Duolingo's place in my life
Introduction
I have always had a decent level of spoken English, especially when I worked in the resource sector. Enough to read the Financial Times over breakfast at the luxurious Four Seasons in London and be surprised that you understand the general meaning of the article. And now, one can only remember about expensive hotels and trips to the UK, brushing away a stingy man’s tear. All this is in the past, like my English.
For some reason, for the last five years I have been working exclusively in Russian, with occasional splashes of English. Too rare to have any impact. My English language had deteriorated and I had difficulty listening to any English-language podcast. Communication in the language seems to be okay. But this is not certain because I have not received any feedback on this matter.
But problems began with writing texts and correspondence. When I write, I have doubts that I have structured the sentence correctly. And I go to Google to check this, which takes time and is annoying. Thus, although I have a significant vocabulary, I am not sure that my sentences are constructed correctly. Fortunately, I don't need to confirm my language level with certificates for any purpose.
A couple of years ago, I wanted to somehow fix it and I can say with confidence that everything worked out. Now I’m quite comfortable watching specialized YouTube videos in English and taking notes in Obsidian. This is how I like to learn and accumulate knowledge across the variety of interests that necessity and curiosity point to.
You probably expected to read here that I started writing essays furiously, started an English-language show on YouTube and became related to native speakers, but alas, no. I acquired a micro-superpower to understand complex YouTube content in English without it feeling like work. Background translation is a burden, and the lazy animal in me loves to cut corners and definitely won’t allow you to do something that you don’t have to do. It gets mad when you are visiting and some smart guy turns on a movie in English. It is indignant when everyone is quiet and irritation hangs in the air. At the same time, no one will object, because you can be considered ignorant. And this smart guy is simply used to consuming content in this way and this is his norm.
I really hate wasting time watching YouTube, but you can definitely learn a lot there and gain access to a variety of other people's experiences. This formulation will serve as the first justification for yourself in the process of fighting phone addiction. The second excuse could be that we are also improving our English. Sounds great, we are learning, gaining vocabulary. Let’s close our eyes while spending time in zombie mode. Why do we need this extra awareness here?
In this article, I will tell you what 2 to 15 minutes of Duolingo a day can do over a period of 2 years and share my life hacks. This app is also a digital drug if you get carried away. Better be careful.
Lazy animal
Normal people start studying with an English teacher or go to an online school. There they hammer grammar into people like me. But this self-violence is not our way.
It’s unbearable for me to think that I’ll have to spend 3-5 hours a week on such an area of my life as the English language. This requires some kind of big goal, but I don’t have one. In addition, a commitment to 2-3 classes per week is quite harsh. Over the same period, you can make good progress on some cool project, one of those that is waiting in the wings in a folder with the status: “considering.” Well, or just do nothing at all during these precious hours and live your wonderful life as a slacker who will soon be swallowed up by the abyss. Sometimes taking a walk and taking the required number of steps is more pleasant than being productive. The lazy animal did not want to learn English; it was more interested in entertainment and other delights of an unconscious lifestyle.
In the next scene, I'm having breakfast in Yerevan with a local businessman whom I'm seeing for the first time in my life. He is a friend of friends. Or a friend of friends of friends. For some reason, we met early in the morning, and we have so little to talk about that it’s pointless to even talk about ourselves in a particularly colorful way. It is difficult to conduct a meeting when you do not have any request for the person. I had long ago eradicated these types of meetings from my life, but this one somehow miraculously slipped into the schedule. And the only thing I took away from this meeting was his story about how he and his whole family have been doing Duolingo for more than a year. After 2 weeks, I installed the application and took my first lesson.
Acquaintance
It was easy for me and not just easy, but elementary. I was looking on the Internet for answers to the question of whether it’s worth learning a language this way or is it a hallucination and a form of self-deception. In the meantime, I continued to practice for 5-10 minutes every day. And then, I felt that I was not just lying on the couch in a break between tasks, but studying. And it was all so fun and great at first that I quickly reached an hour of green owl exercises a day. I got the feeling that I was forcing myself to do this and it was turning from a fun game into work.
A close friend of mine is maniacally learning German on Duolingo and has already beaten everyone there. This is a good example of determination, but I don’t want it that way at all. To be a three-time champion of the diamond league is some kind of strange goal imposed on me. At the same time, the application somehow magically knows how to awaken the demons of people prone to excitement and competitive games. I'm not a gambler, but I'm very interested in how it all works from the point of view of the system. Ultimately, I’ve been studying English with this thing for 2–15 minutes every day for more than 2 years. The application has won and for now I’m pushing away the thought that it’s time to simply delete it. I believe that at some point the course will become significantly more difficult. I am glad that after 2 years, unfamiliar words began to appear. I immediately write them to Obsidian, of course.
It so happened that Duolingo sparked my interest in habit management. For some reason, he always served as a reminder that a lazy animal is capable of conscious, regular actions. Thanks to this knowledge, other habits are gradually added, of which I have about 20. Then something happens and all the habits lie in ruins and are forgotten, but Duolingo survived. He is some kind of my central core around which this “wheel of habits” spins.
I also really like Duolingo to maintain a daily routine. Usually I hold out for a year and deliberately lose it within 10 days without contact at the festival construction site.
Unexpected bonus
About a month ago, I accidentally opened a video in English and felt comfortable. Which I don't translate. Surprised, I experimented with training videos and got a similar result. Somehow, primitive Duolingo lessons affect the perception of the language. This is good news for me, because… I was ready to finish the whole experiment with the application. Now I have a cool new excuse not to do it.
English-language YouTube is incredibly rich and diverse. For any English-language request there will be ten times more different videos than I’m used to. And this can be quite useful. Recently I have had the feeling that I, like Neo from the Matrix, got out of the capsule and saw a big world full of interesting information.
Conclusions
Duolngo definitely gave me something. Perhaps my English has become better in some ways. There is also the possibility that I just learned to play this pseudo-educational game with a green owl very well. Particularly frightening are the moments when you realize that you know the answer before you read the sentence. 180 hours in a mobile application is no joke.
Recommendations
This is my list of rules for getting the most out of Duolingo with a minimum of stress:
Exercise daily. No options.
Don't participate in leagues, otherwise you won't notice how you'll be doing this for an hour and a half a day and getting irritated.
A good day is to complete all daily tasks and one pronunciation task.
A bad day is when only one task is completed.
Maintaining a daily routine is not the most important thing in your life. You can interrupt it and start over. The point of this thing is in the counter itself and the addition of days. You should not be a slave to this system.
In general, never go to the social tab. Well, maybe at the very beginning. Otherwise, you will perform many unnecessary and meaningless actions every day. Never put reactions if you can help it.
If, while studying, you feel that you don’t want to take another lesson, don’t do it.
An owl can steal your time. I don’t recommend studying for more than 30 minutes, otherwise you risk quickly losing motivation.
Result development
As I wrote above, I write down new English words in Obsidian. I come across new words on the Internet and when reading, in interfaces. I keep a diary and it has a field for adding new words. From there they are pulled out by the wonderful Spaced Repetition plugin, which allows you to study words using cards. This method amazingly helps me improve my vocabulary and it works.
For some reason, I still can’t watch TV series in English, but this is a reason to conduct a new experiment.
Thank you for reading to the end. I apologize for any typos.
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