Frequent Frenching for Fun

Reflections on one year of studying French on Duolingo

Screenshot from Duolingo, with the owl wearing sunglasses and the words “365 day streak!”

Last week, I reached a milestone on the popular language-learning app, Duolingo: 365 consecutive days of practice. Duo, their owl mascot, congratulated me on reaching the final tier of the “Streak Society”. To mark the occasion, I thought I’d compare my year of learning French on this app with my prior experience of using Duolingo to practice Spanish.

While I was glad to reach a one-year milestone in French (without using any “streak freezes”, to boot), I had a much longer streak studying Spanish, a language I had prior experience in. However, as I wrote previously, I realized that I could not advance further in that language without more real-world practice.

Duolingo and my history of lazy Spanish practice

In mid-2021, I abandoned my streak, which by then was several years long, and quit using Duolingo altogether for awhile. I took it back up on the Fourth of July, 2022, and switched my study language from Spanish to French. My motivation, as I blogged about last week, was a potential move to Canada. I had previously studied French on…