let's stop saying that duolingo doesn't work

he couldn’t believe it.

“grazie amico! grazie!”

at the time, i couldn’t understand why he was thanking me. all i did was speak to him in broken italian, making more mistakes than a teenager in magaluf.

yet as i moved up the hotdog line, little under an hour before the start of the italian grand prix, i realized why it meant so much to him:

i, a brit, spoke to him in his mother tongue. something i’m not entirely sure he’d ever experienced from a pasty english-speaker like me.

regardless of how i mauled his beautiful language, he couldn’t believe that i’d gone to the effort to learn it. we talked about the upcoming race. why inter were better than milan. how the guy in front pushed-in and how much of a stronzo he was.

it was a fairly mundane conversation, in truth. yet it left me feeling utterly euphoric.

and to think: i’d arrived at this point thanks (in no small part) to duolingo - an application that every man and his dog will have you believe simply does not work.

it’s been pedaled so much that it’s become an unquestionable fact.

“duolingo is a game. it’s not a proper language learning tool. people who use duolingo are caught up in the illusion of learning and will never have real conversations with real people. why would anyone need to say that the spider eats bread?”

it’s little wonder there’s often an air of apology when someone says they use duolingo. they know everyone looks down their nose at it. even the people in the duolingo subreddit spend more time hating on it than actually using it.

yet there i was, back in 2017, armed with little more than 16 months of self-taught italian, able to navigate my way through shops, hotel check-ins and hotdog queues.

and pretty much all of that came from a primitive duolingo course that barely clipped a2 on the cefr.

how do you explain that?

it’s simple really. i had a burning, passionate desire to learn italian.

i became obsessed with the culture, lifestyle, geography, food - tutto - when i visited for the first time back in 2015. i was in rome for no more than 3 days but instantly fell in love. there was an energy and sexiness about the place that i just couldn’t shake.

for me, it was more than just learning the language. i wanted to join the club. i wanted to live and breathe italy and i was hell bent on making it happen.

duolingo was my backbone. my classroom. it’s where i picked up the basics and did much of the all-important active learning.

but beyond that, i kept my eyes on the prize. the stuff that lay beyond the classroom. real italianness.

• italian youtube.

• italian tv shows.

• italian music.

• italian food.

every single day i was diving into a big pool of italy. i was drenched in it. it’s hard not to learn a language when you’re doing that. i didn’t even need to try.

this combination of active and passive learning - the classroom and the real world - is what got me to a point where i could speak with real life italianos.

all of that came from my madman drive to become like one of them.

and that, for me, is the biggest takeaway:

it isn’t really the tool that determines your success, but your determination. your why. your reason for showing up in the first place.

when your reason is thin, hollow, brittle, your routine falters the moment you run into a bit of friction.

when learning a language, this is when the early beginner gains make way for the realities of the messy middle; that place where the language gets difficult and progress is slow. it’s here that the original reason melts away and things like a long-ass duolingo streak become ‘good enough’.

but when it’s well-rounded, full-bodied, red-hot and full of beans, the learning process stops being a ‘learning process’ and becomes something different entirely: a privilege, a pleasure, something you look forward to like that late night tub of haagen dazs when your girlfriend’s gone to bed.

this is true whether you’re using duolingo, a tutor or a battered old textbook. there’s absolutely no way you won’t succeed. you’ll take what you need in the learning phase then plunge yourself into authentic content at every possible opportunity. it all comes together without even consciously trying.

for me, my why wasn’t just about learning italian. it was about becoming italian. i wanted to shed my english skin and become a new person entirely. i wanted access to a brand new world where i could sip espressos and throw my hands around in a constant fit of controversy. i wanted to truly understand what it meant to be a pizza-eater.

after 16 months of that basic duolingo course, i’d pretty much cracked it. i knew i was making mistakes. the guy in the hotdog line definitely knew i was making mistakes. but he understood me, and i understood him.

there really is no better feeling than that.

and anyway… duolingo’s come a long way since then. the game is a means to an end. the video calls are awesome. and the sentences aren’t even that weird anymore (bit of a shame if you ask me).

if it worked for me then, it can absolutely work for you now. just get your why right. the rest will follow.

ciao for now.

matt.