Pre-travel, I did the language school’s multiple-choice assessment test, which graded my Italian at B2, or advanced. While there, I also booked myself onto a language course for two hours a day. With travel opening up again after the pandemic, I decided to put what I’d learned to the test and booked myself a week’s holiday in Italy. Duolingo has since added a sixth “legendary” level, that I’m working through now. It took me nearly four years to work through the first five levels, which was the full extent of the course when I started. On the free version, the adverts quickly become annoying and waste your time, and you can’t work offline. Incidentally, I use the paid-for version of the app, which I recommend, and not just to support the developers. No extra reading, no vocabulary lists, no grammar exercises, just Duolingo. If I’m pressed for time, I might spend only two minutes revising an easy lesson from the beginning of the course. I normally spend around 10 to 20 minutes and do one or two, or occasionally three, lessons. First thing every morning, I make myself a cup of tea, then sit on my sofa drinking the tea and doing Duolingo. The thing I rate most highly about Duolingo is its ease of use. I probably also thought it would be relatively easy as I already knew some French and Spanish. I had recently visited Italy for a swimming event and I could see myself going again, so I guess that was one motivation. For reasons that remain obscure to me, I picked Italian. Instead, I decided to learn something new. However, I got bored with the beginner exercises you need to work through before you can progress. ![]() In 2017, I discovered Duolingo and thought it would be a good tool to revise my rusty French and Spanish. I made daily lists of words to memorise, worked my way through books of grammar exercises and tried to speak the languages as often as possible. I struggled with languages at school but found I picked up a usable amount of Spanish and French while working and travelling in Central America and West Africa in my twenties. ‘App’ wouldn’t enter my vocabulary for another 20 years. ![]() The last time I studied a language, we barely had computers.
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