Why human teachers are far superior to apps…

Imagine that your new job required you to become fluent in a new foreign language in 6 months.

Someone might suggest: use DuoLingo.

Have you ever used DuoLingo?  It’s great.

Have you become fluent in a foreign language through DuoLingo?  Become proficient? Conversational?

Or have you just learned a few words and perhaps enough to do the American version of learning a language – learning to say “hello”, “thank you”, and “where is the restroom?”

We (my family) travel quite a bit, and I eagerly embrace the idea of using DuoLingo to learn the language of our next destination.

I love to learn.  I am highly self-disciplined.  But I end up being just a few steps ahead of what I described above.

We have a relationship with an English language training school in Spain.  So I have had numerous discussions regarding how best to learn languages.  The Europeans always laugh when I discuss apps.  “So American! Fast. Fast. Fast.”

When we discuss further, they point out the obvious:

You are holding a device – whether it’s a phone, I-Pad, or computer – that is the biggest cause of your distraction.  How long will you learn to conjugate verbs when you click on notifications from texts/Instagram/newsfeeds etc.?

The same is true with SAT or math apps, which “in theory” are great but rarely do much in reality.

What teen (or adult) will press forward with algebra problems when a text comes in?

Back to the example above, if your job was dependent on mastering a foreign language, it would be crazy to rely on your use of an app to do so.  Presumably you would enroll in classes/tutoring asap.

College is your teen’s “new job.”