The process of learning a new language is hard, man. We’ve tried every application available and have put in the hours all day long but are unable to engage in conversations with someone who speaks the new language. The majority of the apps’ methods for learning languages are similar that require the conscious effort of learning new phrases, words as well as grammar rules. Yet, Toucan, an extension to your browser offers a different method, and could just be the app that clicks.
How Toucan functions
If you have Toucan installed on either Google, Edge as well as Safari The first time you visit a site when you click on an article you’ll notice something unusual The language appear on the page alter, and then translate into the language you’ve chosen to. When you’re trying to master Portuguese you may see an expression like isabut only the two or three palavras are translated.
Move your mouse over the word in translation and a pop-up will explain the meaning in English. (“Esta” means “this is this” “palavras” can be translated as “words.”) The pop-up offers other interesting options, including the speaker icon that you can click to hear the word is spoken as well as a mini-test to see if you are able to spell the word correctly, and a save button that lets you highlight the word to be used future reference.
It begins with just one word at a given time and as you gain, Toucan ups the ante by adding additional words in blocks, also known as “lexical chunks.” This makes sense since different languages do not have the similar grammar structure. When you build up more extensive groups of words, you’ll learn more quickly the word order, verb conjugation as well as more general grammar in your selected language.
The extension also provides “shortcuts,” which are somewhat more like an actual language learning experience. These are a way to highlight key phrases and words you’ll encounter when you’re in a common situation for example, greetings or dining out. It’s interesting to note that shortcuts work only for Twitter, Reddit, YouTube as well as Google.
Toucan’s strategy is based on scientific research
According To the company the program is built on a concept known as second language acquisition that can be described in this way could be summarized as: Languages learn best when you’re completely immersed into the culture in a calm manner, instead of trying to cram the new words and concepts into your brain over and over. If you’ve ever felt as if high school Spanish classes didn’t do anything in your journey to acquire a language It could be because the system isn’t working for the majority of people.
Naturally, Toucan isn’t taking the Duolingo method, neither and keeps hounding you with reminders to do your study. It is adamant for you to put the least effort you can in learning the language of your choice. If you’re on the internet like you do every day it’s likely that you’ll visit sites and read content you’re really interested in. If Toucan translate some of these words into the language you want to learn it will be easier to learn them, because you’re already absorbed by the content, not studying boring material for your lessons. You’re doing what you always do (wasting time online) while dipping your dedos do pe into a new language.
