Will 2024 be the year I finally finish the Vietnamese course on Duolingo?

My Vietnamese studying has had its ups and downs over the years.  But though my progress may be slow, I'm not going to give up.  

Firstly, because I believe that all language teachers should be language learners.  

But secondly, and more importantly, I've now married into a Vietnamese family.  My in-laws speak Vietnamese, and my kids are learning Vietnamese.  I'm now committed to Vietnamese for the long haul.  No matter where I go, or what I do, Vietnamese will always be a part of my life.

Recently, I announced on this blog that I was giving up on my Vietnamese textbook, Tieng Viet 123, in anticipation of moving back to the USA in the next few months.  But those plans have hit a roadblock, and it looks like I might be in Vietnam for longer than I anticipated.*

So, should I then return to Tieng Viet 123?  Or should I take the time I would have spent on Tieng Viet 123 and try to channel it into some other means of study?

Maybe, I should just go all out on Duolingo this year, and try to finally work my way all the way to the end of the Vietnamese course.

Duolingo advertises itself as a lifelong daily habit, so it's sometimes easy to forget that their courses are in fact finite.  Their courses are indeed long (subdivided into sections, units, levels and lessons), but there are a fixed number of units, and a fixed number of levels within those units, and it is possible to complete the whole thing.  In fact, I know one person who actually did it.  (I have a co-worker who completed the whole Vietnamese course.)

In fact, it's kind of pathetic that I've never finished the Vietnamese course myself.  I first started the Vietnamese course way back when it first launched in 2016.  So why have I never finished it?

The reason is that I keep starting the course, then stopping it, and then starting again.

So why do I keep stopping?

In addition to the usual reasons (getting really busy with other aspects of my life and feeling like I don't have time to study, flagging motivation, etc), there are two main things that have been frustrating me with Duolingo.

1). I found the initial lessons very easy and motivating, but then as I progress into the middle of the course, I get overloaded with more vocabulary then I can remember, and then I have difficulty getting through the lessons because I can't remember any of the words.  And then I just get demotivated and give up.

2). Duolingo causes me to spend too much time on my computer, and I start getting hand-cramps (as I wrote about before here )

...oh, and actually one more thing: a couple times within the past couple years I felt like I had to start over again because Duolingo redesigned their course, and didn't do a very good job of preserving my progress (as  I wrote about here and here.)

But, fingers crossed Duolingo doesn't redesign their course again this year, and I can make it all the way to the end without incident.

That's my 2024 goal, anyway.

Now, I haven't been neglecting Duolingo completely the past couple years.  I am, as of today's date, at a 710 day streak.  But although I've been studying every day for 710 days, I've not been making great progress.  Remembering how in the past I got overwhelmed by vocabulary by attempting to take Duolingo too fast, I've been taking pains to move very slowly through Duolingo.  I do more review lessons on Duolingo than I do new lessons.  I also spend a lot of time consolidating my duolingo vocabulary on quizlet (here and here).  And I've also reset my progress - twice during that time. 

So, this year I'm going to through caution to the wind.  I'm going to try to get through as many lessons on Duolingo as I can.  When I get overwhelmed by vocabulary, I'll stop and consolidate as needed, but I won't preemptively try to go slowly.

And as for the hand cramps.... well, it's been a few years since I've had problems with them, so fingers crossed it doesn't happen again.  Also, I think part of the problem was that I wasn't only doing Duolingo, but I was also doing a lot of other quizlet projects (here, here, here and here).  You see, I got so excited by the idea of making regular daily progress in my studies that I took on a lot of other commitments.  (I also tried to learn other languages on duolingo simultaneously--Latin, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese.)

Trying to do too much was a big part of the reason I failed.

So... no other languages for the moment.  Only concentrate on Vietnamese until I finish the course.

Also, as far as Vietnamese goes, I'm only going to study Duolingo until I finish the course.  No other study sets.  No other books.  No other Youtube playlists or  Pimsleur, etc.  Just concentrate on Duolingo until I finish it, and don't get distracted by other things.

I know Duolingo has a lot of flaws.  I've been using it for years now, I know all its flaws intimately: the sentences aren't useful for real communication, the grammar explanations aren't very good, it's based on the Northern dialect and I live in the South, etc, etc, etc.  I'm sure there are better programs out there and hopefully I'll get around to those as well someday, but one thing at a time.  First I'm going to finish off Duolingo, then I'll check out the other study programs or course  books.

I am way, way overdue to finish this course off.  I need to start getting serious about my studies. No more dabbling!  I'm going to do this!

So let's see: will 2024 be the year I finally finish the Vietnamese course on Duolingo?  Or will I just get discouraged and give up again.  

I'm going to start adding my Duolingo progress to my Weekly Reading Vlog updates, so you can watch out for my progress there.  Or follow me on Duolingo HERE.  

Notes

* It's a long story.  I don't want to discuss it on a public blog.  E-mail me for details if you're curious.