Duolingo for Difficult Times

I learned what German I know in the best way. In high school, a teacher who cared about my mind used a German tutorial as a way of introducing me to literature, art, philosophy, politics, music. The German language became a doorway to a new life, and I more or less inhaled it. Later, I tried other languages: I got a little way in, but never found the magic.

A couple years ago, in January, I was sitting in Keefer Court, my favorite Chinese bakery and restaurant, listening to Chinese being spoken all around me and wanting to understand some of it. I decided to try a language again, but maybe French first, to warm up. For a few of months, I dabbled in the French Duolingo course. It was easy and mindless, and a few bits stuck. Then, I had to spend a long time away from home, visiting family, and I began to get compulsive about the thing. Normal progress is maybe 80 points a day. I got up to 1000 points a day.

After that, predictably, I lost interest, did other things, forgot about it. When I returned a few months ago, Duolingo French had introduced little stories, not just exercises, as before, stories good enough to keep my attention. I quickly ran through all of them (hundreds), then went back to actually learn them and to get them located in my memory. I became conscious that I now had a lot of available vocabulary, and that my pronunciation was improving. Now, I try to ration myself to 150 points a day; during a recent illness, I didn’t miss a day.

A few lessons from this, for the current lockdowns:

1.     I like their modest educational goal: just do some, every day. Don’t worry about it being systematic. It will come together. I think that might be the best we can hope for, for lots of online learning in the next while.

2.     It comforts me to have a useful and simple activity available in endless quantities, when I have seemingly endless time.

3.     It is very helpful when my mind wants to do painful or stupid things to be able to ‘go to French’ and rehearse vocabulary, try to remember the story about the grandmother and the police officer. 

4.     The sense of a structure building in the background, of a language coming together through dream processing and familiarization and practice, encourages me. It is different from going out and attacking a subject, mastering it.

I have extended my practice a little, turning on French captioning for things I want to watch anyway, beginning to read children’s books. I don’t know whether I will ever be proficient enough to teach in French or to have the conversations I want to have, but the exercise shows me things about good teaching and about how I take up new things that are useful in their own way.

I’d recommend Duolingo as one resource for these times. It’s still free, works best on a computer.