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Hello Linguaholics! My name's Mitchell. I speak US English, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese. In addition to being a fellow linguaholic, I also am very interested in product design and educational solutions. I'm in the process of completing a UX Design and Research Certification and currently am conducting a survey for my capstone project focused on designing a solution to make the foreign language learning experience more engaging and effective. If you have 1-2 minutes to spare, it would be greatly appreciated if you could take the below screener survey that anyone, regardless of how extensive or traditional your foreign language learning experiences, can complete to help guide this project that I'm very passionate about. All of your answers will remain completely confidential and you do not need to participate beyond this survey if you don't want to. Note - Please answer questions based on the foreign language that you've been studying longest, whether or not that is Spanish or another language. Survey: https://forms.gle/a8PXPZYzpk8pcLPT7 Thank you so much for your help! - Mitchell

Do you have apps that are not strictly speaking language-learning related but that help you to study? Which ones can you recommend? Maybe there are games that help you learn new words or some motivational apps that keep you on track when it comes to regular study hours. Let's share the titles that are useful for making progress in language learning!

I wonder what you think of old-style coursebooks versus modern-style? By "old style" I mean the books for language learning that were widespread in the past: no (or minimum) pictures, a lot of exercises (with big emphasis on translation to and from target language), a lot of grammar - grammar rules, grammar exceptions, pages and pages of grammar exercises. That's what foreign language textbooks in my school used to be like when I was in primary school. By "modern style" I mean the books that you are popular nowadays: a lot of images, more listening and less exercises, more speaking and less grammar. I've always liked the "colourful" ones more, however, to really learn a language I do need to have access to plain old-fashioned grammar books. To actually read all about the rules and not just something like "Past tense is easy! See these nice cute boxes with some info here and go on creating your own sentences". What about you?

There is one thing that, in my opinion, sparks a lot of controversy whenever you talk about language learning: how often you should do it. Most of the people I know tend to believe that it's an all-or-nothing thing. Either you do it every day or no point starting. Either you schedule your classes every Friday and Monday, or else you better forget about any progress at all. And so on. I, on the other hand, belong to the minority that believes in "doing something is better than nothing" approach. The main reason for this is the fact that I'm a person who really dislikes words like "regular" and "every day". So many things can happen. Even if I plan to do something 3 times a week, there may be disruptions I couldn't predict. Besides, the very idea of doing something "all the time" is simply daunting for me. It's like "together until death do us part". It kills my motivation by telling me that there's something I just MUST do. For many years I suffered from believing in "all-or-nothing" approach. I tried to stick to "learn 30 words a day" or "study English each Thursday" or "repeat Spanish verbs each evening". I'd start on a good note, do it for a week/a month/maybe half a year and then drop it. Then I'd go beat myself about it. "How could you? Now you've ruined it!", "You'll never ever learn English like that", "You are hopeless, Ania. Absolutely hopeless". However, lately I've come to terms with the fact that "regular" never worked for me, and I find it a huge relief. Yes, sometimes people don't do something or they even have longer periods of not studying but why should that be considered such a big no-no? You win some, you lose some. Then you do it again and you're still much closer to fluency than those who do nothing at all What's your take on the subject? Do you study every day, every week or sometimes? Does it work for you? What are the pros and cons?