Yzabelle Bostyn
AN American expat has created an innovative Spanish learning app to compete with the likes of Duolingo and Rosetta Stone.
Tyler Cole, 34, had been trying to learn Spanish for years but still felt lost when surrounded by native speakers.
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The American expat has now created a groundbreaking language learning app to help others become fluent like him.
Palteca uses techniques backed by research to immerse users in Spanish and learn it as if it were their native tongue, using association, context and memory to learn new words and phrases.
Madrid based Cole told the Olive Press: “I found myself in this vicious cycle of going to a Spanish speaking country, coming back super motivated to learn, but getting frustrated and giving up after a few months.
“I tried everything- traditional teaching methods, books, a dozen apps and I felt like nothing worked.”
Then, on a holiday to Peru, the software engineer read a life-changing book about the science of language acquisition and applying these techniques, he eventually became fluent.
After finally achieving his ‘life-long’ goal of speaking Spanish, he was inspired to help others and set about developing an app using the same, science-backed techniques.
“Palteca is based on the idea that we don’t study language, we acquire it through context. We create memories and connect them to these new words,” he told the Olive Press.
“For example, when you’re a kid you know an apple is an apple because you’ve seen, held and tasted one and associated it with that word. In that sense, the app doesn’t say ‘Hola means Hello’, it says, ‘Hola is a good way to greet someone’”
These associations are even personalisable, with users able to handpick images which best represent the word they are trying to learn.
Unlike other apps, Palteca emphasises using as much Spanish as possible, allowing users ‘to learn Spanish as a native speaker would’ using videos from natives, no translations and minimal English feedback.
Accompanied by Palteca’s adorable penguin mascot, users are encouraged to ‘enjoy what they learn’ and they have a ‘clear goal in mind.’
Far from the menacing Duolingo bird, the app embraces making mistakes as ‘part of the process.’
Since Palteca’s soft launch around five months ago, over a thousand users have signed up and many are begging for the next installment of lessons, which are released weekly.
The official version launched on Friday, October 18 and is available on the Play and App store for free.
