The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/1035089
THE MAKING OF AN APP Founder Paul Custance on turning Lirica into a reality This journey started two and half years ago. i was learning Spanish before going to work for the Sony Music Latin regional office. i was using duolingo on the train while listening to music and found myself distracted by the music, which was just more engaging. it made me think, wouldn't it be better if i was learning by listening to Spanish music rather than tapping away at this app? Although there are some pedagogical resources related to music on the internet, we wanted to do something where the user could actually learn the language through the music, rather than just playing a listening game. After a year of thought, research and prototyping, i pitched my idea to Sony Music and received an offer in April 2017 to create the company, focusing initially on teaching Spanish to english speakers. "We see this as a unique way for our artists to reach and engage with their audience, especially the ones that do not speak their language. We see real potential in the impact Lirica could have on the music industry," said María Fernandez, SVP of operations and CFo Latin iberia Region. Since then, i have been working with a fantastic team of developers and linguists. After just over a year of development, testing and iteration, we went live in the app stores in july. even in the prototype phase, with limited content, we had students spending hours on the app, completing every song. We are now starting to see the same engagement with a larger user base. our plan over the next 6-12 months is to extend the content to create a curriculum of 50+ songs where users can learn all the building blocks of a new language through songs. So you can learn the irregular present tense through 'La Bicicleta' by Shakira, the gerund through 'el Perdón' by nicky jam and enrique iglesias, and personal pronouns through cool Bomba estereo songs. We are also planning to extend to other languages and markets, starting with english. Lirica is looking for talented linguists, teachers and institutions to partner with them. Contact paul@lirica.co.uk for details. @Linguist_CIOL oCToBeR/noVeMBeR The Linguist 19 Pioneering research Paul Custance founded the Lirica language-learning app in 2017, and approached us to work on it as academics working in language-learning research. Although positive effects have been reported from the use of music in language learning, there is little available research and few pedagogical resources to guide us. in fact, one of the aspects that attracted us to the project was the number of factors to explore before we even began. Apart from our own research and practice interests, we consulted research on music for language learning, mobile learning, gamification, motivation and pedagogical translation. Among us we had experience of working on teacher training materials, dictionaries and books teaching Spanish, but an app was completely new to us all. We had to question our own beliefs as teachers and attempt to extrapolate what we do in a classroom setting to a language-learning experience involving a mobile device. A team of expert educational app developers was already in place. They had an idea of what they wanted – a fun, gamified app that would engage users – but they asked us to conceive an overall learning strategy that bound the experience together and made it meaningful. They had age STUDENT MOTIVATION