Duolingo got me in the habit of reaching for French words rather than English ones, and it gave me the confidence to use them with native speakers.Īccording to Cindy Blanco, a senior learning specialist at Duolingo whom I chatted with before my trip, that’s the Duolingo promise - not fluency but foundation. These new narrative exercises achieved something no textbook I’ve thumbed has been able to accomplish: familiarize me with the cadence of a language and ease the shock of conversation when it came to speaking out loud. Lessons now guide readers down a “learning path” rather than a “learning tree.” The content is similar but with a greater focus on audio exercises, short stories, and “spaced repetition” to re-expose users to concepts throughout their study. A lot has changed since the first time I used the app. Though I never got invested in gamification tactics like leaderboards and badges, I chased the daily dopamine hit of watching my lesson streak grow.ĭuolingo’s latest conversation-based exercises work to remedy this practicality pitfall. Once, during a cabin trip to Northern California, I walked a mile into town and back to get enough internet access to complete that day’s lesson.

I was translating sentences at breakfast, practicing my pronunciation at crosswalks, and listening to short dialogues before bed. I was placed in Unit 3 of 199 and pledged to spend 15 minutes per day studying for 90 consecutive days.īy day five, I was hooked. Duolingo’s placement exam confirmed just how much French I’d forgotten in the decade since I stopped hearing it regularly.

I chose to visit Brussels, the primarily French-speaking capital, because I remembered some French from a stint I spent in Paris years ago, and I was curious to see how closely Duolingo’s French course translated to the French I’d heard in France versus the French I’d hear in Belgium.įirst, I needed some serious practice. Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, the native language of about 60 percent of Belgians French, the mother tongue of around 40 percent of Belgians and German, which is spoken natively by less than one percent of the population.

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