FOCUS ON VOCABULARY
Learning a language will invariably require you to learn the notions that make up its components: pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
Now, if we allow ourselves to equate the mastery of one “notion” of pronunciation with one of grammar and one of vocabulary, it’s clear how the “elephant in the room” of the work to B2 fluency is just learning words. At 3,000 vs 100 vs 70, the “triathlon” of language learning is heavily skewed towards vocabulary, which is basically 94% of the memorisation effort. It’s 94% of the road you have to travel, 94% of the height you have to climb, 94% of the weight you have to lift.
Hence our focus on vocabulary.
SPACED REPETITION
What does it really mean to learn the 3000 most used words in a language?
In practical terms, if you were to give yourself one year to do so, it would mean acquiring 10 words a day for 6 days a week for 50 weeks. Not an easy task! However, such an amount of learning can be carried out efficiently by the use of spaced repetition.
Spaced repetition makes you learn content by showing it to you repeatedly at increasingly longer intervals as you find it easier to recall. However, the algorhithm will cut that interval short in case of a lapse or a mistake. The effectiveness and efficiency of this approach has been confirmed by research and empirical studies, and illustrious institutions such as the Harvard Medical School have adopted it.
This is why we have put spaced repetition at the core of our app.
FOCUS ON LISTENING
Reaching the critical mass of notions might still leave you unprepared for the toughest aspect of learning languages: listening.
When natives speak, they will do so at native speed, with inflections and dialects that are much harder to understand than what most language learning material will get you used to.
This is why the more advanced sections of Mjølnir feature many listening exercises made up of full sentences spoken with realism by native actors.
You will be surprised to see how your brain will learn to decipher seemingly impenetrable lines thanks to spaced repetition.
FLASHCARDS WITH 3 FIELDS
Flashcards are no novelty in language learning, but ours are a bit different.
Whenever we deemed it necessary, the answer to the flashcard question comes with some further explanation. The same explanation a good teacher would give you and a bad app wouldn’t.
This gives you additional and useful information that gets you reasoning and thinking, breaking away from pure memorisation.
FLEXIBLE LEARNING PATH
Unlike other apps, Mjølnir does not force you through a mandatory path.
You can pick the topics you prefer and, at any one point, you can say “no” to any flashcards that you find unhelpful or obvious, and exclude them from your studies.
This will speed up your learning further and effectively tailor our content to your pre-existing knowledge.
LANGUAGE SPECIFICITY
A significant number of expats to Scandinavian countries will be fluent or mother-tongue English speakers. Now, if learning a language is a journey and fluency is your destination, you might consider the languages you already know as the starting point of said journey. If English is one of them, then you are set for a flying start, given its closeness to Scandinavian languages.
This is why Mjølnir is based on English and aims at leveraging on those similarities as much as possible. If something works like in English, we’ll tell you just that, cutting down on the amount of unnecessary explanations and thus making efficient use of your study time.
UNIFIED VISION
Our content is the result of a collaborative but unified effort. Whether you are going to study Norwegian, Danish or Swedish, we have taken a comprehensive approach to all aspects of the language. Our unified vision means that you will never have to rely on unvetted content submitted by volunteers who are unaware of what is already present.
Our approach “by frequency of use” for the core vocabulary and “by topic” for the more advanced content will also ensure that you can strike a balance between your needs and your interests.