Duolingo

Tl;Dr can read Spanish pretty good. Learned a lot, have a lot more to learn.

Thank you!

I know you asked a simple question but I’m about to give you a wall of text.

95% of my learning has been using nothing but the Duolingo app. The other 5% comes from learn Spanish YouTubers I follow.

If you would’ve told me 1000 days ago that I would eventually hit a 1000 day streak, I’d say “holy shit future me is fluent in Spanish” but the truth is I’m far from that

The first unit took me about 100 days. It was so difficult, I was literally trying to learn a foreign language with zero prior experience. Nothing made sense. It eventually became a habit where I’d do 3 lessons in the morning and 3 before bed. Things started clicking and with a good routine I was able to make it to about unit 4 by the end of year 1.

Year 2 was unit 5 and 6. A lot of that year I spent XP chasing. The best thing I ever did was shut down the leaderboard. I wasn’t learning when I was focusing on that leaderboard/tournament. I’d do a single lesson then do the match game to get points. Eventually I turned that off and focused on the lessons.

This past year has been unit 7 and unit 8. I am halfway through unit 8 and it’s difficult and the lessons are also harder, i’m slowly but surely making my way through it.

To answer your question, I can read the hell out of Spanish. Everything Duolingo throws at me for the most part I can read it and I read it quickly. Words I don’t know I can usually figure them out with context. In my day to day life if I come across written Spanish, I can for the most part read it. I follow Spanish speaking YouTubers and if they’re talking slow enough I can pick out chunks of it. Hearing and understanding spoken Spanish is going to be the last thing I master if I ever even master that. (I believe you’ll probably need to immerse yourself in the language if you want to get a grasp on understanding a spoken foreign language because Duolingo alone will not get you there, not for me anyway)

So while I’m not fluent, I have learned a ton, and I’m still learning each day. It’s so funny going back to earlier units and seeing all the things I struggled so hard with. Those earlier lessons I can now do in under a minute.

Also for anyone curious, everything is gold up to halfway through unit 8. Unit 1 and half of unit 2 are purple/legendary. I could probably get even further as I haven’t tried to master them in a while. I’ve done about 85 of the 102 sets of stories.

My main goal is to finish the Duolingo tree before my app breaks and I’m forced to update. It’s been giving me issues lately.