This summer, I am pushing myself aggressively through DuoLingo French.
I’ve decided to blog about the process.
My guess is… some of you may be interested. Some of you may have questions.
Does DuoLingo really work? Can you become fluent with DuoLingo? And, so on.
First of all, let me say that I am not an affiliate with DuoLingo.
I don’t even know if they have an affiliate program.
I will likely never be an affiliate. I am not even a DuoLingo Plus user. I only use their free material.
I will not support the company financially for simple reasons. Especially in the DuoLingo podcast, they use their platform to push the LGBTetcetera agenda.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I am using DuoLingo to learn French. I am not interested in someone’s political agenda. I don’t care who you are. Republican. Democrat. Libertarian. Liberal. Conservative. I don’t care what your political agenda is DuoLingo. I am on your site to learn French. Simple as that.
That out of the way, I still recommend the platform.
Over the next few weeks, I intend to blog about the process.
I know that some of you just want to know if it works. Like me, you are here to learn a language. Not an agenda.
Okay. Let’s get down to it.
So far, I think it is working.
I knew almost no French when I started using DuoLingo.
Yesterday, I was watching a movie with my wife when two of the characters suddenly switched into French. I was surprised when I realized I knew exactly what they were saying. I was able to translate for my wife… and, she was very impressed. 🙂
I know that I was able to translate, in part, thanks to Duolingo.
By the way, I don’t know if it’s DuoLingo with a capital L, or Duolingo with a lower case l. So, from this point forward, I will use Duolingo.
Duolingo, by the way, roughly translates to Two Languages.
So, here is how I am currently learning French with Duolingo.
If you have ever attempted to learn with Duolingo, you will know that there are many levels you have to pass as you learn.
Each time you pass a level, you get a gold medallion.
Currently, by my own count, there are 231 medallions in the French course. French is one of the more developed courses.
German has 111 medallions. Dutch has 123. Greek has 94. Italian has 66. Latin has only 22.
There are many other languages. I have not counted how many medallions they have.
This morning, I wondered how long it was taking me to get each French medallion. So, I timed myself.
I have accumulated about 70 medallions in the French course. They become more difficult as I advance. This morning, it took me about 2 hours to add another medallion to my list. I try to add one a day.
Since there are currently 231 medallions in the French course, I have about 160 to go. I try to add one a day.
Theoretically, I could finish a course, or two (if I chose shorter courses) a year. If I finish one medallion a day, I should be done with the French course sometime early next year. I never work on Sundays. I do, however, work the other six days a week. I got that idea from an old book I read.
There are 23 Sundays left this year. There are 157 days left in 2021. 157-23 = 134. There are 134 workdays left this year. Since I have 160 more medallions to go in the French tree on Duolingo, I will probably finish up in February sometime. That’s the plan. Some days I may try to do more. And, I am sure I will miss some days.
I will be interested to see what this process does. Will I be fluent in French when I finish the Duolingo tree? I have no idea. I am running an experiment on myself. I certainly hope I will be. But, we shall see. I intend to blog more about the process here.
