I just came across the following quote by Steve Kaufmann on The Linguist Blog:
"One day I will work on improving my German. I will not hire a teacher. I will not go to a school. I will listen to and read content that interests me. I will save words and phrases into a database for review. I will gradually get used to the correct phrasing of German. It will be faster and more pleasant than having someone correct me. That is how I got this far, and the same approach will take me the rest of the way."
This resonated with me and my particular way of learning a language once I have achieved a certain level of proficiency. I am intrigued by the part of saving words and phrases to a database. I wonder what kind of database he uses? This made me think about the possibility of using Drupal for learning languages. Of course, we are already using Drupal here for language-learning by listing resources, but it is not quite the same. We have a database of language-learning resources, not a platform for categorizing and structuring in your own way the many elements involved in learning a language. I am going to look into doing this, and if it works out, we might even integrate some of the features here for people to use when we go for V3 (Version 3), when users will start to join in and we'll start building an eclectic community.
As an aside: Apparently, Steve Kaufmann's comment about not liking to be corrected when speaking a foreign language caused a bit of a stir! He followed up on this with a post you can find here.
If you want to learn German, visit our learn German section or view the tag cloud for German learners.