Adventures in Language
Mollie Hand
Published December 19, 2025
4 Minute Read
Love of Languages
As I wrote in my first blog, I am using two different apps to help me learn Indonesian. The photo above shows a screenshot of Babbel. I also tried an audiobook for times when I was driving to our getaway in Encampment. But the very first thing I tried was YouTube. I found a few videos, but I didn’t feel they were helpful since I really wanted to focus on output, and the videos felt much more passive.
Let me start from the beginning. I love learning languages. In elementary school, we had the chance to learn some Spanish, and I took to it easily. I went on to take Spanish through my senior year of high school, and even though I don’t practice it much anymore, I still feel I have at least an intermediate level—thanks to starting early.
In high school, I added German. It came even more easily, thanks to the best teacher ever: Herr Miller. Honestly, I’ve had great Spanish teachers too, especially my first, Señora Jeffries. But no one compared to Mr. Miller. Somehow, I was able to learn more German in three years and achieve such proficiency that when I arrived in Germany for my Rotary exchange, my host families were impressed with my abilities. I met other exchange students who had studied German for a similar number of years, and often my language skills were stronger. I really don’t want to come off as thinking I was better; I truly believe my teacher was better. I can’t even pinpoint what made him such a great teacher, but vielen Dank, Herr Miller. Amazingly, my sister Celise was one of his first students in the 1980s, and my daughter, Addie, learned from him just before he retired in 2018. What luck we all had! (Incidentally, Addie is my travel buddy to Indonesia!)
I should also mention that I took Mandarin in high school and one semester in college. Most recently, as staff at UW, I studied one semester of Arapaho, which was the most difficult language I’ve ever tried to learn. For anyone interested in studying Arapaho, I highly recommend taking it at the University of Wyoming. It is taught with deep respect for the language and culture, and the instructor, Robyn Lopez, brings an incredible level of expertise, care, and intentionality to the learning process.
News about the Arapaho Language Learning App
Trials and Errors
Well, back to my learning adventures. Once I downloaded Duolingo, I felt that I was getting things right. It motivates you to practice every day by tracking your streaks. It provides points and includes weekly competitions with other users, which is fun. It also does a great job scaffolding the lessons.
However, I worried that my pronunciation wasn’t really being checked with Duolingo, so I decided to invest in Babbel, which I had heard includes listening and speaking sections where you record yourself. At that point, I realized how much Babbel filled in the gaps Duolingo had—particularly with cultural and grammatical explanations. (As you may have noticed, the screenshot at the beginning of this blog shows the inclusion of pronunciation lessons and and the culture of the "unity in diversity.") I still prefer the gamification and motivation of Duolingo and the funny-looking cartoon characters, but in the end, I wanted to learn quickly, so I use both apps. This is my recommendation for anyone looking to learn a language more efficiently.
But my first recommendation for anyone interested in learning a language is to enroll in a face-to-face course. Not only is Arabic offered in Global and Area Studies and the Arapaho class I just mentioned, but thare are wonderful professors at the UW Modern and Classical Languages department teaching Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.
