Four Years on Duolingo

 

So, today is the first day of my fifth year on Duolingo and of those four years I have about three years and four months of studying German. Of course, everybody knows, that period of time, per se, means nothing when it comes to learning, what matters is the method, intensity, actual time, spent with the language, passive learning( acquisition) vs active usage, etc.

If these three years and several months had been spent in an intensive German course, I should have been fairly fluent in the language. On the other hand, were it not for Duolingo, my knowledge of German, as it is, would be non-existent. 

Duolingo is firmly a part of my daily routine, and I can assuredly say, of the happiest of it - my morning coffee. I'm not a fan of sleeping, although I have a very strict sleeping routine, and my first thought when I go to sleep at night is "I can't wait for it to be morning!". The thought of drinking my first morning coffee and opening the Duolingo app makes the beginning of the day so welcome, whatever that day may bring :)

During my fourth year on Duolingo I finished completely the German course and the English course, which contained German translations. This was a bummer, as now my use of Duolingo is much less productive - the revision exercises, which the app provides, are extremely repetitive and I already know the limited set of sentences and stories by heart. 

I am pushing on with the English course, but it's a slog, as I have to consult with external apps, like Google translate and DeepL. Still, I think the effort is worth it, as it requires very intense active use of the knowledge of the language, instead of passive filling in of words or arranging a set of given words in a sentence, as is the intended use of the app. Actually, I believe a lot of people have little or barely noticeable progress with Duolingo, because they use it very passively and with an accent on the game and competition aspects of the app, and not so much as a teaching tool. For instance, instead of listening to a story in English, I turn off the sound, read the English sentences and translate every line of the story into German, checking with the hidden translation, which is revealed when you click on an English word. Meanwhile I write down all of the words and phrases I find interesting and new. Then I do the revision (Legendary level) of the story, without the translation. And I use this approach for every exercises on the app.

I also listen to a lot of German podcasts and audiobooks and I read books in German. I'm still behind on my vocabulary - both passive and active, I find German words very, very difficult to remember and distinguish. Some sources I could recommend:

Super German - a podcast with essays on various topics. I find it extremely useful, as the vocabulary is more or less at my current level, a lot of phrases are clearly explained and it provides a useful structure for expanding on a topic in German.

Matthias Zehnder - a Swiss author and media expert. I like listening to his book recommendations, but I should acknowledge, that the language level of his podcast is quite above my current level, so I grasp the general ideas, but miss the details, so far.

Learn German Relaxed with Gabriel - I think I recommended this channel earlier and I still enjoy listening to it, it is easy and understandable for me and has plenty of useful phrases and idioms in German

I recently heard that Duolingo is preparing the launch of the next part of the German tree, I can't wait for it! Meanwhile I continue with the English tree plus a lot of revisions of the previous levels. Maintaining the acquired vocabulary is a big part of going forward :) Language learning, especially past the childhood years, is a red queen race - you have to run as fast as you can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that. :)

Three Years on Duolingo

 

Day by day, my Duolingo streak got to three years. Now I almost can't imagine not starting my day with a cup of coffee and an hour of German exercises. I definitely prefer the English-German version, with the sound turned off, where I translate out loud every single sentence in German and then compare my translation to the German answer. The thing is, that Duolingo exercises provide you mostly with ready-made sentences in the target language and you are expected to fill in the blanks, translate into your base language or listen to and then build the sentence you just heard out of the word blocks. All of that is useful, no doubt, but it is kind of too easy and doesn't require that much word recalling and sentence building. The way i use the app is much slower, but forces me to translate simultaneously all the time and improves my active use of the language.

Lately I've been listening to Youtube channels in German a lot. Here are some of my latest finds, which I'd like to put in a good word for:

Learn German Relaxed with Gabriel has some grammar videos, but most enjoyable for me are Gabriel's walks around in Taiwan, during which he tries to speak slowly and very clearly and to talk about his surroundings and various other entertaining topics. Absolutely excellent for a beginner listener.

Deutsch-Podcast is a channel by two ladies, both German exam instructors. I've listened to them speaking about various topics, also fairly easy and understandable for a beginner.

Deutsches Geplapper - this one can be a bit more difficult to understand, dependent on the guests, but I've listened to some interesting polyglots, discussing various language learning strategies and personal experiences and I found it worth the effort.

My level is probably somewhere around A2, modest B1.1, with probably some B2 grammar, but gaps in A2 vocabulary, when measured according to a standardized system. I still have a lot of the English-German tree left, plus almost 20 units of the revision part of the German-English tree. I really hope the developers would add new parts to the trees, as I can't imagine what else could make me study German every day, but my Duolingo. Of course, it would be smashing, if they added a German - Bulgarian section, but I'm not holding my breath :(

1000 Days on Duolingo

 

Last month I passed a double milestone - 1000 days on Duolingo (1035 as of today) and two years of learning German. I'm a language nerd, wouldn't call myself polyglot, but I love learning languages and German is the sixth foreign language I've tried to learn, besides English, Russian, French, Italian and Spanish. Of these I have a decent command of English and Russian and I still retain some Spanish and some very basic Italian. My encounter with French was short-lived and very long ago, for a year in middle school. Italian I self-taught during my university years and I started with Spanish with the appearance of Livemocha and then I studied it anew for a few months at the Spanish Cultural Institute in Sofia - until the coronavirus broke out, the courses became online and I lost interest.

I started my journey with Duolingo a bit as a joke in January 2021 and for the first year I practiced my Spanish, until my visit in Vienna in October 2021, when I decided to include a German course to my Duolingo routine. This was my first encounter with German and though I wouldn't claim I fell in love with it, for the first time in years I felt highly motivated to bring my language endeavour somewhere. Having studied languages all of my conscious life, I know only too well that it's an endless journey. However, there's a stage, probably a solid B2, when the knowledge of the language is permanently fixed and daily practice is no longer needed to keep it alive. Thus I know that even if I stopped reading and listening to English or Russian for years, I'll never forget them completely and will always be able to revive my knowledge of these languages. I didn't get there with Italian or Spanish, but I do plan to persist and bring my German to a decent B2 level (one day, in many years time).

Meanwhile, I believe in May this year, I reached the end of the German tree and started the revision part, with no new words and grammar. I got a little bored and decided to try the reverse course, English through German. The first units were, naturally, a joke, but I soon found a method to practice my German, which turned out extremely effective and I believe has significantly improved my language skills. The method is very simple - I turn off the sound of the phone, as I don't need the English sentences read to me, instead I try to translate every single exercise in German, without looking at the clues, and only after I've translated it out loud, I do the exercise and compare my translation with the German key. I do the same with the stories - I read silently the English text and translate it aloud in German, checking from time to time with the hidden German translation (by clicking on a word or a phrase).

Meanwhile I continued with my German course (through English) and they soon rearranged it again, adding new lessons with extended vocabulary and grammar. I finished it in a couple of months and now I am stuck again at the revision level, so I do mostly the reverse course.

I know it's a painfully slow progress, but not only do I enjoy it, but I can see my improvement - I can read books in German and watch films with German subtitles, and though I am still far from understanding everything, I am getting at least 60% of it. Hopefully, next year it will be 80% :)

Two Years on Duolingo

 

This past week I began my third year of language study on Duolingo! I believe that this is the longest I've committed to any activity that requires every day efforts and I am actually quite impressed by Duolingo gaming strategies which have managed to make me, a notorious quitter, stick to their routine.

Regretfully, I had to abandon my Spanish lessons completely. Unlike other polyglots, I am clearly unable to separate new to me languages and as my German grew, Spanish began to mess with my capacity to remember new words. I might return to it in a few years, if I get so ahead with German as to feel secure in my fluency in it, but I doubt it. Anyway, for now I've prioritized learning German and I still feel highly motivated.

My German routine lately includes about 45 min on Duolingo in the morning, while drinking my coffee and breakfasting, about 15 min on Anki flashcards (alas, I skip days and I sometimes skip adding new words - unlike Duolingo, Anki feels like a chore), reading Harry Potter in German and in parallel the Bulgarian translation (I'm currently on the third book of the series, but I'm moving with a pace of less than a page a day, so it's a slog), 15-20 min on Duolingo in the evening, usually revision exercises at the Legendary level and occasionally a grammar video on Youtube. It might sound a lot, but after 50, at least for me, language acquisition feels like a tango - a step forwards, two steps backwards, so I need lots of repetitions in order to retain new words. 

Despite the slow progress I am definitely recommending Duolingo to anyone, who feel they might spend their time on their phone more productively than simply scrolling through FB, IG and the likes. Needless to say, I wish I was paid by Duolingo for endorsing them, but I'm not :)))

New Duolingo Update

 

Just a few thoughts and notes on the new Duolingo update, which everybody seems to hate, judging by the comments on Youtube.

I've been on Duolingo for almost two years and I've been learning German since October 1st last year - so for 14 months now. And the more I use Duolingo, the more I realize that such language apps were made for me. Of all the language learning tasks I set to myself at the beginning of the day, doing my Duolingo exercises is the only one I do with enjoyment and for the fun of it and that is why often in the end of the day it is the only one I have actually done. All the other stuff I try to accomplish - practice words on Anki (I try this pretty systematically), do written grammar exercises (my grammar textbook is still almost untouched), write a diary in German (nope, abandoned on the 6th day), read a book (a paragraph a day, at most), I do reluctantly and as a chore.

So, I was enjoying Duolingo even before they updated it, but the new concept they introduced feels even better. Now you follow a path, alternate between different themes, do a lot of full sentence translations from German to English and vice versa and in my opinion this approach makes you optimize the time spent on Duolingo in memorizing and learning, rather than drilling the same topic ad nauseam. Before, I used to take a week and even 10 days to pass a lesson, while now I am striding along at a pace of at least two lessons a week, and not at the expense of learning. The fact, that, a bit coincidentally, just before the update I added Anki flashcards to my language routine definitely helps. I really feel I am making a progress.

So, as a counterbalance to all the moaning and complaining - a good word and a praise from me :) Way to go, Duolingo!

600 Days on Duolingo

 

A few short notes on my continuing experience with Duolingo. As I have already mentioned, in January 2021, a bit on a whim, I started learning Spanish on Duolingo - just a couple of exercises a day initially, trying to keep my Spanish alive. Then, on October 1st, after my visit to Vienna, I included German. I had never studied any German before, so what I have learned during my almost full year of German on Duolingo now, is from scratch. 

There are many voices out there, that language platforms like Duolingo are a waste of time. Maybe, but compared to what? Paid professional courses or private tutors? Such activities require quite a lot of money, time, schedule. Learning on your own from textbooks and exercises books? I wonder how many have the required perseverance and determination. I know I don't - of all the challenges and nicely intended initiatives I've embarked over the year, Duolingo is the only one I have consistently stuck to, every day. So, yah, it might not be optimal, but it is something compared to the nothing I would have if I wasn't doggedly clutching to my streak and my Diamond league placement.

On the other hand, Duolingo per se is not enough, in my opinion. It does not provide a clear grammar frame and the repetition of phrases, containing words with changing endings without a clear understanding what is happening and why am I getting it constantly wrong is truly frustrating. My break through the language actually came, when I happened upon a structured 16 hour program of introduction into German on Youtube. The program was in Russian, but my passive Russian is good enough and my knowledge of Russian grammar, with its three noun genders and six cases actually helped a lot. To me, the intuitive learning of a language through examples, like children do, is, well, bullsh*t, that window closes once you are over puberty and even for children it does take a lot of years. The advantages adults have is their knowledge of grammar, how languages work and the more foreign languages you have experience with, the better. 

Once I finished that 16 hour program (twice), I bought a Grammar textbook and an exercise book, but in all honesty, I'm not very consistent with them - that only goes to show that I do need my Duolingo lessons. However, I continued and still do, enlarging my knowledge of the structure and rules of the language through Youtube lessons. I have also already read two books in German, constantly comparing the text with the Bulgarian translation of the books (I chose books I have in Bulgarian at home), I watch German language movies (not all the time, of course), from time to time I use Deutsche Welle and their exercises and tests.

So, after a year, I estimate my level at A2.1. Not much, but not nothing. How much time do I spend on Duolingo? I start with my morning coffee and it usually takes me an hour, lately I do exercises in the afternoon as well, if I have the time. So yes, it does take time. To compensate, I have almost entirely abandoned Instagram and Facebook and I don't miss it even a bit! And yes, I did have some withdrawal syndrome with FB in the beginning, I used to have it open on my desktop the entire time before and it makes me wonder now how addicted actually I was! I also do less crafting, but that is due not only to my German lessons, but also to a number of other factors (more work, less enthusiasm).

And finally, what about Spanish? Unfortunately, I had to abandon it for now. My Spanish was a beginner's level (I had A2.1) and it started messing with my German, I found that I just didn't have the capacity to remember so many words from two different languages, to observe different sentence structures, etc. It is enough that I study German through English on Duolingo and through English and Russian on Youtube (my mother tongue Bulgarian is of little use on the world scale, unfortunately), adding another new language in the mix turned unproductive.

What about my further plans? I intend to stick with Duolingo to the end, right now I am through half of the course and I plan on finishing it probably in a year or less. Meanwhile or afterwards I plan to sit for a Goethe Institute certificate - A2 or maybe directly B1. After I've gotten the B1 certificate and finished with Duolingo, I'm thinking of enrolling into a B2 course with Goethe Institute. My ambitions go as high as B2 and keeping it fresh through reading and writing from there on. But I'll think about crossing that bridge when I come to it :)

One Year on Duolingo

This weekend I am celebrating my whole year, 366 consecutive days as of today, on the language study platform Duolingo. I am one of those people (I believe the majority of all people) that like to start things on the first, on Monday, on New Years' day. However, when on January 22 I decided, finally, to check out Duolingo, I didn't expect to find it so delightful, so engaging and satisfying, that a year later I would be celebrating my first milestone streak. Had I known, I would have chosen a first, or at least a Monday :))

Anyway, I started with Spanish, which I later found out to be the best developed and curated of all the language courses, with its own Podcast and loads of Stories. As I already had some knowledge of Spanish, I did the test and the platform placed me somewhere in the middle of the second level, I think. Just a few minutes a day, sometimes with only two or three stories, but never skipping a day, I gradually worked my way to the Diamond league and to the end of the Fourth Unit, trying to complete every unit at least to the golden and most to the legendary level.

Then on October the 1st I added German to my Duolingo practice and things changed a bit. Probably because German is a language I started learning from scratch, I got so engulfed in it, that I stopped my progress on Spanish and concentrated all of my efforts on getting forward with German, alternating between German through English and German through Spanish (thus keeping my Spanish alive, if not kicking).

Would I recommend Duolingo - definitely yes, especially for languages, which are popular and the courses are well made, like Spanish, French and German. There is, for example, a distinct difference between my two German courses - German through English is well balanced, well spaced, with lots of grammar and vocabulary tips and it has stories, which are really great for learning the spoken language. German through Spanish is very chaotic, random and uneven, the tree is short and there aren't any stories. I work with it, because it is a double challenge, but if it was my only German course, I would find it rather frustrating. Besides my two German courses, I use additional grammar videos on Youtube and I plan to add written grammar exercises when I get further in the language, eventually.

Even if I don't get anywhere near to being able to communicate in German or Spanish, I still find the platform perfect for working adults, who can spend half an hour a day learning a language instead of browsing FB or IG. Duolingo is now part of my morning coffee routine and I am truly happy I gave it a go a year ago.