Learning Spanish in the Digital Age

How we spend our time these days matter to all of us. We live in a very different world than it was just a decade or so ago. Learning another language like Spanish has evolved too. In fact, 32 hours on average per month is spent scouring the internet in the United States alone. That's a lot of time online.

Enter Lingocracy!

This app claims to improve your language skills through reading what you want, when you want in a variety of languages including Spanish. Like most apps, you can register for a free account. You may also sign up using your Facebook account.

Lingocracy does a few different things than a typical language learning app will do. For instance, it has different types of content in various languages such as stories, poems and books to read. They are designated as beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. It allows you to look up any word you don't know and get a translation by simply hovering over the word. You may highlight a word and it will appear highlighted when you come across that word again. You can practice with words you select that you do not know well. One of the better features of this app is the ability to browse the web outside in the real world. By adding a website URL to Lingocracy, it gives you the capability to read the site through the app. You may also hover over words to get their meanings. When you click on a word you do not know, you will hear an audio pronunciation of the word.

The Google Chrome plugin lets Lingocracy import external web pages and articles for you to read through the app. You can find sites that interest you in your target language. The hope is by reading a topic of interest to you, you will do more of it and learn more Spanish. The challenge is that you need to know enough Spanish to know if you have a site that interests you to read. The only way to do that is to import it into Lingocracy and try and read through it. A challenge for Americans will be the translations of the words. British vocabulary is used in the English translations. For example, when translating ascensor into English, the translation is lift, the British term for elevator. This may pose an additional hurdle to understanding a word for Americans.

I've been using this app on my Google Chrome web browser on my laptop. It functions great. I could not find it for download through the Google Play Store or the Amazon App Store on my cell phone. This would be useful if one could download it for use on a mobile device. I'm not always in front of my laptop when I'm online and would find more time using this app if it was available through that medium.

Home page after logging into Lingocracy.

The app Home menu option gives you a listing of pinned reading lists that you select from their reading
sources. The My Lists option allows you to create reading lists and add texts to the list. You can check your Progress and Stats and review your Vocabulary. Personally, I find only the Home button helpful. The chart provided for your progress is difficult to read and understand. The stats pie chart is a little better to digest the information of your progress with words. I wish the vocabulary page gave you a way to know which words were marked as difficult, medium and easy and let you sort them as such. It would also be beneficial if the app allowed you to add words from outside websites into your vocabulary word lists. Finally, it really needs to provide more content in the various languages. Lingocracy mentions they are working towards providing more content continuously.

Will you learn Spanish with this app? My assessment is that this app will improve your reading comprehension and build up your vocabulary. Unfortunately, it lacks any grammar explanations to assist you with creating your own expressions in the language. You will learn words and expressions in Spanish with this app. But as we all know, language is a lot more than just words and expressions. You need the ability to learn how to use those words and expressions in a conversation. There is also no way to express yourself through writing comments to converse with others reading the same materials in Spanish. You are completely cut off from other Spanish learners. If the app would provide a way to make it more social within its boundaries, that would be a step up.

I would recommend this app as a supplemental resource in your language acquisition. As you break out reading more in Spanish, this app will help you with building that skill. You can also use it to strengthen your vocabulary. The flexibility of being able to read any webpage in Spanish with the aid of this app is a true benefit. Hopefully they will continue to beef up this app with more functionality, content, socialization in the target language, and actual learning of grammar points to facilitate actual language expression which to any language learner is the ultimate goal.

¡Hasta luego!
~Keith