question about written materials and a desired feature

Hello my name is Eric.  I am a relatively new Rocket Languages user (Spanish for about two weeks).

Question:  One of the Spanish audio lessons suggested referencing the accompanying written materials.  Where are the written materials located?

Future Request for Rocket:  I like keeping track of my hours listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc.  I am using Rocket Languages to help me with my speaking specifically.  It would be nice if the apps saved a record of cumulative time recording my voice.  

Thanks,

Eric

Hi Eric,

Welcome to our Rocket Spanish course; it's great to have you here! 

This might be a reference to our Language and Culture lessons, which focus on the grammatical aspects of learning Spanish. They cover topics such as verb conjugations, subject pronouns, and articles, among others. 

The first one is 1.8 People, Places, and Things. Unlike the Audio lessons, you won't find an audio track here; instead, there's an in-depth breakdown of the grammar point with plenty of opportunities to practice using the provided examples. 

We appreciate your suggestion. In fact, our team is exploring a prospective overhaul of some of the motivational systems in our courses, such as points. Although your idea of tracking recorded time may not be the direction we pursue, it is encouraging to know that you would find something along those lines useful, and I will make sure they hear your feedback.

If you have any further thoughts as you progress through the course, feel free to let us know. 

I hope this is helpful! 

Indy 

Thanks for the quick response.  So, the written materials are not downloadable PDFs or something like that, but rather the “Language and Culture” non-audio lessons.   That helps.

I use cumulative time not just for motivation, but also to help identify relative strengths and weaknesses in my individual language learning toolbox.  Language learning is much different than other educational subjects in one particular aspect…acquisition time.  With all the hype out there hocking methods to acquire fluency in months, it can be discouraging when it takes more time than advertised.  I like using data and discussing it with the language learning community for comparison.

Hype, naiveté, whatever you want to call it, IMO, people who use the word fluent in the context of language learning, unless they're referring to how fluent speakers talk, should have their mouth washed out with soap. I'm convinced that all the nonsense on the internet regarding how long it takes to become “fluent” can be traced back to the Defense Language Institute (DLI), which is a program that mere mortals couldn't hope to qualify for, much less endure. Incredibly gifted people in class, working as a team, forty hours a week and studying until bedtime every night, usually on weekends. And nowhere does it say that they're guaranteed to be “fluent” after their 8 or 9 months, or however long it is. Check it out. I've run across some youtubes made by the participants that are awe inspiring. One guy said that he knew he had turned a corner when he started dreaming in his target language. Another guy said the first day they brought their flashcards in on pallets! For a handful of students! They don't even get to pick the language that they're going to study. It's assigned to them based upon the results of the battery of tests that they have to take for admission.

¡muy interesante!

One thing I find particularly interesting is that the testing process doesn't necessarily evaluate them according to the skills that one would normally associate with language learning such as, memory and recall - instead, it's things like pattern recognition. And this is in spite of the fact that one guy said that every day they left with a vocabulary list of dozens of words to learn for the next day. As for pattern recognition, nothing has become more abundantly clear in my study of French than the fact that the only way anyone will ever become proficient in speaking or listening is learning to transform:

thoughts → phrases,sentences / phrases,sentences → thoughts

not:

thoughts→ words / words→ thoughts

and certainly not:

thoughts→ English words→ French words , etc.

Nobody, other than, perhaps, the Rainman, could possibly parse spoken language word-for-word in real time. In my experience, having individual words jump out at me is actually a distraction. IMO, what distinguishes individual ability to learn a new language is simply how many times you need to hear a common phrase/sentence in the context of other words before it just melts into a thought. For me, I think it must be like, a thousand times. For gifted language learners, I don't know, maybe a few dozen. In any event, I think the most exciting part of learning French is when I have a random thought and I can just say it, and I think, how did I do that?

For what its worth, I commend Robert's comments above, especially to new language learners. (My context: four modern languages plus Latin over a period of 50 years, using many different resources.) 

Experienced learners will recognise many or all of them as valid.  One that I personally endorse is to only learn words within the context of phrases/sentences.  Words in isolation - the basis of so many paid-for apps - has been shown by many studies to be comparatively ineffective.  

It takes ages to become truly proficient in another language but for me, the journey is part of the joy of languages.

Chris