How I Learned Spanish: Part 2 — Duolingo
THE DUOLINGO CRAZE
In the Fall of 2013, any Spanish that I had learned before had gone cold. So it was around that time that Duolingo first caught my attention.
Of course, it advertised itself as many popular language learning tools do, as THE only tool that you need to become fluent in a foreign language and have fun at the same time.
I figured it would be a good way for me to start up my studies again and stay committed to it, because the app was very easy to follow with its streamlined interface and cute gamified mechanics. Initially I was very excited to use it and I jumped in with high hopes and great enthusiasm.
KEEPING THE OWL HAPPY
I made rapid progress through Duolingo. Partly because I did know some of the basics of Spanish already, but also because I was having fun.
As a seasoned gamer, I very much enjoyed unlocking various vocabulary and grammar categories and earning achievements along the way.
At the time I was very busy with work, so it’s design was perfect for allowing me to spend 5 or 10 minutes in the app and feel accomplished afterwards.
I completed the entire Spanish Duolingo set in about a month or two and I must say that I did enjoy myself while using it. However, it was only after I completed it, that I realized how little Spanish I had actually learned. This was due to the numerous problems with the app that I graciously overlooked while I was unlocking achievements and meeting my daily XP goals.
PROBLEMS WITH THE OWL
Duolingo is great at getting you hooked. It accomplishes this by providing users with bite-sized lessons that you can get through fairly quickly to make you feel like you’re making progress.
While this approach is fantastic for indoctrinating students to the language, it doesn’t really do well at preparing them to use the language outside of Duolingo. Let me explain:
PROBLEM 1: EXAMPLE SENTENCES
I remember that many of the example sentences used in some of the lessons were quite wacky. They provided little context for when new vocabulary should be used outside of that example sentence, which made it harder to actually learn the words. Speaking of context.
PROBLEM 2: NO CONTEXT WITH SENTENCES
How important is context when it comes to learning vocabulary and grammar in a foreign language? Very.
Because the lessons are so short and there was typically only one sentence per card to show a grammar concept or new term, this made it very difficult for me to assimilate what the app was trying to teach me into my long-term memory.
Trying to learn grammar constructions like “acabar de” or “apuntar de” is next to impossible to learn without other sentences to help a new student understand what it means.
PROBLEM 3: TEXT-TO-SPEECH AND SPEECH-TO-TEXT ISSUES
For an app that claimed to be able to teach me how to speak Spanish, I felt like I wasn’t doing enough speaking. Most of the time I was unjumbling words to translate what I heard or I was yelling like an idiot into my phone to get the app to correctly register what I said.
I’m sure these problems have been improved now since 2013, but back then, it really affected my progress with Spanish.
PROBLEM 4: NOT ENOUGH CONTENT/REPETITION
One of my biggest concerns when learning a foreign language is running out of material to study. This is because, after I’ve learned the basics with one program, I know how difficult it is to find organized materials that can take me to the next level without rehashing what I already learned with my first tool.
My worst nightmare happened after I completed the entire Spanish Duolingo tree to the “mastery” level.
Sure they added a few extra trees that went over some basic idioms and one that helps you flirt in Spanish, but I was really looking for more practice with the core concepts of the language.
Did they really expect me to master the subjunctive or the difference between the preterit and imperfect tenses with 10 example sentences each?
Oh wait maybe they did.
HOW IT AFFECTED MY SPANISH
I can’t say that using Duolingo helped me learn much Spanish. The app was a mile wide and an inch deep, and provided just enough material for me to get familiar with basic vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. Ultimately, the app seemed better suited for children, than a grown ass man like me who had ambitions to use the language regularly in my everyday life.
This viewpoint was confirmed three years later in 2016, when I was a substitute teacher at my old middle school. There, I saw a 7th grader become frustrated after he lost all of his hearts and had to start his level about the Spanish names for family members again.
Although I knew he would eventually pass the level, I doubted he would be able to say anything in Spanish to his teacher when she returned.
FINAL THOUGHTS ON DUOLINGO
There two kinds of people that I would recommend Duolingo to: kids under 10 and people who interested in being exposed to a language, but are not sure if they want to go all in and learn it.
As of this writing (Jun 2018) there are 28 languages available (including the popular Klingon and High Valyrian).
If you have never heard a language before and would like exposure to the mechanics of it, then Duolingo is a fantastic option.
But if you don’t fall into that category and you are at least in middle school, I wouldn’t waste time with it. You will enjoy your time with it, but you probably will not retain much of the information presented through the app, and you will ultimately be searching for some other tool to fill in the gaps for what you should have learned.
Once again, my Spanish went into another slump after using Duolingo.
It wasn’t until 2014 that I was ready to pick it up again, by using a lesser known, yet effective language tool that students have been using to learn a language for decades.
With it, and a few changes in mindset, I was able to finally take my skills from basic to advanced beginner, and feel like I could actually speak Spanish independently.
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