A few years ago, I blogged about the language app DuoLingo. I used it to complete the German course (per that post, it took me ~1.25 years to finish, doing ~3 lessons per day). It was a great help to me to reinforce (and introduce new) German vocabulary and grammar when I lived overseas. But I had four years of German instruction in school, and lived in the country, so I had a leg up. I wanted to see how the app would help when I had no background in a language.
In September of 2021, I started the Spanish course on the app. I did ~2 lessons per day, and after ~1.5 years, I completed 37 units. Though it was still valuable, I decided to stop Spanish for a few reasons:
- The Spanish course has 211 units (the German had 55 when I completed it [though I see it is now up to 114]). At my current pace, I would take another 6 years to complete it.
- Having no background in Spanish, I found it harder to track the grammar rules/etc. I followed easily enough through 30 units, but as I advanced, I felt my lack of background more poignantly.
- DuoLingo changed how they did units. Previously, a given unit consisted of a series of lessons, each of which had five levels. Each lesson had a specific topic. They (apparently) decided to change it up, and interleave the levels and lessons. My retention has gone down drastically.
The experience was still valuable; I learned a lot of Spanish vocabulary and some basic grammar. I just wasn't retaining enough to keep going. I think immersion is important, and I really don't like the changes they made to how the app instructs. That said, I want to keep using it daily, so I decided to spend some time in Latin. That course has only 14 units, so I should be able to get through it much faster.
Never stop learning.
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