels and spelling rules of the target language, and then provides users with flashcards that teach spelling rules and train a user’s ears.
The spelling rule cards are relatively standard flashcards with pictures and recordings. For example, “What does K as in Koala sound like?" The ear training flashcards are somewhat novel. They train users’ ears to hear new sounds by presenting them with “Minimal Pairs” – pairs of words that sound almost identical, such as "niece/knees” in English or “caro/carro” in Italian.
The app will play one of the two words at random and ask users to identify the word they heard correctly. This type of Minimal Pair Training is one of the only research-proven methods for teaching pronunciation to adults.
After this ear training stage, users progress to learn words in the context of sentences and create audiovisual flashcards for themselves that they’ll review in the following weeks and months. The program has a sophisticated algorithm for finding the optimal moment to show a user a particular flashcard so that it stays memorized for as long as possible. This technique is known as a "Spaced Repetition System," and it’s one of the most effective study tools that exist.
Due to their effectiveness, Spaced Repetition Systems (SRSs) are becoming relatively common in the language learning world, but most programs use SRSs to teach translations. In contrast, all of the flashcards in the Fluent Forever App are fully immersive; they’re entirely in the user’s target language – there are never any English translations.
If a user is learning the Spanish word for dog, which is perro, then the program will offer three example sentences using that word in Spanish. After that, it will then ask the user to pick their favorite pictures for the word perro. Finally, it goes back into the example sentence and chooses other words to learn.
In this process, the user is simultaneously learning Spanish and creating flashcards to remind students of what they’ve learned.
The base version of the app will support Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian and Korean. If funding continues to proceed as predicted, then the app will also support Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin, and Japanese.
There is also a goal of adding the ability to learn any language whatsoever; users will be able to enter sentences into the app, learn them, and share resources with other learners of that same language.
The Kickstarter campaign ends October 19th.
