What Lack I Yet?

"What lack I yet?"

This is the question that a wealthy young man asked to Jesus of Nazareth. His question was about his own spiritual worthiness to enter the kingdom of God. He had done everything that he had learned, but just wanted to make sure. Jesus' response was pretty demanding, "Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor..."

In another religious episode, Siddhartha Gautama was a wealthy young man who was asking the question, "What lack I yet."  His answer was also to leave everything seek a life of spiritual enlightenment.

Countless other religions have motivated people to do great things, and to do some terrible things. But whatever it is they do, it's hard to argue against the idea that religion is a powerful motivator. Most people in the world owe their current social existence to religion in some form in another. In fact, the idea of a state religion was pretty common until recently. And it's not totally gone now.

Religious and moral motivations are alive and present in nearly everyone's world and they have been for all of recorded history. Just to be clear, I'm talking about religion in all forms - from devout and prescribed religious ceremonies all the way to basic beliefs about what the world is. Even atheists will often act on moral or ethical codes that they believe exist outside of themselves.

My point is that there are things that motivate people enough to change their lives, if not their world. What is it for your character? Does your character have religion? Or perhaps even a religion? What are the things that would make them change the world, or change their lives? What kind of person, god, or prophet would they be willing to follow? When they attend a funeral is it the detached funeral of modern television, or is it the spiritual experience of the Hopi who believed the death was the beginning of a journey for the souls of the departed? Is it a time of weeping, or a time of joy, or does it matter at all?

In current media, most characters are portrayed without religion. Heroes are supposed to be good moral characters, but we ignore the part of their life that helped them become good or moral. In part that may be because it's easy to become too preachy, and in part it's because personal beliefs are just that, personal. Another reason might be that people don't always talk about their religion. It's entirely possible to tell a full and engaging story about someone and never know many aspects of their life. And it's difficult to portray religion well.

But it might be worthwhile to consider your characters beliefs and backgrounds. Do they have the have the individualistic sense that comes from the classical Greek and Roman background found in many European cultures? Or do they have a stronger sense of accomplishment from the success of the whole as in some Oriental cultures. Do they look at a poor person and say, "I should give them my coat." Or do they say, "That lazy bum is getting what he deserves."

The less you plan the religion of your characters, the more their worldview will simply be a mirror of your own or the generic agnosticism of popular culture. Your characters don't have to be religious. But give it a thought once in a while. Maybe a little religion will add some spice to your stories.

Languages and Learning - A Duolingo Review

Ok, This week's post is a bit different. It's about a language learning program called Duolingo. I normally wouldn't post this except that I've had a wonderful experience using this program, and I think that it can really help you out if you're even dabbling in learning a language.

As some of you might know, my minor in undergrad was German. I was considering a license to teach it in high school, and so I studied how to teach and how to learn a language. I also taught English as a foreign language for two years, so I've got some background when I say Duolingo is worth checking out. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am not affiliated in any way with Duolingo except as a user. But I do like their program.)

Here's a few reasons why I would suggest it:

1. IT'S FREE. And I mean free. It's not free for one or two lessons, or free but. It's completely free to you as a user. There's an in app store, and when I went to check it out I thought, "Ok, this is how they make their money." But it's not. The in app store only uses in game currencies. You earn points by learning, and then you spend those points to learn more. The incentive program is exceptionally well designed from a game aspect, and from an educational viewpoint. And you don't pay anything. I might be wrong, but I've yet to encounter any thing requiring money. I'll be sure to update here if I come across something later.
2. IT'S CONVENIENT. Duolingo is a tablet/phone app, and a web page, and it takes about 10-15 minutes a day. And with language learning, 10 minutes a day is worth way more than 1 hour every six days.
3. IT HITS MULTIPLE LEARNING GOALS IN EVERY LESSON. Each lesson requires you to listen to the target language, speak the target language, read the target language, write the target language, and arrange words in the target language. There are a few pictures to help with vocabulary, and the lessons are short and well organized.
4. USEFUL PROGRESSION. The difficulty curve is just right. You'll come across words that you don't know, but Duolingo introduces those words in a way that will get them into your brain. You'll be stretched outside your current skill level enough that you're learning new things, but not so far that you can't learn. The principle applied here is i+1. I've found this is true from the early lessons on.
5. ACCURATE ASSESSMENT. I can't tell you how many language learning programs I've picked up and started at the beginning and wished for a way to jump right to the level I needed to progress in my learning. I wanted to skip ahead, but I didn't want to miss skills that I might need. The tests in other programs were alright, but the Duolingo test really honed in on the skills I needed to work on. It uses a system of questions that start out easy and then get harder until you get one wrong. Then it asks another similar question to make sure it wasn't just a fluke. Once it finds your skill level, it asks a bunch of questions that hone in on your strengths and weaknesses so it can put you in just the right spot. I felt like it really pinpointed my skill level.
6. IT'S CONNECTED. You can post your successes to Facebook or twitter so that others know what your learning if you want. Having partners is important for achieving any goal. But there's more than that. When you complete a question (on the web app, I don't know about the iPad app) there's an option to discuss a question or report a problem. Discussing a question allows you to ask why your answer was wrong, or talk about alternate translations.
7. GOALS. Duolingo has a simple optional goal setting mechanic. You choose how many minutes you want to practice each day, and it sends you a reminder. It tracks your progress, and encourages you to practice every day. It's so simple you could do it yourself, but it's in-app so you don't have to go anywhere else to plot your progress.
8. IT ENCOURAGES REVIEW. Once you pass a lesson, you move on to another. It's pretty simple. But as you keep practicing, there's a visual display showing past skills diminishing. It shows you which skills you should go back and review, and then it rewards you with points and in game currency when you do. The review doesn't happen immediately either. It happens after a few days, so that you're reinforcing your learning rather than just drilling or waiting til you forget it and need to learn it again.
9. MONETIZATION IS GENIUS. They make money by crowd sourcing translation. If you want, you can participate in translating real world documents. But here's the kicker, that's exactly the kind  of thing you want to do if you're learning a language. It's another way to help you learn, and it's optional.
10. IT'S EFFECTIVE. According to the Wikipedia(I know, wikipedia. If you want a more definite source, you look it up.) article, Duolingo commissioned an external study which "estimated that 34 hours on Duolingo may yield reading and writing ability of a first-year college semester, which takes in the order of 130+ hours." That's also better than Rosetta Stone if you were wondering. I'm not going to claim that the specifics are true, but given my own experience, I'm inclined to believe them. I've tried a number of language learning programs and apps (BUSUU, Mango, Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone, Babbel, Actilingua, etc.) and while I would happily recommend some of those, Duolingo is by far the best. (EDIT: I found the study. You can download the final report on this page.)

I could say more. I could tell you about Duolingo's data-driven methods, their crowd-sourcing method to expand the languages they offer, Duolingo's Luis von Ahn's views on massive scale online collaboration, and more.

But all that is beside the point. The point is this: if you're learning a language offered by duolingo, you should use Duolingo. If I were teaching a high school German class I would require all of my students to use Duolingo every day, and given my background that I almost was a high school German teacher, that might mean something to you.

But here's something more succinct. 

Learn language? Use Duolingo.