3 things I learned from 365 days straight on Duolingo
Microhabits are the bomb
On the 1st of December, 2014, I decided to learn French through Duolingo. Duolingo is a cool little app that makes language learning fun. Through gamification, it encourages you to stick to your streak and keep going.
I’d found out about it on Facebook and thought I’d give it a whirl. I remember the early versions of the app hadn’t ironed out the kinks yet; after hitting Day 20, the day counter wouldn’t update. I broke my streak.
Over the next few months, I made a few half-hearted attempts at starting a new habit through this language app. I don’t know what made me decide to give it a fair go, but on the 10th of July, 2015, I started Day 1 for the last time.
I haven’t broken my streak since.
The streak has survived me going overseas twice. Being set back three hours and being in areas with patchy internet weren’t excuses. It would be the first thing I would do as soon as I had any internet connection on my phone.
The majority of days, I would whip out my phone once I got to the train station and start. The lessons are grouped in themes, e.g. greetings, food, animals, getting more and more difficult so that you tackled things like tenses, questions and grammar.
In the early days, I would do three lessons. That was considered my goal. Some time after I’d hit 100 days, I upped it to four. Later, I upped it again to five — the maximum. It became my norm.
You probably are wondering how my French is now. Je ne sais pas… je pense que c’est average. Let me address the points below:
#1 — I’m not fluent in French
That wasn’t my goal from the beginning. I took up French (as opposed to Italian or Spanish) for the typical reasons: it’s a sexy language and my wife likes it.
I started Duolingo because I needed discipline in my life. I needed to take control of something small and prove to myself that I could stick with it for 365 days in a row.
I’d read about microhabits and knew they were powerful. Every morning, I smash out 60 push ups. I’ve got decent shoulders, triceps and chest muscles as a result.
Let it be known that I started French from scratch. I didn’t do it in school. Contrary to what Duolingo says, I’m far from fluent. If I was to give it a rating, I’m probably 10% fluent.
I sometimes hear French people chatting in the streets (tourists coming to Melbourne) and I have no bloody clue what they’re saying. I haven’t used a word of French with a French person. I haven’t been to France.
Basically, after the 365th day, clarions didn’t explode in joyous song, French flags unfurling and fluttering majestically in the breeze. I didn’t magically grow a thin moustache and goatee, a poodle didn’t just fall into my lap and I didn’t have a sudden irresistible urge to eat a long baguette.
I wasn’t fluent by a long shot.
#2 — Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking
That’s the rough order I would put proficiency in after a year of Duolingo. Because I do it on the train, I don’t do the speaking or listening exercises. When I listen on the weekends, I realise how I say the words in my head are sometimes dramatically different from how they’re meant to be said.
I think the first time I realised the French study was paying off was when I was in the shower and saw one of my sister’s shampoo(ing) bottles and could read a good part of it.
Another time, I was taking my usual lunch stroll and was thinking about buying some strawberries, since it was the season for it. For fun, I tried translating it in my head and to my own surprise, the words came together.
I forget what the sentence was, something like, “I will buy some strawberries tonight” (Je vais acheter des fraises ce soir.)
The good thing about French is that sentence structures are somewhat similar to English. This means you don’t have to expend too much energy thinking about subject — object relationship, though verb — adjective order haunts me to this day.
#3 — Flaws of the system/me
It takes me 10–15 minutes a day to stick to this habit. If you think that that that amount of time is enough to make you fluent in a language, you’re way in over your head. It’s a great to keep it fresh and cover overarching basics, but not to go into detail.
Incidentally, that’s the way I like to learn. I like seeing the big picture, then drilling down into the finer details. Duolingo will not allow you to drill down into the finer details.
Grammar is one of those things. Duolingo touches on the important structures, but for the inevitable exceptions, there’s no mention. Having said that, Duolingo tends to stick to the basics.
What you’ll find happening after some time is that the same sort of questions come up. When you get a question wrong, it shuffles to the back of the queue and ends up being the last question you have to answer correctly to complete the lesson.
This means that you can almost predict what’s going to be asked. While this is good for memory, it’s not really testing your understanding of a sentence structure.
Also, it tends to focus on choosing the right English words to translate French to English. I would have liked more of the other way around, also requiring you to write out French translations to English sentences. This means that I can translate French to English, but struggle the other way around.
I very much like routine now, but I realize that routines can also stunt growth. It’s no problem of Duolingo’s but I caught myself mentally switching off and doing it out of habit. In some sense, this is a good thing, but if there’s no intent to learn, then that defeats the purpose of learning the language.
Intent is what supercharges the habit and makes it even that much more powerful.
Am I still continuing?
Yes. I can’t break the streak. I see this as the start of my French education. The habit has been built and I’ll always have this streak. While virtually nothing has changed since a year ago, I feel more accomplished and have more self-belief in what I can achieve.
I feel proud that I can finally say that I have stuck to something for at least a year. It excites me as to what I can achieve if I stick to other things for at least a year.
When I eventually start proper French lessons, I’ll have this background to work from. I’ll pick up the nuances quicker and have a firmer grasp of the language as a whole.
All I have to work on is the accent. Allez!
Johnson is the founder of 1%b., an online community that gives entrepreneurs the courage to turn their vulnerabilities into their strengths.
