Crowd Sourced Language Learning

By: Zachary Rosen '16

     The world today is incredibly globalized, a result of both the international economy and the world wide web. Social media can let people from different continents speak casually to each other. One can read the news from papers of any number of nations. Agricultural products and industrial goods, the tech gadgets and designer clothing, can all be moved between different countries, providing to consumers the most of what they want for the lowest costs.
     The problem this presents is that now, for those seeking careers in any professional field, but most importantly government and business, foreign language ability is a necessity. The problem is that learning a new language, if you aren't raised in a multilingual household or spend a month in a a different country, is exceptionally difficult. This is exacerbated by the fact that many people don't practice when they aren't in school, that we don't live in an immersive environment, and that some people just don't like language learning. Even with the mandate that Severn students take three years of a consecutive language, few will graduate being truly fluent.
      One new language app/website, called "Duolingo", might help fix this problem. Duolingo is a free language learning resource, invented by Luis Von Ahn, the creator of Captcha. The app works by teaching users the basics of the language of their choice with a variety of relatively entertaining games. It then provides users with articles, websites, and other texts in the language of study for the student to translate. Because so many different people are translating the same article, eventually, algorithms determine an incredibly accurate translation, which is then sold to the company seeking the translation (this is how the website is able to keep itself free).
      Of course, this is no way to achieve fluency. However, it does offer a great chance to start learning a language your interested in, and it's incredibly easy to stick with compared to normal independent study. The creators of the website intend to eventually put every language up, but for now, they have Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, and Swedish. Hungarian, Turkish, Esperanto, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, and Polish are coming soon. This is a perfect opportunity to augment study in your current language class or to start looking into something you've always been curious about. Viel Glück!