I have noticed this type of learning being very helpful for me trying to get practice using grammar in a new language. Hearing a native speaker order a sentence of conjugate a certain way get my brain used to doing this in the new language. After practicing this, the next time a run into a sentence structure similar to the example I am more comfortable implementing it.

Something that we learned about in class is the idea of emblems and co-speech gestures. Emblems have meaning outside of speaking and can be different culture to culture. In this instance a gesture to represent a cat is an emblems and the point can be understood without speech. A co-speech gesture is a communication gesture that is not interpretable with language so this could be mean pointing at something.

It is hard to draw a line of fluency in language learning because there is never a point that you reach where you are perfect at a language. That being said, the change from having to think about grammar rules and translation I believe, is a strong point at which you transition into fluency.

I have found that Duolingo has a lot of different ways of providing serotonin giving users the ability to be motivated by different things. For me I find the learning streak the most motivating but for other people they could be motivated by the validation the app gives them or being able to keep up with their friends.

I definitely relate to this. In high school I was learning spanish and I didn't have any intrinsic motivation to learn the language and was only learning it because I had to. Now I am learning Dutch and I have a lot of intrinsic motivation because a lot of my family speaks the language so I get excited to be able to communicate with family members that I otherwise would not be able to. Because of my intrinsic motivation to learn Dutch I have been much more successful in learning the language.

I think this is very true specifically regarding age. In class we talked about the common idea that you can't learn a language after the age of 13. This idea can make it very intimidating for people wanting to start learning a new language as an adult. In reality the truth behind the rumor is that you can't completely gain a new accent after 13 but even that is not always the case.

I think the idea of communication and language is especially tricky when it comes to texting. A large part of communication relies on body language and tone which can completely change the meaning of the words being said. When reading a text you don't get any of that outside information so the interpretation of the text can be completely different from the way it was intended.

I definitely relate to this idea in my personal life. I always feel the need to down play the amount I speak of a language because I never want the person I'm speaking to have higher expectations from what I am able to provide. This fear causes me to not engage with other speakers as much which would be helpful to my learning.