Language learning fascinates me. A while back, I heard about a website called Livemocha that takes a community-oriented approach to language learning. It’s a bit of a cross between Facebook, Wikipedia, and the much-acclaimed Rosetta Stone language tutoring software, which teaches with images rather than by association with your native tongue.

On Livemocha, you can take courses in a number of languages, and other people on the site can correct your answers or your pronunciation, help you with exercises that are confusing you, or chat with you in the language you’re trying to learn. The website prompts you to help correct others’ answers after you’ve  just completed an exercise yourself.

What’s great is that this method actually works. I tried out the site yesterday, and within a couple of hours of filling out some of the exercises, I got comments and corrections from other people using the site.

I think Livemocha’s approach is ingenious. I feel like most people have a surplus of helpfulness, so to speak, that doesn’t have enough outlets in our very disconnected, compartmentalized modern society. A website like this gives people an easy way to help and connect with others in a common goal—in this case, learning a new language.

The effect is like plugging in your lamp to the electrical outlet, or turning on the sink faucet. You don’t need to pull the electricity out into the lamp with a crank or a rope, or squeeze the water out of the tap; as soon as you plug the cord in or turn the valve, it starts flowing freely.

How else could we tap this unused potential energy?