Deborah Varga, OFLA Executive Vice-President 
Spanish Teacher, Canton City Schools

Recently, I binge-watched the Danish drama “Sygeplejeskolen (The New Nurses)” on Hoopla Digital. I have always been drawn to historical medical dramas, and I loved how I immediately understood many words and expressions.  I could infer quite a bit through the comprehensible input that the subtitles and the context of the show’s various stories provided. Since English is a Germanic (West Germanic) and Danish is a North Germanic language, many expressions sound very similar.  The experience I had while viewing the drama, inspired me to delve into learning Danish as a way to revisit novice language learning again.  I  chose to revisit this idea that I had heard discussed in a past professional development some time ago. For world language teachers to truly understand how to approach proficiency-based instruction in their classrooms, one should try learning a new language! 

I have done some Duolingo studies in the past with Catalán, Japanese, and French and decided to reuse this app again for my new adventure! As of writing this article, I can write a list of about 35 words in isolation, with a varying amount of simple, memorized phrases based on these words. My novice low interpretive listening is improving gradually, but the repetitive nature of the listening exercises is key, especially with the remixing of vocabulary in new contexts. The pronunciation is a challenge because of the different sound combinations. Still, I have noticed that the words I previously heard from the show were much easier to pronounce than those I had learned in isolation via the app! I hope to continue searching for authentic resources to begin my novice reading practice. Even though I will not understand an entire reading, especially one for native speakers, I am going to try to identify some of the vocabulary that I have picked up in isolation.  I have also seen ideas via Pinterest for beginning a language learning journal, so I am curious to see what format that could take for personalized language learning that may differ from what I do in my class for my students.  As I finish this article, I just got a reminder from Duolingo to take 3 minutes for my lesson! Well…I better get moving!  Tak og farvel!