Why didn't I do this sooner: Duolingo

You know how sometimes you just feel like sitting in a chair and swiping around on your phone but then it accidentally makes your life worse? WHAT IF you could do this, but not come out more depressed and anxious than before?

I’ve mentioned a few times how stopping with the excuses has been a life-changing mind shift for me. For the record I’m not strictly against making excuses, as long as one knows that’s what they are doing. For example, if you don’t want to go for a walk because you have a cold and just want to veg out and watch TV today, own it. If you say you CAN’T go for a walk ever because you don’t have time and then you spend that time watching TV and swiping around, that is where one runs into trouble. All this to say, I used to complain that not being able to grow up somewhere with a school French Immersion program prevented me from being bilingual. That, friends, is an excuse that needn’t fly in the Future in Which We Live.

I’d heard good things about Duolingo for a while and one day when I was bored and swiping away at my phone making my life worse, I decided to download it. I was and continue to be very impressed! I’m working through the Spanish course because I think unless you are going to spend a lot of time in exclusively-French speaking Quebec or France, Spanish is probably the more practical language for most North Americans to learn.

I’m not sure how fluent I’ll become even if I work my way all the way through the Duolingo “Tree”. Internet people all have their various preferences for language learning software and one major critique of Duolingo is that the learning style is mostly direct translation, so you can’t really start to think in Spanish. I don’t know if I should switch to an immersion program instead, or just supplement Duolingo with Spanish immersion in the form of TV (or the Duolingo podcasts) as well as a textbook for getting a better handle on all the grammar rules.

I’m also kicking myself for not doing this earlier when I was sharing an office with native Spanish speakers, or doing even a few weeks of Italian before going to Italy (two times! What is my problem). After starting the program about a month ago, I just progressed out of the introductory level and definitely can’t hold a conversation but know a variety of greetings, pronunciations, and essential phrases (donde esta el bano, how ignorant have I felt for not even knowing how to say that the three times I’ve been to Mexico).

Maybe Duolingo isn’t the tool to get to total fluency but it’s definitely a very easy way to prep oneself to be decently respectful if traveling to a place where English isn’t the first language, and a much better use of screen time than social media.