Duolingo is free, milk it for all it’s worth. Having used duolingo for a few years now, here are some things I’ve noticed that you can do to use it more effectively :
While you can keep an active streak alive with one lesson in the target language a day, it’s much better to do as much as possible. You want to learn the languages after all.
Sometimes I’ll give myself challenges such as “I’ll finish the skill tree this month to level one”, and spent a sizeable portion of my free time over the next, it was less than two weeks, getting just that done.
Psychologically it’s better to force yourself to learn with deadlines. You go from wishy washy about doing more than the minimal amount, to doing lesson after lesson mostly without thinking about how much you’re doing.
Waking up and immediately practicing or going to bed immediately after practicing can serve as a way to think better in the target language.
Even if it’s not the most efficient way, I like to teach two languages to myself at the same time often switching back and forth lesson by lesson as a drill for brain power. This increases IQ, it makes you smarter.
An hour a day is nothing if you truly want to learn the language. Set a timer, go the entire time not paying attention to the clock but practicing with total focus, then when the clock runs out, finish the lesson you’re on, and then stop. Easy peasy. Continue if you please.
Typing the answers up requires more active engagement than selecting the word bubbles.
Do practice the language outside of just duolingo. Duolingo alone tends to have you learning moreso as a mute.
I saw the directions were in ten languages on the manual for my uncle’s truck. I was blowing his mind reading, telling him what the words I knew meant, and doing my best to sound out the rest in russian.
I’ve taken to when I read and come across an anglicized russian name to translate it back into cyrillic. I feel great when I get it perfectly. A few years ago cyrillic was all greek to me.
Spanish is so easy, though again – outside of duolingo, speak it when you can. The presence of immigrants makes picking up languages more efficient, that or you become the immigrant. Skype or similar can be the answer here.
I tend to attempt naming everything in the grocery store trilingually, sometimes quadlingually. I do the same in the car mostly with russian.
If you’re really sick of practicing the target languages, it’s okay to for a short time stop doing lessons for them, and instead do lessons for another language entirely.
Doing this keeps the brain working on translation, and after a few days or a couple weeks, you go back to the target languages and often find yourself connecting their dots better.
Languages in your bloodline, ie those spoken by ancestors may pick up more quickly than languages none of your great-great-grandfathers spoke. And I’ve retained them more strongly when I cycle back to them as time off from the target languages.
However spanish is still silly easy.
The longer you keep it up the better you get. A few years in I know some russian words just as a part of me. I knew nothing past да and нет coming in.
During hurry up and wait situations at work I have used the app to practice the languages.
Having done this I would tell coworkers that I’m now a professional linguist, just as playing chess and go on my phone in similar situations made me obviously a pro player in them.
When we came across dumbbells or a barbell I tended to curl or overhead them so as to say I must now be a professional athlete. Once did an overhead squat before putting the barbell in the truck, looked my nearest coworker in the eye and told him I’m a professional weightlifter. I was getting paid for them after all, however the coworkers insisted that’s not how status as a professional works.
An app on your phone is very convenient. However the app is not superior to the web version. I leave myself logged in on my phone’s web browser and practice there the most.
Timed practice is fun – if/when it’s available. A unique challenge, but easily abused as a way to just put in little effort towards getting your daily XP.
You don’t have to finish the skill tree, nor progress down it. It can be better to really get/master the above lessons before moving on, and I’ve done this a few times for a few languages – reset the skill tree and start over at the basics.
Cyrillic wants you to do this.
It’s far less lazy to teach yourself outside of the app as well. The app can teach stuff in a strange order.
The cartoon characters are unnecessary, at first I thought them distracting especially once they had become moving emoticons. It’d be a nice option to turn them off, but it’s a free app. I’ve learned to just focus on the translation.
I am thankful that duolingo is freely available. Learning other languages was something that has always interested me, and one day a few years ago I realized the app would be a way to do that. So I started.
Every minute using the app is a better choice than mindlessly watching another minute of television.
It’s 2020! (or whatever year you’re reading this) Everything you could wish to learn is freely available, 24/7 right there at your fingertips, on the the internet.