December is #NoBlanks Month: Learn About the Alternatives to fill-in-the-blanks Based Language Exercises All Month Long
It’s hard for us to believe, but it’s been a full year since we made the decision to get rid of fill-in-the-blanks based language exercises and reinvent language learning from the group up.
To celebrate, and to help the community learn more about the #NoBlanks movement, we’ve officially declared the month of December #NoBlanks Month here at Thinkin.
Why #NoBlanks?
When you start learning a new language, the learning curve is high in the first year but as soon as you reach the intermediate level you stop seeing progress. Midway in your language learning, traditional fill-in-the-blanks based exercises stop working as well as they used to. They only makes you better at fill-in-the-blanks and not the actual skill of speaking the language fluently.
Ultimately, fill-in-the-blanks based exercises are too far from the real experience of speaking outside. When you’re outside you do not have any hints or blanks-to-fill but you have to make sentences from the ground up. It can be better understood as doing these predictable language exercises is like playing Lego but when you are outside you have to build a house.
According to research, there is 90% failure rate for second language learners. Another study found that 9 out of 10 language learners admit that they can understand foreign languages very well but are rather bad a speaking it.
The takeaway: Spoken skills have a massive failure rate when you try to learn them through fill-in-the-blanks exercises, one that is stopping people to anymore rely on these predictable language exercises. Long story short, to speak at the highest level, one needs to practice making sentences their own because that’s what you ultimately need when you’re outside.
At the end of the day, it’s always easier to stick to the status quo, and to stick to your habit rather. If you’re used to doing these predictable exercises it’s easy to stick to them but if you really want to see an improvement in your skills so that when you go out you’re not stuck anymore or you’re not blank then you should stop filling-in-the-blanks and rather make sentences on your own. Your choices are either to adapt or watch yourself fail.
So for a year now, we’ve been developing a new approach at Thinkin, specifically, to become fluent outside, one that replaces these predictable boring fill-in-the-blanks exercises. And there are four reasons this approach is better than the traditional, fill-in-the-blanks based exercises:
- Making your own sentences is exactly like speaking outside and develops the real skills to speak fluently.
- Making your own sentences is surprisingly fun because you are the creator here and not the consumer and you never know where your thoughts will take you.
- Making your own sentences trains you to respond spontaneously which will ultimately make you look confident.
- Making your own sentences makes you fluent faster because naturally you only learn only those words that are relevant to you.
Throughout the month of December, we’ll be sharing more stats as well as customer stories that show how making your own sentences develops language intuition and makes you fluent faster.
#NoBlanks Month: What to Expect
We’ll be celebrating #NoBlanks Month across all of our marketing channels, including right here on the Thinkin blog, where we’ll be publishing fresh content about replacing fill-in-the-blanks based exercises every week.
We’ve also creating a dedicated site page for #NoBlanks Month, where you can find resources and stay up-to-date on all of the latest #NoBlanks Month happenings.
On LinkedIn, we’ll be using the hashtag #NoBlanks to share content and to get the conversation going around replacing predictable language exercises.
You can also say hi to us on Twitter and LinkedIn, where we’ll be sharing photos and other resources all month long. For a chance to win a #NoBlanks sticker and other Thinkin swag, be sure to tweet at us.
And of course, for our latest #NoBlanks video content, you can drop by our YouTube channel.
