Duolingo

Uncle Roger from the "egg fry rice" fame had mentioned Duolingo in one of his videos.

So one fine day I downloaded the app to learn Chinese (which I have postponed for the longest time: 12 years to be exact!)

The app teaches me 5 minutes a day useful phrases coupled with the characters in written form. It is actually up to the learner how much time he/she is willing to put in daily and incidentally this is where Duolingo has succeeded where edX and Coursera have not (when it comes to me at least): the daily reminders and the rewards just drags me back. And the lessons are pretty well done too.

So far I have learnt hello, goodbye, numbers.. and now names/ introductions.

And I get the benefit of having 2 little teachers correcting my pronunciation. Nice.

Here's to hoping that this initiative will last longer that the other abandoned courses.