Sometime along the way I also started doing Coffee Break Spanish. Because I was well along in Duolingo, I let that slide for a few months while I caught up to it. I'm now roughly even in both places so can go forward equally.
That lapse of Duolingo turned out to have a benefit. I was starting to feel a bit discouraged with my progress. It wasn't that I hadn't learned anything, but I didn't feel that I had learned all that much and was annoyed that I am still struggling along, usually unable to follow a spoken conversation at all and not doing much better with written text.
I just didn't feel like I had gained much.
But when you stay away from Duolingo, it wants you to refresh your skills. I was so long in catching up that it took me right back to the beginning for review and practice. That's where I was able to truly appreciate how much I have learned: the review was easy. I am still working through the levels to catch up, but I have been clipping right along, snapping off translations in either direction with ease and (this surprised me) having no problem with the listening exercises too!
If this had been a graded test, I think I would have easily had an A. Even the mistakes I made were mostly from carelessness and haste rather than lack of understanding, so I feel pretty good about that. So, yes, I'm a long, long way from the fluency I would like to have, but I also have learned much more than I thought.
I'm happy :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment