A World of Language Learning at Your Fingertipss

Why are people committing crimes like poaching or trafficking wild animals?

There’s a lot of variety in motivation. Sometimes it’s a food security issue. Sometimes it’s a job opportunity. Sometimes people do it for religious reasons, like a life-cycle ritual. They may not even be aware what they’re doing is illegal. I’m using science to help understand what drives all this behavior.

Where have you worked around the world?

Right now I have active projects in Vietnam, Madagascar, Ethiopia, the Congo and Mexico. I’m working with 23 colleges and tribal colleges around the U.S. I’m all over the place, and just trying to think as broadly as I can, and trying to help people think differently about these problems.

What have you uncovered with that method?

Some of my recent research looks at the role of women. It’s women who do most of the work in certain parts of the world—like illegally entering a protected area to collect firewood. Women might be disproportionately arrested as a result. No one is really doing work in this space, which is astounding, because we’re half the world’s population, so we’re half of the problem, and half of the solution.

A World of Language Learning—at Your Fingertips

New UMD-Developed App Offers 420 Immersive Lessons in Seven Languages

SAY HELLO—or hola, bonjour, привет or 你好—to a new tool that transports you to cultures across the globe while fitting in your hand, pocket or purse.

Lectica, a free language-learning app created by UMD’s National

Foreign Language Center (NFLC), features 420 lessons in seven languages (Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and

Persian) with content prepared by native speakers.

“Learners are drawn in by the real-life materials, things that you’d see if you were immersed in the target language culture,” says Kathy

Kilday, NFLC director of product development.

Language apps surged among quarantiners looking to broaden their horizons, and Lectica, available in September in the Apple App Store, offers subscription- and ad-free options. Instead of earning points in games, its users explore text, audio and video clips that native speakers might encounter.

In one intermediate lesson, for example, users watch a news report with vendors at a Christmas market in France, then can speed up, slow down or loop video segments to boost understanding. Comprehension activities about the vendors follow, and then a translation tool, glossary and cultural and linguistic notes are unlocked.

Student marketing group RedBlack Consulting came up with

Lectica’s name (which plays on Greek roots relating to “words” and “speech”) and promoted its launch through social media outreach.

“(We wanted to) show how this app is for people who are really serious about language-learning,” says RedBlack Consulting Account

Manager Faith Chisholm ’22.

Lectica will hit the Google Play store in 2022, when NFLC will publish 720 lessons in 12 additional languages and enhance the original seven options.—AD