Article first published on my personal blog at HIVE. 

One day out of curiosity I downloaded Duolingo, an application omnipresent in social networks, it caught my attention and awakened my desire to advance in my English learning. My main motivation was to improve and achieve mastery over the language, a goal that led me to embark on this 365-day journey.

Duolingo Daily

My daily experience with Duolingo has been generally positive. The app is persistent, sending notifications and emails to remind you to complete your daily lesson. Although it can be a bit annoying at times, this constant reminder became an integral part of my daily routine.

The biggest challenge was definitely maintaining consistency. Remembering to do my lesson daily became a chore in itself. However, I managed to keep the streak going by planning to use streak guards, a useful feature that allows you to skip a day. I used the app in my downtime, especially during commutes and in the evenings before bed.

Achievements and Progress

Although I feel that I have not improved as much as I would like, as many lessons are still easy, I firmly believe that Duolingo is an invaluable tool for solidifying knowledge and practicing daily. It is especially useful when you are not in an environment conducive to speaking the language you are learning, thanks to its listening and speaking practice exercises.

Favorite features of Duolingo

Duolingo has several features that I enjoy. The gamification of learning, the stories told through dialogues and the pronunciation exercises are some of my favorites. I also really like that Duolingo has its own character lore, which adds a fun element to learning.

The feature that helped me the most was the dialogue narration. Listening to the different character voices and participating in the conversations helped me improve my listening comprehension and pronunciation.

Lessons Learned

Currently, I am in Stage 5, called “Breakthrough,” which focuses on social interactions. According to Duolingo's leveling, I am at B1 of the CEFR. In the future, I plan to finish all lessons and continue with another language, keeping the streak going in English while studying from other sources.

Advice

My advice to other learners would be not to stick with Duolingo alone. Supplement your learning with other independent activities such as reading and consuming audio-visual material in the language you are learning. I would also recommend reading the articles on the Duolingo blog and listening to their podcast.

To stay motivated, the most important thing is to set small goals. In my case, learning a new word daily and writing it down in a notebook has helped me tremendously.

My language learning journey with Duolingo has been an enriching experience. Although there have been challenges along the way, the satisfaction of maintaining a 365-day streak and seeing my progress has been immense. I am excited for what the future holds for me with Duolingo.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
I apologize if there are any grammatical errors, English is not my native language, I have tried to be as careful as possible.

Resources in this article are sourced from the Duolingo Press Room or captured from my app