Gilded German in 40 days: what you need to know

So after 3 years since I first started using Duolingo to learn German, today I finally finished the skill tree for the first time, with everything golden. It took me around 50 hours of studying, but it could be done in much less time, with the same learning curve.

After finishing Duo's tree, I'm currently being placed at B1.1 according to Expath (44 right answers out of 100). Awesome!

Here is what I discovered about my learning process, and I suppose this could be helpful for many of you out there in order to speed up the process and avoid mistakes.

Don't stop.

This is the single most important tip I could give. In all those years, I would go long streaks (I believe my longest streak was 90-ish or something a few years ago), quit for a while and once I came back, I would discover I had forgotten most of what I learned. Once you get back after stopping for a while, lessons feel a lot harder than they actually are. You start making many mistakes and this is very frustrating. You will start to doubt yourself and what you learned so far.

Faster is better.

The faster you commit yourself to finish the tree, the better. I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but by doing it like this, you'll always keep what you learned fresh for the next lessons. This will make them feel easier, and easy lessons equals a faster course and the building of confidence in the target language.

Forget grammar.

German grammar is hard! If you focus too much on it, you'll find yourself hitting barriers that, with the little understanding of the language you currently have, will feel impossible to trespass. By following the two previous tips, you won't have problems to finish Duo lessons at all. It's all about keeping the Woo Woo Train of Knowledge moving.

Most Germans can't even explain you their grammar, they just know it. The same goes for all the other languages around the world. Kids don't learn to speak their mother tongue by going through extensive grammar textbooks.

This quote was a game changer for me:

“Communicative competence is not a matter of knowing rules, but a matter of knowing a stock of partially pre-assembled patterns” (Widdowson, 1989).

Once I understood that, my mind exploded. I'm a sponge now! Slowly absorbing German. :)

Make your daily goals based on words learned, not skills learned nor XP.

I only decided that I would finish the tree by day 40 when I was around day 20. So, during half of the time in these past 6 weeks, I wasn't as committed as in the past few days. Having a definite goal will keep you on track.

And the best way to keep track on the vocabulary you're learning with Duo is using Memrise. Here's the course that has all the words used here for the German course. Memrise is going to be your best friend if your goal is to actually retain new words in your long-term memory. It's based on spaced-repetition and many other scientifically proven mnemonic methods.

So, our German course has 2348 words. If you want to finish it like I did in 40 days, you divide it by 40 and that will give you roughly 59 words per day. I know this may sound like a lot, but it's not. Memrise keeps it very simple and fast to do. I recommend doing the equivalent Duo lesson in Memrise first. This way, you'll move faster through the tree without the need of clicking on the words to know their meaning. You'll already know the vocab, now you'll be learning how the words are arranged and interact with each other (aka grammar) in a natural way.

If you have the time and enthusiasm, do more than your daily minimum goal.

This will give you a safe margin for those days you can't study, no matter what the reason is. There will be days that you'll lack the time to do it, other days the motivation, and some days you'll just be plain tired and only want to chill. Compensate this by learning more in the days you feel like learning or have more spare time, like weekends.

But even in the days that you just can't do your self-established minimum goal, don't forget tip #1. You still have to show here at Duolingo and Memrise and keep your streak alive.

Well this is it, hope that helps! I'm starting to understand German, what was once just gibberish now makes sense. The next 2 months will be crucial to consolidate what I learned with Duo. I'll be using Glossika and Yabla. Cheers!

Bonus: This is how I felt after hitting the bottom of the tree and getting that beautiful golden owl trophy after all the waiting for the past 3 years.

June 28, 2017

42 Comments

annika_a

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! You've got some nice insights there. I love the Woo Woo Train of Knowledge! X-)

I absolutely agree with the strategy of learning the corresponding words of a Duolingo lesson on Memrise first, and only then doing the actual lesson. (I wouldn't have survived the Russian tree without using this method.)

Going through the tree quickly is indeed a nice way to keep it interesting without getting too bogged down in the (tricky) details. But with a grammar heavy language like German (and Russian...) one does have to tackle the grammar eventually. But I guess having some idea of how the language works and knowing the words one is using helps once it's time for the serious grammar learning. (At least I hope it does.)