During quarantine I started to study Spanish outside of class using Duolingo. I have always been passionate about languages — especially Spanish. My preferred iPhone language is Spanish, I watch Spanish TV shows and I speak Spanish at every opportunity. I have become very conversational and am quite proud of myself. I don’t necessarily believe that my passion for the Spanish language is because of Duolingo alone, I am currently in my fourth year of spanish at school, but Duolingo has helped me feel more confident and experience some fluency over these past several months.
I started my REAL Duolingo journey on June 8, 2020. By “real” I mean that I started doing it everyday — not just 20 XP everyday, but 30 minutes to 1 hour a day. Because of my competitive spirit, I was eager to be at the top of the leaderboard at Duolingo. As a result of all my hard work, I rose to the Diamond League. The Diamond League is the top league on Duolingo — I was getting 1,000 + XP (XP are points you get after completing lessons) a week which was helpful because it meant that I was really working hard on perfecting this language.
Now that I am back in school full time I don’t earn 150+ XP a day, but I do get anywhere from 20–100 a day (on a school day) which I am proud of. It’s not easy to spend approximately 30 minutes studying Spanish on Duolingo, in addition to my 75 minute classes, but it is worth it. One of the biggest lessons I have learned in my life is that if I really want something, I will make the time to do it (new blog post on this coming soon…!).
With that said, if you really want to learn a language, or for that matter, start a hobby or do anything in life, if you dedicate 30 minutes to it everyday, you will see a result. You will enjoy a nice break from your reality and you will benefit from the commitment — I know I have! I am very excited to see how far I will go in a couple weeks, months, years. I hope to be fully fluent by the time I graduate from college (yes, I know that is in 4 ½ years away, but I like to under promise and over deliver)!