FabuLingua

The modes are all the different ways of interacting with the stories (listen and touch, listen in Spanish, games, imitate and record, and record the full story, etc). They get progressively more challenging and take your child through a specifically designed learning path of understanding, reinforcement, pronunciation practice and reading.

Only the “Escuchar y tocar (listen and touch)” mode is available when you open a story for the first time. Once your child has played the whole way through a story this way, it will unlock the second mode for that story. Play through that mode, and you will unlock the next one, and so on.

Tip: If your child is not up for the more difficult modes yet, you could try to model to her how you are brave enough to try them! If this does not work, don’t worry! Your child can always repeat the easier modes many times over and get ample ‘comprehensible input’ to aid their language learning.

Because she will get a new assortment of stickers every time she reads a story through, you’ll find she’s very willing to go back and read the same story again so she can expand her sticker collection and make her own illustrations!

Escuchar y tocar (Listen and touch)

In this mode your child listens to the story and its Magical Translation™. After the narrator is done speaking, the page will become alive with interactions. Encourage her to explore and discover by touching around.

Some of the interactions will allow her to hear the Spanish word for an object or the sounds an animal makes, others will invite her to count objects, and on a few pages there are mini-games to be discovered.

Escuchar en español (Listen in Spanish)

In this mode your child can listen to the story narrated only in Spanish. Given that this mode will only be available once she’s played the story in the previous mode once, she should have a general understanding of what the story is about. If you think she doesn’t understand it at all, encourage her to do the first mode with the Magical Translation a few times before moving onto the second mode of Spanish only.

She can also touch any of the words to hear them sounded out in syllables and translated to English!

All the same interactions from the previous mode become available after each page’s narration. Have your child explore some more, they often discover new interactions on this second read through.

Jugar (play)

This mode features a collection of games associated to each story that reinforce the learned vocabulary.

"Jugar a emparejar” is a matching game. Drag the character/object to the correct destination bubble in Spanish. If you can’t remember the English word for a character/object, touch it to hear the word.

If your child is a pre-reader and cannot read the Spanish in the destination bubbles, she can touch those bubbles to hear them read out loud in Spanish.

Each time you play you’ll have a new random selection of words to play in the matching game, so play often!

'Los Articulos' is a game where nouns from the story fall from the top of the screen, and the player has to assign the noun to an article ('el' or 'la') before the word falls on the floor. If you don't get them all right don't worry, you learn more each time you play, so try again! Each time you get a perfect score in any of our games you win a sticker! So play the games often to win more stickers!

Imitar y grabar (Imitate & record)

This is the mode where you and your child get to practice and improve your pronunciation (and giggle at the sound of your own voices!)

Listen to the narrator read a phrase. When she’s finished, a red ‘record’ button will pop up. Press it and have your child repeat the phrase, then press the ‘stop’ button. The narrator will go on to read the next phrase, help your child record his imitation once more.

When you get to the end of the page, you will automatically hear the narrator’s playback followed by your child’s version. If you’re satisfied, press on the check mark. If not, choose whether you want to hear it again (triangle) or re-do it (circular arrow).

Note: This is a practice mode, no recordings will be stored in this modality.

Grabar el cuento (Record the story)

This is FabuLingua’s most challenging and rewarding mode, where your child becomes the narrator of the story. In this case, the phrase she is meant to read out loud will be highlighted. Press the record button, allow her to read the corresponding segment, and press stop.

The recording of your child’s voice will play back at the end of the page. You can choose to play it back again (triangle), re-record it (circular arrow) or save it (check mark). The approved recording for each page will be stored locally on your device.

At the end of the story, your child will be rewarded with the full story on a single page of text with the sound of her voice reading that text out loud in Spanish! You can choose to share these files with friends, grandparents or teachers.

When your child reads the first mode of the story ("Escuchar y tocar") through completely, she will earn a pack of 3 colored stickers. Touch the pack to open it up! Then touch each of the stickers and watch them go into your Magic Sticker Book.

Completing the second mode ("Escuchar en español") awards a pack of 4 bronze stickers. The last two modes ("Imitar y grabar" and "Grabar el cuento") award packs of 5 silver and 6 gold stickers, respectively. Finally, in the "Jugar" game mode, your child will earn a new sticker every time she gets 100% correct answers. This should motivate many children to stretch themselves and try the more challenging modes in order to win the more “special” stickers.

If your child doesn’t want to do the more challenging modes, that’s fine! Remember that learning a language is a long journey. To be successful at it you have to carry on showing up, and that will only happen if she enjoys it. She can still collect plenty of stickers in the easier modes :)

The stickers should keep her excited to go back and hear the same story again days later and get more ‘comprehensible input’ with each pass at the story.

What do they do with the stickers?

Put them in your Magic Sticker Book! This is where your child gets to be totally creative and respond only to his imagination. Basically, it’s our sandbox area for free play.

Inside his personal sticker book he’ll find a roll with all of his collected stickers. The numbers indicate how many versions of any given sticker he has. His book will start growing in size over time, with new pages being added.

Here’s how to play and interact with it:

- Drag the stickers you want off the sticker roll and onto the page (for many of them, you’ll hear the Spanish word!)

- If you want to remove any sticker from the page and put it back onto the sticker roll, just touch it and drag it from the page to the sticker roll.

- Use standard screen expanding and pinching gestures to enlarge them and make them smaller, double tap with two fingers to flip them, drag them to change their position.

- Expand the menu above the sticker roll and find:

- Layers: determine which sticker is in front of or behind which other sticker.

- Background colors: change the color of the page.

- Recycle: move all your stickers from the page back onto the sticker roll so you can make a fresh start!

Watch your child’s creations unfold! (and maybe take a screenshot of their “sticker art” and share it on social media with the hashtag #FabuLinguaStickerArt).

Our Magical Translations™ method aligns with the model of comprehensible input by Dr Steven Krashen, the preeminent academic in second language acquisition. His research shows that new languages are most efficiently acquired not by memorizing grammar rules or vocabulary lists but when the learner is exposed to ‘maximum comprehensible input’.

Comprehensible input is new-language input into the brain which is ‘comprehensible’, which means that you more or less understand it even if you don’t understand it perfectly.

When interacting with FabuLingua, your child will see only the Spanish text, but hear the narrator’s rhythmic alternation between Spanish and its English translation. This Magical Translation™, is what makes the new-language input (or the story) ‘comprehensible’. Basically, it will enable your child to understand and follow the story in a relaxed and engaged way, which is the ideal state for language acquisition.

The more stories your child is exposed to in this way, and the more often he’s exposed to them, the more ‘comprehensible input’ he’s exposed to. When you have your child regularly use FabuLingua, you are creating a program of ongoing ‘maximum comprehensible input’ for him. And this creates the perfect conditions for acquiring a new language.