BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and Duolingo: Three New Tools for Language Teaching

Ana Patricia Lindo Tannous

BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and Duolingo: Three New Tools for Language Teaching
San Francisco State University
March 6, 2016
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Abstract

This assignment explores the affordances of BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and Duolingo for Spanish

Language Teaching. Based on the authors personal use of the programs, the author points out the most

salient components of each programs affordances and the skills involved in navigating language meaning

with each of the programs the author explores. The authors assessment of the programs is followed by a

summary of three journal articles dealing with Spanish Language Teaching with BBC Languages and

Duolingo respectively.

Keywords: BBC Languages, MEMRISE, Duolingo, Spanish

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BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and Duolingo: Three New Tools for Language Teaching
Introduction

The Huffington Post, listed BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and Duolingo among the 7

Outstanding Language-Learning Apps and Websites (Connelly 2015). The premise if this online article

is that one can better tap into a culture by speaking in the local language while traveling. Since these

three apps are also listed on the Inkwell Scholars link we find in 21 st Century Skills ACTFL link assigned

for our homework on the SFSU iLearn page, I decided to explore these three apps for my homework

assignment. I found it interesting that The Huffington Post blogpost lures the reader in to explore these

language tools with the premise that the best way to tap into the local culture while traveling is to speak

the local language (Connelly 2015). On a more cerebral offering, the Inkwell Scholars link lists these

same three tools as part of the 10 Free Foreign Language Resources which will also boost your

brainpower (Bianchi 2013). Both author statements on why they offer these apps as tools for foreign

language learning align with the 21st Century Skills goals of making our learners more culturally

proficient while increasing their learning/knowledge (brainpower) in a foreign language proficiency.

Given the aforesaid claims made by the authors, and the fact that I am already working with Busuu as part

of my coursework in this class, I decided to explore the affordances of BBC Languages, MEMRISE, and

Duolingo for the language teaching environment.

BBC Languages:
The Huffington Post listed BBC Languages as having a strong comprehensive lesson offering

in seven languages (Connelly 2015). The Inkwell Scholars article highlighted the interactive video

dramas component of the program as a fun interactive activity to engage learners (Bianchi 2013). I

viewed the drama Mi vida loca and found that it was very engaging, colorful, and mysterious: all which

captured and held my attention and interest. At the beginning of the video, they offered the viewer the

ability to see the title in English and Spanish in alternating sequences and syntactical order which allows
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the learner to see how the words of the title can be moved around: Mi vida loca/Mi loca vida to play with

the literal and the metaphorical connotations of the adjective loca. The cinematography is of a very high

quality, the native speaker who acts as the viewers phrasebook speaks with an authentic Castilian

accent, and the pronunciation was perfect and enhanced with the correct spelling (accent marks and all)

paired with an English equivalent audio feature before you proceed to the next phase of the episode. The

video drama of the program affords the learner with a native speaker /authentic dialogue, excellent audio

and visual reinforcement of the vocabulary, and makes the interpretation of the information very easy for

a beginner. The video feature also serves to create a real-life situation wherein the viewer has to travel to

Madrid when the friend she was supposed to travel with leaves her a note in the seat of the airplane with

the keys to the apartment in Madrid saying she cant join her on the trip. The next phase of the video takes

the viewer inside a taxi and highlights the names of the sights you see along the way. The taxi driver asks

the viewer to give directions with an CMC device that captions what the driver is saying in Spanish and

gives the names of the sights you of what you see on the way to the apartment. All in all, the video was

very good because it placed the learner in a real-life context which requires the interpersonal,

interpretative, and presentational skills with which to travel from the airplane to the taxi and then to get

inside the apartment. Although the video was labeled as the beginner level, the vocabulary they provided

was not sufficient for a true beginner who didnt already know how to say hello, thank you, or how to ask

a question. However, once you click back on the homepage, you will find vocabulary lists, grammar, and

crossword puzzles with all the vocabulary you need to navigate your way through each and every video.

This is a great tool which engages all of the viewers senses. The program offers a huge selection of real

life video dramas with pdfs of the vocabulary lists and transcripts of the dialogues and the phrases needed

to travel in Spanish. They also have additional lessons/videos which are all designed for the

beginner/intermediate/advanced levels which seem to correspond to the ACTFL guidelines. Judging by

what I explored in the Spanish Language offering of this platform, BBC Languages is an amazing free

tool for travelers and students who want to be conversational in or study the languages this program offers

in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish.

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MEMRISE:

The MEMRISE platform offers mems to help the learner remember/associate words with funny

images to help embed the vocabulary in their memory. They use native Spanish speakers at the beginner

level to say one word at a time. The mems are not always appropriate and dont give the learner the

appropriate pronunciation. For example: the mem for Qu pasa? (Whats up/whats going on?) was Do

you have a QUEstion about PAStA? Que in Spanish is not pronounced the same as the que portion of the

English Language word question and also does not offer the correct intonation for asking a question. At

the end of the first set of words, the system gives you a points list: 7 correct answers equal 320 points.

They list the speed at which the learner responds to and completes the segment, and offer a percentage

point for accuracy: I scored 440 points for seven correct answers which might be encouraging for a

learner who is points oriented. The use of humor in the mems is also a plus for those who dont mind

goofy humor. However, I dont think this is a quality platform for serious learners who want to pronounce

words correctly. The other drawback is that this is essentially a vocabulary building site without a

contextualized or real-life setting. All in all, I would not direct my students to this site at all. While the

Huffington Post article claims that the mems work, they really work (Connelly 2015), I found them to

be misleading and insufficient for correct pronunciation. The mems do require an interpretive mode of

navigation but they are at a very low level and sometimes take the learner in an incorrect direction.

Duolingo

Duolingo offers their platform for learning Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese

(Brazilian), Dutch, Irish, Danish, and Swedish. The Huffington Post blogpost took me to the Duolingo

homepage of the site where I chose the language and level without creating a profile. The lesson began

with random (not contextualized) words such as apple, a girl, a boy, a woman, a man and I was asked to

match the Spanish word with the corresponding image. This part of the program was very effective in

that the interpretative mode was at work at a very easy level. The problem was when the next lesson

started out using the personal pronouns without context. A beginner would not know what the words
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mean or why the pronoun l must have an accent since they did not offer images or contextualize the

questions for the learner. I decided to follow the Inkwell Scholars link to Duolingo and was happy to find

that I had landed on a page that offered me a choice between Basic 1 level beginner or taking a placement

test: the right way to begin a journey into a new language learning experience should include taking an

assessment test so I was happy to see this function. I placed out of the assessment with the site stating that

I was now 28% proficient in Spanish and that I should add this to my LinkedIn Profile. Obviously, the

program is designed to be used on a social platform which I personally wouldnt want to have my non-

adult students use. I think the offer of points and happy music when you do well is very positive and

adds an element of fun to the process. I found that I used an equal amount of English and Spanish in my

assessment questions but there was not inter-cultural learning or contextualization of the phrases. This

program seems like a decent exercise for those who want to build their writing vocabulary. The program

also has a native speaker pronounce the words for you. However, there were no options to engage the

learner in speaking the language or building inter-cultural understanding at all. The learner will read,

write, and listen but without speaking the language this seems like an incomplete sequence of tasks to

really build language proficiency for the learner. A teacher would have to design a sequence wherein the

students are asked to use the words they learned in the presentational mode to complete the three modes

of learning experience for the learner.

Summary of Three Articles on BBC and Duolingo:

BBC Language Platform

There was only one article in Google Scholar which touched on the BBC Language platform.

Celia Morales Palmas article Teaching Spanish as a foreign language: tools and resources for the

modern ELE teacher lists the BBC Languages platform I explored as a resource for already-trained

teachers (Palma 2016). The author offers this article as a resource that should not be a stand alone

guide because the complexity of teaching Spanish and the cultural differences encountered in teaching

ELE (Espaol como Lengua Extranjera) Spanish as a foreign language require more than just the
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resources listed in her article. Palma offers her list of resources as a guide for new teachers and lists a

wonderful repertoire of websites which include stories, songs, film, dictionaries and a variety of resources

which will help me design interesting classes for my students.

Duolingo

Rachels ddoctoral dissertation, is based on a quasi-experimental pretest--posttest control group to

examine gamification with primary school grades 3 and 4 in Spanish Language achievement

incorporating Duolingo as a gamification strategy to gage self-efficacy and language achievement. The

study lasted twelve weeks and the students answered fifty multiple choice Spanish and English pretest

and posttest questions which also assessed the students with the Pattern of Adaptive Learning Scales

Academic Efficacy subscale to control for prior academic self-efficacy and posttest. The study found that

there was no difference between student achievements and self-efficacy when comparing students who

were taught in the traditional teacher-centered face to face manner and those who were taught with

Duolingo. According the author, the fact that there was no significant difference between the control

group findings demonstrates that Duolingo is a useful tool for teaching Spanish to elementary school

students. The complete article will be available to the public on July 17, 2017. Contrary to much of the

literature written which shows that CMC and Technology-enhanced CMC has positive results in student

achievements, it is interesting that Rachels argues that a lack of significant differences in student

achievements makes Duolingo a useful tool.

According to Munday, the use of Duolingo in two university level Spanish courses shows that

Duolingo is useful and has potential (Munday 2016) because students found it easy to use and enjoyed

using it. However, Munday points out that Duolingo should not be used for more than 15% of any

course grade and that the program had some deficits in the accuracy of translations. However, Mundays

study also found that about 10% of the students in the study continued to use Duolingo even after they
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finished the coursework and that 56.5% of the first-year students did more lessons than they were

assigned to do in the class.

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References

BBC. (2008, January 30). Learn Spanish with free online lessons. Retrieved March 6, 2017, from

BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/

Bianchi, N. (2013, May 8). 10 free foreign language learning resources. Retrieved March 6,

2017, from Education, http://inkwellscholars.org/10-free-foreign-language-learning-resources/

Connelly, F. M. (2015, January 07). 7 Outstanding Language-Learning Apps and Websites.

Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fodors/7-outstanding-language-

le_b_6431448.html

Duolingo: Learn Spanish, French and other languages for free. Retrieved March 6, 2017, from

https://www.duolingo.com/skill/es/Basics-1/1

MEMRISE Spanish Beginner. (n.d.). Retrieved March 06, 2017, from

https://www.memrise.com/course/1098043/spanish-spain-1/1/garden/learn/

Munday, P. (2016). The case for using DUOLINGO as part of the language classroom

experience/DUOLINGO como parte del currculo de las clases de lengua extranjera. Revista

Iberoamericana de Educacin a Distancia, 19(1), 83.

Palma, C. M. (2016). Teaching Spanish as a foreign language: tools and resources for the

modern ELE teacher. International Journal of Research and Education, 1(1), 7.

Rachels, J. (2016). The Effect of Gamification on Elementary Students Spanish Language

Achievement and Academic Self-Efficacy.