venga!

Before I came to Spain, I had wanted to learn the language. I'd been afraid that without language skills I wouldn't be able to communicate efficiently. So as many many people I had installed Duolingo as my language acquisition partner. I had been learning new words, such as café, sandwich, taco, hence I had been able to order some food in Spain despite being in Poland. Such a bullshit man... 

Why would you learn such useless things??

Well, you can say that you learn pronunciation, basic words, basics of grammar. But in this way? Why? Why wouldn't you learn something more useful, not deprived from naturality of basic human interaction. Like "How are you? Do you like Spain? Have you tried our food?" And you learn to acknowledge and respond to such questions that are more life-occurent. 

Duolingo lacks sense of connection. Its society concentrates around a) daily streakers that brag about their score, b) trauma-bonded folks connected by mutual upsetness at the haunting green bird and c) short-time exceptional language explorers.

Venga! fills the blank space of connection with other language explorers. Feel free to visit venga.space for more details.

See you at the 2nd edition of Venga! Language Event in Madrid :) on 6th of December 2025. 

There is a bunch of trainings dedicated for teachers and principals that are touched by the phenomena of burnout in their speciality. But the paradox lays in a form in which are those schoolings conveyed - (most certainly almost) are ONLINE. Bruh... It's like you would try to cease the fire by being in the fire your own. We need to keep more distance and use the opposite - water. In this sense, what I want to say is that such practices as attending to ONLINE courses about preventing or fixing teachers' burnout does not touch the real problem, but only increases it. 

Since the Babbel Tower collapse, people split into language clusters. Before, they had communicated in one way - like other animals. They had used to inform about proximate danger through non-articulated sounds, shouts, conveying emotions. And yet, one thing resisted - the ability to conduct mental states through different forms of communication, mostly non-verbal. As the evolution progressed, human-beings had began creating plans, revealing their past experiences and in-so-forth increasing the distance between two gaps (the Past and the Future) from their Present. Through planning and recalling, humans evolved to live less purely in the present, widening the chasm between their experienced reality, their history, and their aspirations.

We need to find the Presence back. In Language Learning Sphere it would be to first abandon planning and remembering, focusing merely on the Present actions. Instructions, such as "Go back", "Go next", "Open", "Close" - can underpin the Explorer's understanding of quick consequences of Their actions. 

I have been systematically learning Spanish language by:
1) reading books in Spanish ("Historía del Hombre"), and then reading aloud to the Translator app,
2) talking to natives,
3) asking for meanings of specific words/phrases, via Translator app, or via directly asking natives.

I think those methods are enough for basic comprehension of the language.

Although I still struggle with grammar and vocabulary and understanding of natives' speech. 

So, how to successfully scaffold the language?
1) learn patterns: words in context, word-formation, distinguishing between nouns, verbs, adjectives and other parts of speech;
2) highlight and write down sentences that use grammar structure correctly (this helps you understand the context and function of the rule);
3) use thesaurus https://www.wordhippo.com/ ;
4) deconstruct connected speech: listen to a slow-speed audio resource (a one simple sentence), then try to write down what you're hearing, then listen once again with a transcript and correct your mistakes;
5) focus on musicality and rhythm of speech, try to mimic native speaker's emotions (this action is called shadowing);
6) choose content that you enjoy reading/watching about.

Language Learning could be compared to playing football. You train and play matches. You can learn playing football merely by trainings, without performing in real match situations. But it does not seem fun, it seems pointless. Although a match does not need to be a high class clash between two biggest teams in the world. It could be a friendly or even a meeting with your friends. But no matter how big scale of a match is, the same rules apply. Well, if you want to be good at playing football, it requires efficient and repetitive training.

Same goes with Learning a Language. In order to perform on a higher level, you need to acquire some skills, such as: pronunciation, vocabulary, writing, spelling. You can train these language components on the Venga! hub. 

Have you ever heard the phrase: "to learn from sb's mistakes"? Or "learning a hard way"? 

That's right - you can do it. Of course it seems better to learn from others' mistakes, however what do you gain from that as an observer?

Often I hear my explorers' complaints about their teachers. That they shout at other students, they are rough, or on the other hand - too lazy, don't teach anything, students get bored. So no wonder that my role as the guide would be to "fix" skills of victims' of educational system. But what if I'm not available? How will my explorers "gain motivation" to study? Of course it depends on their own (or their parents') desires to learn and study. But we can agree, that in every case, the main point of learning English As Foreign Language is to acquire skills essential for communication. But how do the explorers use those skills? The problem is that it is a very rare occasion when the explorer tells me that she or he uses the language in everyday situations. Well, there is no point of code switching in an environment when it is not necessary (maybe except for using the language per se in school, but more as the CALP [academic] rather than BISC [non-formal]. 

So Venga! role would be to create such environment, when the "being acquired" language would be used necessarily and freely. 

Visit venga.space for more details!

There are bunch of links to language games from Mercedes (profesora).

So, my idea, a goal is to compile all the most interesting platforms to create a learning pathway for students.

One problem is that all those platforms are created in vague layouts, designs, different fonts, etc. so UX is not easy.

Another problem is that these resources are in general paid, or if some are free, you get overwhelmed by misleading adverts that make your work resembling going through a labyrinth more than actually doing something valuable.

Venga! gathers all those resources in one place, creating a safe space for explorers.

What we need to do:

1)    play with all those links, open them and see what’s going on,

2)    create learning paths (first, only for English language learning),

3)    convert every platform into one coherent design.