After last summer's trip to Portugal, and considering we are about to purchase a property, I have decided to start learning some Portuguese to try to better communicate with locals.
There are plenty of people who speak English in the country and having Catalan and Spanish as mother languages makes things quite easy to even communicate with those only talking in Portuguese, but when you interact with older people or with neighbors in small local communities, it is much better to have some Portuguese knowledge.
It's been a while since I took some foreign language classes. I believe the last time was about 15 years ago when I was trying to learn German attending a real-life school. Now, the internet provides tons of options to start online for free and decide how you want to move forward once you reach a basic level. And this is what I have done so far. After a quick online search for resources, I decided to try what seems to be the Learning Foreign Language King App, Duolingo.
Their business model is freemium, you can start and remain free forever but they keep showing you ads to upgrade for a paid subscription they also "force you" to watch other regular ads every once in a while when you end lessons. So they clearly follow the same revenue model as many free online games, where they monetize from advertising and keep pushing you from free to a paid subscription.
They also have a well-integrated gamification program in the app, with levels, rewards, points, leaderboards, etc. And messages reminding you to keep working for progress.
I have been testing for more than a week, and I have to say the exercises seem very well designed, repeating most of the compositions in different scenarios so you can learn as you go, and asking for voice and written translations and answers.
I decided to look for info about the app and was quite surprised to read
the company has grown at an enormous scale, with over 500 million total users and around 40 million monthly active users, representing every country in the world. They offer 98 language courses that teach 39 different languages.
What actually motivates me the most is the days in a roll achievement which pushes you to keep doing lessons every day.
And the leaderboard. I reached 3rd position for the week and the next day I got a message from the App announcing someone passed me and I was down one position I then decided to practice some more and ended up in second position for the week, it is incredible how some well-designed gamification rules can push you into doing the tasks!.
Here's a screenshot I found online where you can see how the leaderboard is shown on the app screen.
I encourage anyone wishing to try a new language to download the App and use it for a few days. It is worth it. I'll just have to see if I learned enough to order a coffee next in my next trip!
