Want to really learn languages with VR without boring video graphics and unrealistic stories? Katie Pascoe of Dynamic Languages has just the thing…

Before we begin…

Choose how you want to enjoy this episode – video with subtitles, podcast on the go, or read the blog version below.

The Video

The Podcast

How to Really Learn Languages with VR with Katie Pascoe of Dynamic Languages

In this episode, you’ll hear Katie discuss…

• (sort of) meeting Obama in her pyjamas!
• the physiological response & how VR is the perfect step between practice and real life
• authenticity in language resources
• the mixed experiences of languages for travel
• the future of AI & tech in language learning (yes, she is the oracle!)

Links from this Conversation

App on the Meta Store: https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/dynamic-languages/4890053391081880/
Website: https://www.dynamiclanguages.org/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dynamiclanguages
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dynamic_languages_360/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DynamicLanguages

Transcript

Lindsay:

Hello.
Welcome back to how to learn a language.
I have another interview installment in the series, and this time I’m speaking with Katie Pascoe of Dynamic Languages.
And Dynamic Languages is all about VR and bringing language lessons and travel and all sorts of really cool experiences to you with real footage, 360 footage.
It’s not like.
You know, computer generated graphics with like a, hello, how are you kind of robot voice.
This is all really real and authentic.

And yeah, they do such a great job that I just wanted to talk to Katie about all of this, about, well, we get into all sorts, really.
We get into sort of meeting Obama in her pajamas.
We get into the physiological response of VR and how that actually makes VR the perfect step between practice and real life.
We talk about authenticity and language resources.
About the mixed experiences that she’s had in terms of languages for travel and about the future of AI and VR and tech in language learning, because yes, she is the Oracle.
So I’m going to hand over now and let you enjoy the episode and I’ll speak to you very soon.
Hello, Katie! Welcome.

Katie:
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.

It’s really good to be here.

Well, I’m in my own home, but you know what I mean.

Lindsay:

The powers of the internet and the powers of technology, which is something we’ll come on to and talk about a little bit today.
But yeah, first of all, I want to know about you and your language learning and your experience and why you like languages.
I’m assuming you do.
Maybe that’s a big assumption.
So yeah, let’s start there.
Feel free to introduce yourself.

Katie:

Okay, I’m Katie.
I’m from the UK, currently living in the UK, but kind of living slightly digital nomad life, which maybe we’ll get into a bit later.
My language learning kind of journey so far started, I suppose, like at school.
And when I was at school in the UK, everyone had to learn languages, generally French and German up to the age of 14. And then you could drop one of them, but you had to study one of them up to the age of 16. I never got on with French at all.
I’ve tried multiple times since school to learn it on my own in various different ways as well and I just I don’t know what it is I just can’t get on with it so I was very much German focused really enjoyed it really liked I was quite talkative and teen so I think I enjoyed just being able to talk
to more people and no more words generally so yeah really got on well with German so decided to Continue it kind of after it was compulsory.
So I did it for A levels.

Sorry for international listeners.
This might be a bit confusing, but after GCSEs at 16, then we do A levels till 18. So I chose German as one of my four subjects for that.
Continued really enjoying it and went to Germany, did like an exchange and just got on really well with it.
So then when it came to choosing what I was going to do at university, it turned out to be The easy choice for me because I enjoyed the learning of it.
I don’t know whether at that point I would have considered myself to have been good at it necessarily.
The grammar always was tricky for me and kind of the way it was being taught.
The grammar was never, kind of never became natural for me.

It was never instinctual.
It was always Even up to the end of my degree I’d always walk into an exam and scribble the case tables on the back page so I had them to refer to.
That was never something that I fully absorbed into my day-to-day German so I was probably always speaking with a lot of grammatical errors but I really enjoyed the history and the culture and the literature that I was studying at university so that was all really fun and then as part of my degree I
got to do a year abroad which I split between Austria and Germany.
Austria I was working as a teaching assistant, Germany I was going to university and also as part of my degree I got kind of some credits free that I could spend on whatever I wanted and I chose to do another language.
So in the first year I picked Turkish because that seemed like quite a good match.
Where was this?

Lindsay:

What university was this?

Katie:
Oh, this was Manchester, University of Manchester.

Lindsay:
Turkish, wow.

Katie:
Yeah, I don’t think they taught it to degree level actually, but it was kind of, you know, I was doing it A1, A2 level in the first year.
So it seemed like a logical choice, given I was thinking, oh, I might work in Germany one day and Turkish, there’s a big Turkish population there, this could be a really good mix, but the grammar was wildly different to anything I’d encountered before.
And so I think I just struggled a bit.
I mean, it was first year of university, so I wasn’t necessarily being the most studious anyway, but I think I struggled a bit with the contrast and it not being Quite so easy to pick up as I’d maybe hoped.

I did all right.
I didn’t do badly, but I wasn’t inspired to carry on with it.
So in the other two years that I was studying, I chose Spanish and I got a much better with that.
And I enjoyed that.
That was fun.
And I think probably because of so many cognates, I felt like I was able to make, you know, much better progress much quicker, which I think I needed at the time to just, you know, German was getting really hard and I think I just enjoyed that it felt A bit more manageable.
The Turkish maybe was a bit too much of a challenge for me at the time.

So I was kind of my university life education.
And then after that, I’ve moved around a lot.
So there’s a lot of different chapters to this story.
But me and my partner, David, we moved to South Korea for a year to teach English.
And there I picked up some vocabulary and some phrases.
Mostly for restaurants because food’s my thing.
So that’s the most important thing for me is being able to get by in a restaurant and being able to be polite.

So I always like to try and be polite whenever I am in a different country.
I like to, you know, learn the pleases and thank yous and whatever.
But what I found interesting was I didn’t, I hadn’t at that point studied on my own a language, you know, I’d always been in the academic track and With Korean I did try kind of a language exchange with a university student there who, you know, just like a conversational thing.
My issue with that was because I was so academically trained on how to learn a language I had so many questions that they weren’t able to answer because they were just a native speaker who hadn’t, obviously they knew their language very well, but they hadn’t learned how to teach it so they didn’t
know The answer to the questions I had, it was all very just how we say it, which now would be fine.
I would love that.
But at the time, I was still kind of in a more analytical, coming from a more analytical viewpoint.

So I wouldn’t say I succeeded with Korean in any big way, but I got by.
And then we traveled a bit and then we moved to Scotland.
And then we moved to Brazil, because Dave’s job sent him there for the best part of the year.
So I didn’t have a job then but I was going to Portuguese classes and I had at that point already I think forgotten most of my German and definitely all of my Spanish but the first Portuguese lesson I went to just Spanish just started coming out of my mouth and the teachers like why are you speaking
Spanish like I didn’t know I could really speak Spanish actually sorry about that But that was good.
So then I did alright with the Portuguese actually, I have to say I did really quite well.
Brazil is a massive country and there are definitely parts of it where the English level is really low, of course.

And so there were instances where I was able to be a bit of a translator or a go-between for other tourists with a tour guide and stuff like that.
That was cool.
That was like a boost.
And that was my, that wasn’t formal education.
That was very casual.
It was good.
It was structured, but it wasn’t the kind of way we’d learned at school.

It was much more conversational way of learning.
That really suited me.
And then after that, moved back to the UK and then to Spain.
And then I really replaced that Portuguese with Spanish again.
I don’t think for me I don’t think I could have both of them in my mind at any good level at the same time because they’re too similar.
I haven’t tried to be fair to maintain them both but I think I would probably struggle with the similarities of that and kind of getting them mixed up.
But my Spanish now I would say is probably better than my German ever was.

So really quite alright.
And that’s it, that’s my, well that’s not my full language learning journey because I’ve also learned Japanese since but maybe we’ll come on to that a bit later because I feel like I’ve been rambling a lot now about all this.

Lindsay:

That’s cool.
It’s good to get like a full picture of everything before we kind of dive in.
I’m intrigued because there’s some similarities between what you said and like my own experience as well.
Like when I started my degree, which wasn’t German was, was French or Spanish, but the beginning was a repeat of everything I’d done at A-level and I was like, well, I don’t want to repeat myself, let’s do something else.
And so I did Mandarin and Italian, and it sounds similar to what you said about, was it Turkish and Spanish, right?
Where one was like, Oh, this feels easier than what I’m doing with the main stuff.
And then the other one was like, Oh, this is tougher.

And it was also the first time I’d done a sort of non-romance language, learned a language on my own outside of school, all of these other things.
So yeah, that was kind of interesting to hear you had a similar experience as well, there’s definitely something to be said for the power of cognates, shall we say.

Katie:

Yes, oh yes, they are an absolute joy.
And I have to say, skipping ahead to the Japanese bit again, I’ve loved that about Japanese because there are so many loanwords that it’s actually, that’s quite, it’s like a comfort blanket.
It’s like reassuring.
Yeah, you can guess, you can guess if you pronounce your own word like one of their words and maybe it’ll work.
It works a lot in Spanish and It is comforting.

Lindsay:

And so you sort of touched on Spanish and Japanese.
So mostly recently, that’s been as part of your business, right?

Katie:

Yes.
Well, so my Spanish, because we were living in Spain, and because I had already studied it, and then I had the whole Portuguese situation.
And when we arrived in Spain, my Spanish was Okay, I have to say that, and I know people talk about this, it’s not, this isn’t new, but I was surprised that just by living in Spain, my Spanish didn’t improve.
I needed to, I did actually really work on it with an online tutor for a long time to get it where it is now.
Just being there wasn’t enough.
Probably because I was working as an English teacher, so my day was all English.
But when we got to Spain, Dave, my husband, I think I already said who he was.

He had his Portuguese, his Portuguese was good, but he’d never studied Spanish.
So he wanted to put his best foot forward and learn some Spanish and kind of prior to this, we had bought our first virtual reality headsets back when we were living in the UK and both had our, you know, socks blown off by like how incredibly immersive it was.
I remember there was this one experience where you could do a tour of the White House.
So you’ve got your goggles on and it’s all, you know, it’s real video, it’s not computer generated.
So early one morning Dave goes, Katie get out of bed, come and try this thing.
Come and do a tour of the White House.
I’m sitting there on the beanbag in my pyjamas doing a tour, this narrated tour of the White House looking all around me and then suddenly Obama is sitting in front of me.

I was like, oh my god, I’m in my pajamas.
Like I really genuinely had the feeling.
Oh my god, I’m in my pajamas.
It was such a genuine reaction of embarrassment that I had in that moment that I was like, wow, this is this is powerful.
This is really powerful and then I felt like a bit, I blushed a bit when he made eye contact with me and you know, I was really, we won’t go into the details, but I was having like a proper reaction to being in the presence of someone who I wasn’t in the presence of.
It was really quite incredible.
So when we got to Spain, my best friend was coming to visit and she’s an incredible Spanish teacher.

And so Dave had kind of said to her, can you give me some Spanish lessons when you’re here?
And Can I film them with my 360 camera because he really wanted to use this new technology to learn Spanish and at the time there wasn’t really any way to do that and I think really existed in the VR world for learning languages.

Even now it’s something I wanted to talk about and maybe we’ll get to later like it feels very untapped as an area for language learning.

There are people doing things there definitely are some There are other people out there that are making content, some good stuff, but I will say that when it comes to the 360 video, this like really immersive experiences, I feel like we’re the ones leading the way with that.
Most of the stuff you’ll find is computer generated, which has other benefits to it.
Of course, you know, you can move around, you can pick stuff up, you can interact with the environment more, but it’s obviously much less immersive and you’re never gonna Blush seeing a computer generated Obama in quite the same way.
So he was like, look, can we just record these lessons that you’re going to give me?
And then I can put them out there so that anyone who wants to learn a bit of Spanish can put the headset on, watch these videos and learn alongside me.
We’d previously used a lot of Michelle Thomas courses.
And so that was kind of the thinking was, we both really enjoyed The dynamic in his tapes, CDs I want to call them, of the two learners, one of whom is slightly, usually slightly more on it than the other one.

And just the dynamic there and the jokes they make and we really enjoyed that environment so we thought, you know, let’s give that a go.
In this kind of classroom that we built in our apartment for Dave and the camera who would be the other student and so Jen was teaching my friend was teaching to both of them and she had a native she’s not native Spanish speaker but we had a native Spanish speaker there as well to help with the
pronunciation just to clarify all that and it was really good and then when we put the headset on this I guess really it really works at one point we’re playing charades so Jen has to whisper in your ear what you’re supposed to act out And it’s really realistic you know like she’s like yeah
playing games and then you have to act out playing games and obviously the people Dave when he was filming it they couldn’t really see what the VR person is going to be doing you know there are limitations but when you’re wearing the headset it really feels real and most of all you’re learning from
Dave’s mistakes which he was very kind to make a lot of so that we could all learn a lot from him.
It’s very generous.
It was, it was, he did a really good job there.

So we put that out there.
It was originally called Dynamic Spanish and people liked it.
And we then took the camera all over Spain and filmed what we were seeing in Spain.
So we had the classroom lessons and there were five of those or six, five of those and then we had these virtual tours around Spain.
Generally I mean they’re absolutely suitable for beginners and we’ve built them for beginners as well as for more advanced speakers but you know not maybe A1.
You need to have maybe A2 level to be able to get the most out of them but they’re great as a stretch goal for absolute beginners you know comprehensive input, perfect.
So then you put the goggles on and you’re in the middle of the Alhambra and you’re hearing Spanish narration and you’re learning about what you can actually see, you’re seeing the people around you, you’re hearing the sounds and it’s really, I don’t know, it’s really immersive.

I keep using that word but it’s the best word for it.
It feels really realistic and it puts the language In context as well.

Lindsay:

Yeah.
I mean, I think you mentioned earlier about immersion, about how I can’t remember where it was.
You said you went where you thought I’m going to go and it will be immersion.
And then it wasn’t.

Katie:
Oh, Spain.

Lindsay:
Yeah.
Right.

And, and this is what I love about this is that first of all, you could get that immersion anywhere.
And then it’s intentional.
You’re, you know, you’re, you’re going into this deciding like, I want to be immersed right now.
And you can be, 360, fully.
Like I’ve, I’ve won a VR headset before and yeah, you’d feel like, oh, I’m here, I’m here.
It’s kind of disappointing when you pull up the goal and you’re like, oh.

Katie:

Exactly.
And I think when people haven’t used the VR headset before, I’m not saying they can’t imagine what it’s like.
Of course you can imagine what it’s like, but it is, It is something that I would recognize people experience at least once just to see really how amazing this technology is.
And one thing we have done as part of the Spanish and the Japanese course is we’ve got local people.
So when we’re in Spain, we’re in Valencia, in Japan, it’s mostly in Tokyo, people just standing in front of the camera having a conversation with you.
So one of the, so you’re in the classroom learning, that’s, you know, Low stakes, you rewind it, do everything you can rewind, do as much as you want.
We’ve got speech recognition, so that’s encouraging you to really work on your pronunciation and it marks you as correct or incorrect and you know you really got to say things clearly.

To move on to move past with that and then you’re standing in Tokyo having a conversation using all the language you’ve just learned having to listen to that person say introduce themselves and then answer comprehension questions how old are they oh wow I wasn’t really paying enough attention or yes
I understood that and what that does when someone’s standing there talking to you and then they wait for your response they’re looking at you in the eyes it kind of gives you that like I said the physiological reaction So you get nervous, you feel nervous, you feel that anxiety or excitement,
whatever word you want to label it with, that you feel when you have to speak the language.
But you’re safe.

Lindsay:
But you’re safe.
That’s the difference.
Exactly.

Katie:

And so you can do as many times as you want and you can practice How to control that reaction, that response.
You can learn to love it or live with it, however you want to describe it, overcome it.
It gives you so much more confidence that when you’re actually faced with speaking to a real person after you’ve practiced there, it’s much less scary because you’ve already either overcome those nerves or at the very least they’re familiar.
So you can recognize them and go, actually, no, I can do it.
I’ve done it before.
Hmm, I can do it now much more much more than if you’re just talking to yourself.
Maybe it’s very useful, obviously, to do self talking to record yourself when you’re learning languages, but you don’t have the same physiological responses to them with the nerves and everything.

So it’s just the next the next step on I suppose, it’s like an intermediary step between that and real life.
We’ve all been there.
Like when Dave first got to Brazil, he got in a taxi, he went before me, he got in a taxi and he spent ages studying Portuguese before he got there.
The taxi driver asked him where he was going and where he was from.
And Dave’s like, literally, I don’t know what’s going on.
And part of it obviously was the accent in Rio, it’s quite a strong accent.
But no, it was just that he hadn’t actually prepared himself for the situation of having to speak off the cuff in a non-rehearsed way.

And so we’ve all been there, you can speak so well in your own head.
So much easier.

Lindsay:

So right now, you’ve got English as well, right?

Katie:
English, Spanish and Japanese.
Yeah.

Lindsay:
What does, what do you need to use?
Is it, would you call it like a course or a resource?
How would you describe it?
I don’t want to say the wrong word for you.

Katie:

No, that’s, that’s fine.
It depends on the language.
So for English, we have only the virtual tours.
We don’t have any classroom content.
We’re working on it.
We’ll get there eventually.
It’s a very, very small team.

It’s me and Dave, a couple of developers and a couple of language experts, and that’s it.
So, you know, we’re bootstrapping it, we’re not, we’re funding ourselves, we haven’t got outside investments, so we’re going as fast as we can.
The English is incredible, though.
So you’re all over the UK.
I mean, we’ve just filmed more this summer in Scotland.
And it’s really great for actually genuinely for native speakers as well, because it’s anyone who’s interested about history and culture.
And they’ll learn a lot.

And the UK obviously has a very long history.
We’ve got, you know, the different countries within it, and there’s a lot to learn.
And so they’re really great.
And then Spain, The majority of the content is the trips, the virtual tours.
We have the classroom lessons.
They’re very small compared to the Japanese.
There’s only a few and they were filmed on obviously our original camera, which is not as high quality, still looks great, but just as a comparison.

We haven’t updated it yet.
That was our kind of first attempt, proof of concept.
We’re very, very proud of it and hence it’s still on the app.
People are still using it and learning from it.
But the real What would someone need to use this resource?

A meta quest headset.

Lindsay:
A meta quest headset.
Okay.
Talk me through like what that actually is.
What else can you do with it?

How much are they?

Katie:
How much are they is a good question.
I’m going to have to Google that.

Lindsay:
That doesn’t matter too much.

Katie:
Oh, okay.
The prices change because they, you know, they’re bringing out new versions and, um, but basically it’s Facebook’s headsets.
It’s, um, The leading one.

Lindsay:

Is that the only one or are there other brands?
Are there other VR headsets?

Katie:

There are other VR headsets.
The big one at the moment, as in the most talked about one at the moment, is probably the Apple Vision Pro.

Lindsay:

Oh, I think I saw the advert.

Katie:

That is a lot more expensive than the MetaQuest.
The MetaQuest is a lot more affordable.
They have different versions of the Quest as well, so you can find one that suits your price range and also what you want to use it for.
Some of them are better for gaming and some of them are better for watching 360 video, for example.
I’m not a gamer.
That’s probably what most people think of with the virtual reality and what most people use it for.
So if that’s what you’re really into, you can get ones that even use the power of your PC to really amp up the graphics.

But for our app in particular, the most basic one would be perfectly acceptable.
The Vision Pro is really expensive and we would have to completely rebuild the app to put it on Again, we’re working on getting the app onto other headsets, but at the moment the meta headsets are the most popular.
Anyway, at least in this part of the world, there’s another one.
Well, there’s several, there’s several.
PlayStation have got one, Sony have got one, sorry.
There’s one called the Pico.
They’re all in use out there, but we have to pick one because you have to redevelop the app for each different one.

So we put our eggs in the Facebook basket to start with.

So that’s really the one.

Lindsay:
So like, if I was thinking, oh, this sounds great.
I love the idea of this immersive course and these lessons.
Like, why would I buy the headset?
What else can I do with it?
That would be like…

Katie:

Oh, okay.
Yeah, that’s a good question.
Well, so first of all, one good thing about it is, You can take it anywhere.
You need Wi-Fi, but you can take it and use it on the plane.
People use it on airplanes, in a hotel, when you travel.
People use them for all sorts of things.
Obviously, there’s the gaming, which I’ve described.

I don’t really do that, but a lot of people are really into the gaming.
There are other VR language learning apps, like I’ve said.
Some of them focus Just on vocabulary, some of them are a bit more interactive with other people, other real people, kind of, but it’s like I say, graphically rendered.
And then some of them are a bit more scenario based.
Mondly is a good example of one where they are, it’s graphically rendered, but more, yes, scenario based, you’re working your way through Getting on a train, asking you know where the trains going, maybe buying train tickets or that’s just the one that’s popped in my head.
They have loads of scenarios anyway.
So you can use it for that for sure.

There’s also you can use it to watch Netflix or YouTube stuff like that and I’ll get on to why that’s good in a minute.
And then the other thing that is for language learners, that’s really can be really good resources, VR chat.
So basically chat rooms, but you’ve obviously got your avatar.
So it’s a bit more realistic than just typing in your computer, you’re speaking.
And people go there to language based ones where you go into like a Japanese VR chat room, and then bump into people speak to people using your Japanese.
And it’s more anonymous.
Then if you went to an actual language exchange where everyone can see you in real life.

Lindsay:

Again, it’s the same thing, it’s that bridge, right, that you were describing of having the conversation with a real person virtually.
This is a similar thing where you’ve got the avatar, you’re sort of hiding behind a little bit, the pressure is off.

Katie:

Exactly and I think that’s one thing people like about VR in general is that it’s just giving them that extra distance from reality to feel a bit more comfortable.
But one of the things that I would say makes learning especially, I mean there’s so many great apps out there for travel content, documentaries, films, there’s so much you could do with the headset but the great thing about it is once it’s on you can’t see your phone especially if you put headphones
or earphones on You’re not distracted by anything around you and I don’t know about you but I would imagine it’s the same as for me.
If you’re trying to work at your laptop or learn at your laptop, well you’ve got the world at your fingertips and that’s a good and a bad thing and it’s very hard not to be distracted.
But with the headset on, the temptations are significantly limited.

Lindsay:

That’s yeah, that’s a really good point.
So there’s, there’s some good options then it sounds like, you know, it’s cause obviously it would be quite a commitment if I’m listening.
Yeah.
I really want to learn Japanese with this.
This sounds great, but that’s the only thing I can do with that headset.
Like I love the idea that actually there is some, there are more options.
The VR chat I’ve never heard of before. That’s really interesting.

Katie:

Yeah.
It can be, it can be really good.
And we know under no, under no illusions that people are going to go out and buy a headset just to use.
Our content, but it could be a good persuasion tool if you want one for Christmas, maybe.
But you know, I don’t just want it for gaming.
I can learn with it as well.
You know, just helping spread the word is a good excuse to get one.

Yeah, and I think so with the Japanese course, it was really interesting.
It was so much fun to make, actually, because So it was 40 lessons.
We filmed it over two weeks.
I was the student this time.
Dave was obviously the director.
Behind the blue screen you’ll see at the back of the room, we had, we were in an actual classroom with two teachers who have taught together for over a decade and one Japanese lady, one Australian lady.
It was me.

We’re surrounded by Japanese, you know, in this school classroom, Japanese all over the walls and I mean for me personally it was an insane challenge because I learned the entire course over the course of two weeks.
We did not rehearse, we did not repeat anything.
The only times we cut during the lessons was when the camera overheated because it was the middle of a heat wave.
That’s the only cut.
The only English I used was when I, like I think twice, I got really stuck and I had to ask a question.
But otherwise it’s completely in Japanese so you don’t have to be a native English speaker to learn Japanese from it because it’s just all Japanese.
And we’ve got games, we’ve got songs and then after each lesson in the classroom then you go to Tokyo and use what you’ve just learned to speak To one of our friends in Tokyo and over the course of the course.

Lindsay:

You did the course in two weeks and then you went out into the street to film it and it was you doing that in real life?

Katie:

I was there, yeah.
So after we filmed it, we finished in the summer and the following spring we went to Japan for three months with our 360 camera.
We got a camper van and we drove from Tokyo to Kagoshima.
So that’s Tokyo’s kind of maybe halfway.
Up the island and we drove all the way to the southern tip of the southern main island filming everything we saw along the way and yes filming conversations with people and I got to use the Japanese.
Okay, I didn’t learn at the pace that you’re going to learn in the app because I had to do it in two weeks so for sure anyone doing the course will be more successful than me because I did not have any time to revise or repeat anything it was just like okay I hope I remembered that for next time.
But when I got there I was able to order food and drinks I was able to say yes please no thank you.

I’m on a hike I don’t know how far we had left some people were walking the opposite direction I said oh how far is it how many minutes please and then I understood the response and we had a little bit of banter.
Well, I think we did, maybe it wasn’t bad.
Several times people asked who we were, what we were doing, and I was able to tell them we’re from the UK, we’re driving in a car from Tokyo to Kagoshima, we’re filming, you know, yes, I learned a bit of extra vocabulary on my own before we went related to the camera, but we needed to ask for
permissions and stuff.
But almost all of the language that I was able to use check into hotels.
The hotels were checked into when no one spoke English and I was able to do that.
So I can guarantee that the language you learn is super useful for enriching your experience in Japan as a as a tourist.

100% can guarantee that because I did it.

Lindsay:
Exactly.

What kind of, in those 40 lessons with the Japanese one, what kind of level, is it like you’re aiming for like a level, you know, like a sort of, with Japanese it’s not A1, A2 is it?

Katie:

It’s not.
We based our syllabus around a Marugoto course which has been developed by the Japan Foundation.
We didn’t follow it exactly but if someone wanted to do like More writing, for example, reading and writing, we would recommend they followed that, it’s a free online course alongside ours.
What it’s preparing you for, what you’ll be able to do by the end of it is get by as a tourist or say you’ve just moved to Japan.
It gives you that first step so you can have those first initial conversations, maybe make some friends, get over the nerves, just have been introduced to the concept of the honorifics and the different writing systems.
Again, we don’t teach the reading and writing because we wanted to focus on the communication, but it’s there on screen, you know, you can see everything written.
And so it’s not necessarily, it’s not focused on preparing you to pass the official exam of a certain level.

It’s about getting you to communicate and have confidence to Yeah, to continue your journey, you know, getting you over the first hurdle, showing you actually, look, you can do this, it might sound like it’s going to be a huge challenge, because like with the Mandarin and the Turkish, it’s wildly
different to languages a lot of people will have studied before.
Actually, it’s, there’s a lot of things about it that are a lot easier than other languages.
Yeah, definitely.
And I had never studied any Japanese before at all.
And it was really enjoyable.
It’s really fun.

It’s a very, very fun way to learn because you’re interacting with three people in that classroom and we’re making mistakes because there’s no rehearsal.
So the teachers make mistakes.
I make jokes somehow at some point.
I remember I made a joke and I was like, oh my god, you know, you know, you’re doing well when you can do that.
And it’s really fun.
Yeah, we’re playing games and I think it will give people confidence.
I think it will give them language skills, obviously, but confidence is a huge thing.

Lindsay:

I love that there’s no rehearsal.
Genuinely, because sometimes language resources can feel very scripted and a little bit fake.

I struggle with that sometimes.
Because that makes you doubt Well, is this person really achieving what they’re saying they’re achieving or did they already know the answers?

Katie:
We’ve had that question because I did so well in the course.
We’ve had that question from users just a couple of times.
They just wondered.
It wasn’t like a suspicion or a criticism.
They just wondered if it was as genuine as it looks and it really is because we needed that chemistry in the classroom.

We needed it to be to be real.
And it definitely is.

You can see how you as the learner, if you’re listening and you’ve got the headset like you feel more relaxed because there’s no pressure or tension of like, oh, This person got it straight away.
You know, if it’s overly rehearsed and correct, even if it’s just like an audio course that goes, hello, bonjour, we’ve like very perfect.
And you feel like not ready for that.

You know, it’s…

Lindsay:

It’s so important to have something that shows a bit more of the middle, I think.

Yeah, and the humanity of it.

Lindsay:

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Katie:

And that’s what I really liked about Michel, sorry, that’s what I really liked about Michel Thomas is because there were always the two students and one of them, one of them was always moving faster than the other one.
You’d even sometimes hear irritation in the voice of the student who was slightly ahead.

Lindsay:
They’re very brave to do that.

Katie:
They’re brilliant.

They’re a really good resource.
I have two questions that are kind of the same, but different about the future.

Lindsay:
Okay.
One, one question you can choose which order you answer them in.
One question is what is the future of dynamic languages and you know, what languages are next?
What direction do you want to take things in?
What would you like to add, et cetera?

The second question is what’s the future of VR and languages in general, like VR and language learning and technology and language learning, you know?
Yeah.
There’s a lot, so much talk now around AI, and I think it’s easy for it to be reduced to a bit of a buzzword that you end up just ignoring.
Cause you think, ah, I don’t fully understand it.
I’m just going to leave that over there.
And I feel like with VR, for some people, they might feel that same way where it’s like, I’ve heard about it, but scary.
I don’t understand what it’s going to lead to, what the future is.

So yeah, what’s the future?
And like I say, you can choose which way around is big, big batch of questions.
Yeah.

Katie:

Well, lucky for you, I am an oracle.
And I do know exactly what’s going to happen in the future.
So, um, when it, when it comes to the, when it comes to the AI question, it is really interesting.
And we’ve, we’ve heard this a lot, you know, over the decades, really, about languages, are people still gonna bother learning languages?
We’ve got Google Translate now.
And obviously, I don’t know about you but I’m so very aware of the improvement that Google Translate has made when we were at university and they were like don’t use it and well obviously not because it just spits out rubbish why would we?
Now I mean it spits out incredibly good language for the most part you know there’s obviously still tweaks you would need to make to it but it is very useful and we did use it in Japan with great success.

When obviously the language that we needed was beyond my capabilities but so generally I would say technology yeah there’s always going to be that conversation around is it removing the need to learn languages but what we always come back to is when you know people who actually learn languages As a
hobby, let’s say, rather than someone who’s learning it academically or learning it because they need it for work and they’re not particularly outside of that they wouldn’t be interested in it.
If we’re talking about hobbyist language learners then it doesn’t matter that this technology is coming because the reason we do it is for personal satisfaction and connection with humans and learning about other cultures.
All the other experiences you get from learning a language That aren’t actually related to being able to just order that coffee.
Yes, you could say it in English into your phone and then play it back in Mandarin to the person behind the counter, but they’re not going to react to you in any kind of joyous way compared to if you’d said it in real life.
We all know this.
They would be thinking, why didn’t you say it to me in English?

What are you trying to do?

And well, there we go.
There’s the same question.
Why?
Why do people learn languages for countries where that population generally has a good level of English?
Why?
If you’re obviously not if you’re not a native English speaker, but if you’re a native English speaker, what’s the point of ever learning any language when if you’ve traveled, you know, you can get by well enough pretty much anywhere on the planet with a handful of local words and English and body
language.

So why bother learning but like I say, it’s For all the other reasons that we do this and I don’t think technology is going to replace that because at the end of the day it’s about human connection and an AI is not going to replace that human connection.
What it can do is help the people who never really wanted to learn in the first place but need to use it.
Fine.
Those people, if they need to write an email in French and they don’t know French, do it.
Use the AI, it’ll help you for sure.
And the rest of us, we can use it as an aid like we would use anything else like we would use a dictionary or like we would use like an online based language forum, I suppose, rather than is maybe not going to replace an italki lesson, but then it can people use people use the AI to chat and you can
use the voice and the speech function as well and it can text back to you know it’s developing and I think the instinct is to say, Oh, well, it’s going to replace everything.

But no, it could just aid it could just enhance it.
And that’s my optimistic view of it.
But I think there’ll be enough of us who will continue to want to learn languages, you’ve got heritage language learners, who have very, you know, personal connections to languages that they’re going to want to learn and then they’re not going to be happy replacing it with, with a bot.
Um, Yeah, I don’t actually know the answer to what’s going to happen in the future, but I think as long as people still want to learn languages because of the human connection, then it will not disappear completely as an activity.
It won’t be replaced.
Because we do still speak on the phone, even though you can just text people or send voice notes on WhatsApp or whatever, we do also still make phone calls.
We do still meet up at the pub or whatever to have a chat.

Lindsay:

You know, people got so Zoom fatigued that there was this like, you know, desire to then meet up in real life and go to a real life language meetup rather than online and all of this.
So yeah, it aids, it gives us more options rather than eliminates old ones.

Katie:

I think so.
I think we shouldn’t be, um, I mean, yeah, be, be Afraid of it if you want to be and ignore it as a technology if you’re not into technology absolutely fine but don’t write it off because it can be the AIs can be incredibly useful but what you won’t get is the kind of experiential learning and that
is something that I think going back to VR that does give you that maybe they’re just the AI on your laptop wouldn’t is so you’ll have Probably a list of words that you remember exactly where you were and when it was that you learned them because they occurred in like an amusing or a very
memorable way.
You know, you tripped over a toad walking down the street and then you learned the word for toad.
That was a really weird example but you know what I mean.
These things happen where the reason, the way you learned a word is in itself a memory and was an experience and so That’s what we try to include in our VR experiences as well is that you’re going to learn words in context and in a memorable way.

So, you know, exploring the Alhambra as an example, you’re going to learn words related to the architecture.
And you can see it.
You can see a vaulted ceiling and then learn what that is in Spanish rather than just, you know, if you wanted to learn that learning in a very bland way written down.
And so I think with the AI you’re not going to have those experiences whereas with VR you can even in VR chats like we talked about you would maybe remember the avatar of the person who you were speaking to when you when you learn the word and so I think what VR is going to do if I remember your
second question correctly what’s the future of VR and language learning I think it’s going to give us more opportunities to have those experiences that maybe we’re not able to have.
One thing we’re very aware of Is how much we love travel and the kind of, I don’t like to use the word privilege because I think it’s a complicated word, but the privileged position we’re in to be able to travel and see the world and visit these places and use the languages in situ.
Many, many people in the world aren’t able to do that for various reasons.

And what we would like to do, you know, talking big picture kind of pie in the sky dream is break down those barriers of entry for people, not only to learning the language, so the fact that you can be in the middle of nowhere, as long as you’ve got internet and put the headset on and learn
Japanese from these two incredible teachers.
And we’ve already had people using the I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese but there’s no good courses where I live and now I can use this one and that’s genuine feedback we got.
I sent the review to my brother and he said did you write this because it’s what we’ve always said it would literally nail on the head of what we’ve always said we wanted to be able to do and also when it comes to financial reasons, geographical reasons, physical reasons people might not be able to
travel or not just travel the world but travel to a class So we just want to use VR and 360 video specifically rather than graphically rendered stuff to break down all these barriers to give as many people as possible the opportunity to see the world So far not the whole world as much as we’ve
managed to film and experience these things and understand even if maybe even if they’re not interested in learning languages you know you can still use the app as someone who’s curious about travel and culture you can still learn from the virtual tours just don’t just skip the quizzes the
questions skip that Okay, so the second part of your question was about kind of the future of VR rather than specifically or more generally AI.

I think the two are linked because AI is going to be integrated into everything including virtual reality and virtual reality headsets and it’s something we’re going to actually look at incorporating into our app because I think the great thing about AI and for language learning, it’s going to give
you more personalized feedback And so with virtual reality, I think we’ve only just by we I mean the people working in the space have only just scratched the surface of what can be done with it.
And so by integrating AI and developing more and learning more about what can be achieved with virtual reality and augmented reality, which is kind of when you’re looking through glasses or a headset and you can see Virtual things, but you can also still see the world, the real world around you.
All of that’s going to keep developing and I think it’s going to give people way more opportunities to learn loads of different stuff and make things so much more accessible.
So whether you can afford to travel or not, whether you’re physically able to travel or not, it’s going to break, what we want to do is break down all those barriers and, you know, really Kind of just make experiences and make learning especially much more accessible to people wherever in the world
you are, whether you’ve got access to a good language school or not, and whether you’re physically or Financially able to travel or not, you know, all these things are going to be made more universally available through virtual reality.
And yes, obviously, traveling in the VR headset isn’t the same as in real life.

But, you know, we’ve just this year taken our newest 360 camera all around France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and filmed more trips.
So we’ve got more languages coming to the app very soon.
And you can see You’re standing somewhere, you can see the birds in the sky and the flowers in the grass and you can hear the people’s conversations as they walk past you.
I mean, not very clearly, but just get the sense of life around you.
And I think, you know, it’s a good thing to do now that it’s getting darker and more wintery here in the UK.
It’s putting on the headset and going to San Tropez.
It’s quite a nice thing to do in the winter, get a bit of summer sun.

So I think when it comes to the future of VR, I’m very optimistic and excited to see what’s going to happen.
Obviously, there’s all the gaming as well and I’m sure that’s going to go to crazy places as well.
But for me personally, it’s about this breaking down of barriers and opening up of opportunities for people globally.
So I think that’s going to be really, really exciting and As I say, any resource to anyone who spent time learning a language knows that you can pretty much use anything in your day to day life to immerse yourself in the language or to add a bit of contact with your language, whether it’s sticking
up, you know, post-its around the house, labeling the vocabulary or whatever.
So any new technology, we’re going to be able to find a way to use it to our advantage.
And I think it’s really interesting to think about, you know, this People assume that as technology develops, we’re going to, like we talked about before, lose contact with these skills.

Maybe it’s less important to learn a language, but people are still going to learn musical instruments, for example, even though now instead of playing guitar at a party, you could put on Spotify.
People still sit around and they play the guitar because it’s a human connection.
It’s a real tangible moment.
It’s not manufactured.
And I think so in that sense, Even if AI takes away all our jobs and leaves us with all this free time yeah maybe for the first couple of years we saw in the pandemic you know we’re very happy as a society to just sit and watch telly but we also learned that you know hobbies and skills and making
sourdough bread and stuff like that is something we want to do as well so I think it’s just going to free up maybe our time a bit more to do these things that are more like passions and hobbies and aid our ability to do that as well.
So we’re constantly improving the app we’re trying to create like a metaversity for language learning so I think we’re personally at Dynamic Languages very excited to see how we can keep working with these new technologies rather than my instinct often is to go oh it’s scary no I don’t want it, it’s new it’s gonna ruin things but realistically you know The teachers told us at school, you’re not going to have, you need to learn maths because you’re not going to have a calculator in your pocket.
Well, I do have a calculator in my pocket now.
And you know what, it’s a good thing.

Lindsay:

Yeah, having a calculator paper and a non calculator paper, like why did we bother with a non calculator?

Katie:

Yeah, exactly.
We’ve all got the phones now, who cares?
So, um, and you did ask me before about the price of headsets, and I do have that information.
So just because, you know, like I said, the Apple Vision Pro is very expensive.
But when it comes to the meta headsets, they’ve actually just released a new one that’s like £290, I don’t know about in dollars.
£290 which obviously isn’t a small amount of money, I’m not saying that, but in terms of making it, you know, we’re getting there, we’re getting more accessible, we’re getting it to be like a more achievable price, but then they’ve got one for like £470 I think or £500 and then the top one which is
the MetaQuest Pro is I think like £1000.

Our app will work on the cheapest.

Lindsay:

It’s not long with stuff like that until it becomes so much more commonplace.
Like think of like an iPad.
When that first came out, it was like, what?
It’s too big to be a phone, but it’s too small to be a computer.
What is this thing?
And now it’s just so just everywhere, you know, and.
Yeah, I think it will be the same with this, but I like, it just becomes more commonplace and therefore becomes more accessible and affordable.

And, you know, it’s, it’s not long before that happens.
There’s a very positive answer you get, I have to say, cause I think like you mentioned, sometimes the default is just to think, no, I don’t understand it.
I’m scared.
Ignore that’s for somebody else.
And I think especially with technology and technology with this level of potential.
It’s dangerous to ignore, it’s dangerous to think I’ll just leave it to someone else.
And it’s important to have some kind of understanding of how these things work so that When, you know, things may go wrong in the future, whatever you’re able to be like, well, actually I get it a little bit and I have a bit of knowledge on this.

And if the way into understanding that is through language learning, that’s, you know, it’s not a bad side effect to be able to.

Lindsay:

Well, exactly.
And that’s one of the key things about learning language, isn’t it?
Just try and connect it to think other things you’re interested in.

Katie:
So there was a time when I spent quite a lot of time working on my Spanish and I did that through.
Food and cooking because that’s another kind of hobby and interest of mine.
So I wrote a blog with recipes and stuff in Spanish that I worked with my tutor on to kind of help and I tried to write it in the past tense which is my weakness.
And so I think if you’ve got an interest in technology or if like I said if you’re looking for an excuse to get a VR headset for maybe playing some games, it’s a good justification and it is a genuinely You know, like a legitimate reason to get one, I think.

Lindsay:

One more thing you mentioned as well, that you’ve recorded some tour videos in France, Germany, where are Switzerland?
Switzerland and Italy.
Do you know what’s next for dynamic languages?
Do you know where you’ll be or what languages you’re planning to add?

Katie:

Well, we are always Thinking, obviously I’m planning and dreaming.
So we’re going to put these new trips as what we call them the tours on the app and they’ll be perfect for any level of learner.
And then what we really, you know, would like to do our next big kind of stretch goal is to get another lesson.
So another language, like of classroom lessons on the app.
So if any of your listeners are language teachers and would like to get involved, please get in touch, genuinely get in touch, because we’re always looking for enthusiastic people to get involved in the project.
But it’s a huge project, it’s not A cheap project to do the classroom lessons and so we’re looking into that.
We’ve got a few languages in mind but mostly we want to get feedback from users as to all potential prospective users as to what their preferred or desired languages would be.

We don’t want to say, oh well I really want to learn Mandarin so that’s going to be the next language just because I want to learn it because it might not be what other people want.
So we’ve had requests for few different languages like French is quite a popular one.
You can imagine Korean, Mandarin obviously as well.
They’re the most popular languages that people learn really.
That’s where we would like to focus at the moment.
And as we grow and hopefully as we get more resources available to us, then we’ll be able to move a bit quicker.
But I think That would be, you know, the next dream would be to do more of those classroom lessons because the Japanese is so good and it was so much fun to make and people are having so much fun using it.

So we want to replicate that in other languages.

Lindsay:

Amazing.
And if people are listening and they’re thinking, oh, this sounds good, I want to give this a go, where can people find out more and follow along with what comes next?

So DynamicLanguages.org is our website, that’s probably the best place for you to go.
If you do already have a VR headset, then you can find us on YouTube and Kind of like the meta TV and the usual places where you would go download to get 360 videos.
We have a lot of our content available for free.
Maybe it’s just a shorter teaser version.
But for example, for Japanese, haven’t mentioned this actually, we’ve got, so the course is obviously for absolute beginners, but then we’ve developed a 15 part history series, which takes you from the Japanese creation myth all the way to modern day.
As far as I’m aware, it’s the first This is a docuseries in virtual reality about Japan and Japan’s history, so that’s exciting.
We have a version in English with Japanese keywords that you can learn or not as you go.

And then we have a version that’s in intermediate level Japanese.
or very ambitious beginners or intermediate and above learners.
And some of those episodes are available for free on YouTube and the other kind of 360 video platforms as well.

Lindsay:

Sorry to interrupt, just for the YouTube.

Would you need a headset to watch them on YouTube?
Like I’ve watched a 360 video on my phone and you move the phone, right?

Katie:
You can absolutely do that.

It’s called the magic window, which I think is a cool name.
Yeah, for sure.
You can do that.
So yeah, feel free to have a look at that.
If you do again, if you have a headset, a meta quest headset, then you can download the app of the meta store.
There’s a sample of all of the content A bit of everything in every language available for free is like a demo so you can try everything out there and then we’re actually going to be running in the new year a 60-day challenge with the Japanese course so you can sign up for that it’s like a one-off
payment rather than a subscription and we’re going to challenge you to complete the first unit within the 60 days we’re going to give you challenges, daily messages, coaching, little extra activities every day, help you build a language learning habit Although I imagine most of your listeners are already kind of aware of that.
They’re probably good at studying languages, but maybe it’s something you’d want to buy someone as a gift.
I don’t know.
And there’ll be prizes available for people who really put their all into it.
And everyone who completes it is going to get some really cool, really high quality photos of 360 photos of Mount Fuji.
So that’s quite a good entry point.
If anyone’s thinking about learning Japanese or curious about the app, It’s a one-off challenge.

I mean, we’ll continue it afterwards, obviously with the next units, but you just give it a go.
And again, another justification for we’re getting that headset for Christmas, if you want.
It starts on the 1st of January, so, you know, perfect timing.
But yeah, I would say dynamiclanguages.org, you’ll find all this information and send us an email if you’ve got any questions.
It’ll be me or Dave that replies, not a bot or, I don’t know, not a virtual assistant or anything, it’ll be us.
And we just love to hear people’s thoughts as well and opinions and criticisms as much as compliments.
Feedback is such a gift and more than anything I think we’re keen to get more feedback from users.

So even if you’ve just tried the demo, let us know what you think.

Lindsay:

Excellent.
Thank you so much.
I’m so excited about this.
It’s such a cool concept that feels like, yeah, you’re very much at the forefront of it.
And I’m really excited to see what comes next.

Katie:

Thank you.

Lindsay:

Thank you so much.
What a pleasure.
And I’m sure we’ll speak again soon.

Katie:
Yes.
Looking forward to it.
Thank you for having me.
Bye.

Lindsay:

Thank you.
Bye.