Well, time flies, doesn’t it?
Just a few days out from hitting a 500-day streak on Duolingo’s Swedish course, for which I completed the whole ‘tree’ a few months back. Duo veterans will be aware that a ‘streak’ can have gaps in it—you can buy yourself days off with the in-game currency (the little red gems, there), which you earn by completing various levels and daily practice targets. But even so, I’d estimate I’ve rarely dropped more than one day in every week, and 500 “on” days still translates to a pretty impressive amount of time spent practising: assuming around 20m per session, that’s around 165 hours.
It’s paid off, too! I’m just about to head over to the School of Languages for my first actual formal Swedish lessons, provided by my host university, and I’ve managed to blag my way into starting at level 3, which apparently correlates to level B1 in the standardised European language competence scale. Not bad at all, considering I’ve learned most of what I’ve learned through solo practice… though the exam I took was all reading comprehension and writing, which plays to not only my having learned via Duo so far, but also my innate biases. I suspect my listening and speaking skill levels about to be shown to be way behind that level…
But hey—gotta push yourself if you want to learn, right? Right! So I’ve bought my (bloody expensive!) textbooks, and I’m off to get stuck in…
