Image credit: habitica.com
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A few weeks ago a friend introduced me to this amazing app designed to boost personal productivity. It’s kind of a cross between a role-playing game, a tamagotchi and a to-do list. It’s pretty damn geeky but it works a treat!
Want to go to the gym or write a blog post every day? Habitica can help.You simply put all the good habits you’d like to start doing (and all the bad ones you’d like to stop) into the app and then every time you do them your avatar receives experience points or gold. As you level up you can equip yourself with better weapons, armour and pets that you can ride into battle against the bad habit monsters. You can team up with friends to do battle together and earn more rewards. As I said, it’s pretty geeky and probably not to everyone’s taste but in the week I’ve been using it I’ve flossed every day, written 5 blog posts and taken up a new sport!
Obviously you have to be honest about what you have and haven’t done but it has definitely given me a push to do things I would often put off or simply not do.
Applying it to language learning
It could be the push you or your students need to study some vocabulary or read for pleasure in their L2 outside class. Advise your students to set a target of 10 minutes reading or studying a day and see how they get on. I’ve done it myself and I’m currently on a 7-day streak of reading for pleasure in Spanish!
Check it out at: https://habitica.com