“Excuse me, I am an apple.” This is what 70 days of the Japanese Duolingo course has taught me so far. To politely excuse myself and proclaim that I am a fruit.
I can’t help but imagine the good folks over at Duolingo HQ all gathered in a big meeting room. Management walks in, looks around the room and proudly proclaims:
“As of today we are officially the largest language learning community in the World. We therefore feel we have a responsibility – nay an obligation! – to make sure that people from all over the planet can safely introduce themselves as fresh produce”.
All kidding aside though, I do feel like I have learned a lot over the last couple of months. Being in a tourist town like Tromsø means signs are often translated into many different languages and there is something very satisfying about being able to spell out ‘da-wa-n-ta-wa-n’ on a sign at the busstop or recognising the character for water (水) on a poster at the Polar museum.
So Duolingo is great, but it also has its limits. I know this because I have previously aced the entire Spanish course and I am in no way shape or form fluent in Spanish. I therefor decided to do things a little differently this time.
First of all, true to my style, I have set my daily learning goal as low as possible (one lesson/day), aiming for consistency over cramming. Sometimes the one lesson will be enough, sometimes I get caught up and do a couple more. The important thing is that my criteria for success is very low, which keeps me going even on days where I don’t feel like it.
Secondly, the fact that I know this knowledge will be useful for me on our trip is a great motivator for me. I started my Spanish course right before a vacation to Valencia and sure enough the daily reminders quickly lost their appeal after returning to Denmark. Most people probably have a reason for starting a new language course but reminding yourself of it once in a while can be very useful.
Speaking of daily reminders, I have turned them off completely. They annoy the shit out of me, so if you feel the same way, I suggest placing the app front and center on your homescreen instead so you don’t forget to train, but aren’t pestered by the little green Duolingo owl on a daily basis either.
The final thing I am doing differently, is that I speak the words out loud with the app as I go along. This goes for all of them, not just the ones I pick (This makes sense if you have tried the app). Overall I’m pretty good with new languages. Learning new sounds and grammar systems comes easily to me, but I often struggle with building a vocabulary. I feel like the act of repeating the words over and over has really helped me with this.
If I was being a really good student I would also take notes after each lesson. I don’t do that, but I suspect it would accelerate my learning significantly if I did. The reason I don’t do it, is that it takes out much of the flexibility of the app for me if I have to carry a notebook and pen around with me in addition to my phone.
What I have done is I have bought a little waterproof notebook that I intend to turn into a handy pocket dictionary with useful phrases for our trip. So far it contains all the signs from the hiragana and katakana writing systems.
Finally, I will say that Duolingo has changed quite a bit since I used it to learn Spanish. I suspect it would no longer be as easy to force your way though a whole course, as I did, without really learning anything. I obviously don’t know exactly how Duolingo’s algorithms work*, but my experience is that they have to a larger extend begun to tailer their courses to each individual user. This is a huge advantage over traditional language classes where everyone has to progress at the same speed and in the same order.
Of course it is with language learning as with everything else in life, that return is proportional to investment. However, if you are smart about it, this relationship does not have to be linear. Experiment with finding out what works for you, maybe by incorporating some of my tips from above, and soon I believe you will find yourself politely introducing yourself as an apple in all kinds of languages.
Have you ever tried Duolingo? What language did you learn? Did it teach you how to introduce yourself as a fruit?
*Edit Nov 17th 2020: Shortly after writing this I read this blogpost from Duolingo where they explain their new learning algorithm, Birdbrain, in more detail. It appears I was right, and that they do now to a larger extent tailor lessons to the individual user.