The Most Important Thing I’ve learned After 600 Days of Duolingo
A few months ago, at the beginning of the year, I finished my daily Duolingo routine, and saw that I had apparently done this for the 437th day in a row. And I realized that I don’t actually know that much Swedish. Despite spending at least half an hour a day learning it on Duolingo and other language learning apps, I couldn’t actually do that much with the language. I knew then and there that I would never be fluent if I only use language learning apps, no matter how much I do them and how long I do them for.
So, while I still use Duolingo and other apps (even to this day), I have found something else that has worked for me, comprehensible input. Despite the fact that yes, everyone has their own preferred methods of language learning, I believe that any good routine will have input somewhere in it. I began doing input right around that aforementioned realization, and I have made more progress since then compared to the 400+ days of apps-only language learning.
But let’s backtrack a little bit, what is comprehensible input? Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like, input (reading, watching, listening to things in the language you’re learning) that you can comprehend. That’s all there is to it. But you might be wondering, how can anything be comprehensible when you’re new? Well, that’s where the language learning apps come in.
There are three apps that I mainly use, Duolingo, Anki and Clozemaster. I’ve been using these three apps from the beginning. The thing that has changed is just the way I use them. If you’re learning a language, before you should start doing input, I think it would be beneficial to use apps in order to build the necessary foundation so that the input can be comprehensible. You can use whatever apps work best for you, experimenting with what works for you and what doesn’t is just part of the process.
This is where I think these apps are wonderful. Say what you will about Duolingo (and I do have some not-so-good things to say about it), it is fun, and it kept me coming back day after day, for hundreds of days, in order to stay engaged with the language I was learning. This foundation is important, because if you start doing input and you have no idea what you’re watching/reading, you’re not gonna have fun, and the key of doing input is to make sure it’s fun. You get to choose what to read, what to watch, you can consume content that you normally consume in your native language, except in your target language.
But after you have this necessary foundation, I think it’s a good idea to tone down the language learning apps usage and start immersing yourself in comprehensible input, because this is the point where (most) language learning apps loses its usefulness.
Nowadays, I only really use Duolingo in order to keep the streak, that’s it. I do one lesson a day, it takes less than five minutes. The rest of my “language learning time” is taken by Anki, Clozemaster, and input.
So, now that you have an idea of what comprehensible input is, and what you should probably do before you start inputting, what exactly is it like to learn a language this way? Well, fortunately, I’m right in the middle of this process myself, so I can speak directly from my current experience.
For the first three or so months of doing comprehensible input, I didn’t really pay too much attention to what I was doing, I tried doing as much input as I could, whenever I could. But starting from April, I began tracking the time I spend on input/apps, so I could do a better job of maximizing my time. Here’s the summary of my active input (input where I’m paying full attention to the input):
As you can see, there are many different ways you can get input, and these are not all, these don’t include all the times I read tweets in Swedish for example. But the point is, there are many ways that you can get input.
For me, my favorite one is svt, or Sveriges Television, which is a TV channel in Sweden, with its own app. This app has a lot of Swedish shows and movies, from kids’ cartoons to adult drama, and everything in between. This app has been more useful than any language learning apps in terms of improving my Swedish. I recommend you look for an app or a website like this for your target language.
One thing I wanna emphasize is that it doesn’t matter where you get your input from, as long as you understand and enjoy it. How much should you understand it? As much as necessary for you to enjoy it, if you don’t enjoy it, scrap it and look for something else.
As for everything else, well…
Most of everything else is spent on passive listening. There have been many debates on whether passive immersion/listening even helps at all. I can’t speak for anyone else, but it does for me, especially when paired with passively listening to things I have previously listened to actively, if that makes sense.
As you can see, my passive immersion consists of “podcast passive”, which is when I listen to podcasts while not paying full attention to the podcast (like when I’m commuting, or when I’m doing chores), and “podcast+game”, which is when I listen to podcasts while I game (only while I play games that doesn’t require me to communicate, ofc.). Why do I have a separate category for that even though it’s basically the same as “podcast passive”? I don’t know, I guess some part of me wants to track how much I play games.
Getting back to the point, SRS (Spaced Repetition System, which is a system used by Clozemaster and Anki) takes up about 10% of my Swedish learning time. It used to take up way more, but I scaled it back a little, while increasing my immersion time, because as much as I enjoy Clozemaster and Anki, too much of SRS gets tiresome quickly, unlike immersion.
And finally, there’s the grammar study. You can probably tell that I’m not the biggest fan of grammar study. Is it because I’m learning about Swedish grammar on Wikipedia? No, I think the Wikipedia article for Swedish grammar is perfectly fine, but I think the actual act of studying grammar is just so unbelievably boring. Yes, I know it’s important, it makes my input more comprehensible, therefore making it more enjoyable, but it’s not for me. You should definitely do it if you like it, just don’t let it take too much time from your immersion.
One way that you can maybe make grammar study a bit more exciting is to do it using comprehensible input. Try to find grammar study materials (in my case it’s in the form of YouTube channels, but it doesn’t have to be) where the grammar is taught in an easily understandable form of the language you’re learning.
So, since April 1st of this year, I have spent over 346 hours with Swedish, a language that is very different from my actual native language, Indonesian. And while I’m not fluent yet, not even close, I have made so much more progress in these past six months compared to the previous 400+ days of apps-only language learning. But still, you might be wondering, why exactly am I already so sure about this method of language learning, despite the fact that I’m not even fluent yet?
The answer is simple, it’s because comprehensible input was how I learned English, up to the point that I can use it better than my native language, and without even knowing that I was doing it, because I was just having fun, enjoying all the English content I was reading/watching. I think that (seeing it as “having fun” instead of “learning a language”) is a very important part of this whole thing.
So, if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this post, is that if you’re learning a language, no matter what it is, expose yourself to as much of the language as possible, and do it while having fun. The specifics of your language learning method don’t really matter all that much, as long as immersion is a part of it.
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