I managed to study Japanese with the Duolingo app for 1,000 days in a row!
If you are unfamiliar with Duolingo, it is one of the most popular language learning apps today. It focuses on small exercises and gamifies almost every aspect of learning. It tracks your “streak” (how many consecutive days you have used the app to learn), there are points to collect each week, different leagues you can reach depending on your score, and a system of notifications that aim to encourage you – to extend your streak, to get more points, to move up to a higher league, to play various language-learning games.
Duolingo’s method does not provide hour-long learning sessions like in a traditional course. It focuses on very short sessions of 3-10 minutes that have to be completed every single day. This motivates you to stay consistent, do at least something every day, and keep your memory fresh.
I originally started using Duolingo in 2022 ahead of our trip to Japan. I wanted to learn some basics of Japanese, in case I needed to ask someone for directions or something like that. Unfortunately, I overestimated how much I could learn in such a short time, so I was able to use very little during our trip to Japan – but I tried!
After the trip, I just continued to study. Reading about both Japanese culture and brain science convinced me that ongoing progress and learning something new every day are key both to mastery and to staying mentally fit. In addition, I find learning languages a fun hobby and I look forward to using my skills on the next visit to Japan.
So after 1,000 days, I am still working on reaching the most basic CEFR level of A1 (basic phrases, simple interactions), but it’s interesting to learn the various characters (Japanese has three different writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji) and to establish a daily habit of learning.
Some days I do just one lesson, some days I do many, especially if I try to level up to a new league. Gamification clearly seems to work on me. I feel that maintaining habits in general is important for success, so Duolingo is one of my daily habits, probably the one I am most consistent with.
The gamification methods that Duolingo applies fascinate me because they really motivate me to stay consistent and do something every single day. I also tried to apply this to other areas of my life and track several different daily habits I want to establish in the “Way of Life” habit tracker app. I also tried to break down big tasks into smaller chunks so I could make consistent progress instead of pushing them forward due to lack of time. It is satisfying to tick off daily habits and the method really does help; however, I have not reached the same level of consistency with any habit as with Duolingo yet.
Daily contact with a subject is good for learning; however, doing any habit just a few minutes a day still won’t magically achieve big progress. I think both are good - taking small steps regularly as well as taking bigger chunks of time for the bigger steps. In my experience, if I rely only on planning huge blocks of time for projects, I won’t easily find the time for those huge blocks and keep pushing them into the future and end up regretting it. Therefore I think planning smaller steps that are actually more easily achievable is most efficient.
The 1,000-day streak on Duolingo was a goal I had been looking forward to for quite a while, and I am very happy that I reached it. Will I reach 2,000 days as well? Who knows, but I aim to keep my habit of daily learning of a skill.
My suggestion to everyone: pick a skill, aim to build a streak, and see where it leads.