Finishing My Duolingo Spanish Course: What Now?

Instead of using a picture of Duo, the green owl of Duolingo fame, I thought that I’d use this photo of a wise old bird that I took myself. This little fellow lives in St David’s Cathedral at the western tip of Wales. I’ll give you a little hint about what you might find if you lift the seats in the choir section of old churches. They are often hinged. Underneath them there are often wonderful carvings like this one! I know that this has nothing to do with language learning but I thought it might intrigue some of you.

Duolingo Spanish Completed

So this week I finished the Duolingo Spanish lessons. I’ve been studying on the app six days a week since 2019 so it’s quite a feat and I’m very chuffed. Now I’ve written a previous post about whether Duolingo has actually helped me to speak fluent Spanish. The answer was ‘No’. But it has given me confidence to have a chat when I’m in a shop or a campsite. Additionally I can get the gist of written Spanish and I’m pretty pleased about my level of competency with that.

In my last article I came up with some ideas of what I might be doing afterwards to improve my speaking and listening skills. I may well be using some of my own recommendations. I like the idea of listening to Spanish speaking podcasts. The end of my course has forced me to come up with a concrete plan. I don’t want to lose the habitual nature of my studying. It’s been a godsend in helping me to improve. So over the last few days here’s what I’ve come up with for maintaining consistency with language learning.

Spanish Onwards and Upwards

I won’t be ditching Duolingo altogether. Hello I don’t want to lose my diamond league status. So, at the very least, I’ll be doing the Daily Refresh, a series of six lessons that’s come up on my feed since finishing the course. I might also doing a review lesson from time to time. These are more difficult and don’t have hints. I’ve only progressed to the beginning of the fourth level (out of eight) of these so there’s plenty more to practice. I’ll also continue the games and exercises where I improve my grammar and practise mistakes.

With regard to speaking to real people I’ve have come over all shy! I don’t feel confident enough to put myself out there. But AI has some great free solutions that I’m going to try. There’s two apps that a friend has suggested that look promising. Firstly Superfluent lets me practice my speaking with a very convincing robot. It even has a ‘streak system’ like Duolingo to keep me motivated. The lesson that I tried was probably about my level. The only disadvantage was that the text came up on screen so I could cheat if I didn’t understand. That doesn’t happen in real life does it?

The second is the Character AI app. I’ve found a ‘bloke’ called Spanish Teacher who I can ‘phone’! Actually it’s again a AI generated character that I’m speaking to, of course. The learning level seems a bit more advanced. I don’t understand everything that my robot friend says. But isn’t that like it is on holiday? It’s got to help me improve.

I’m planning to use all three apps for the same amount of time in the morning that I’ve been using Duolingo on its own. I’ll keep regular readers updated to see if my plan works.

Language Number Two

I’ve studied French beyond A-level in the past on an excellent course with the Open University. Can I speak this language fluently? Err no! That old adage ‘if you don’t use it you lose it ‘ applies. I’d say my French conversational skills are a tad better than my Spanish but there’s rather a lot of room for improvement. And I want to get better because we spend quite a lot of time in France too.

So it’s back to Duolingo for French tuition for my evening learning sessions. Hopefully I’ll progress quite quickly as it should just be revision. And with the amount of studying I’m still doing I should be able to keep my space in the top ranking diamond league!