Still going strong with DuoLingo

I'm on a 20-day streak of using DuoLingo to maintain my knowledge of the Portuguese language. For someone like me, who likes to start activities but not carry through with them, that streak is remarkable.   DuoLingo is now included on my mental list of tasks I have to accomplish, not just things I want to do, on a daily basis.

I read recently that gamification is becoming an important part of education.  Before trying DuoLingo, I would have scoffed at that notion.  Now I am sold on the motivation that is built into the program. Getting points to move up to another level  keeps me hunched over an electronic device to do just one more activity. When I recently succeeded in making my first big move up to a new level, I felt like I had truly accomplished something. My husband Wayne just shook his head at my big news and probably secretly wished I would expend all that energy in the kitchen trying out a new recipe.

56 Lingots!  That's what it is in my virtual DuoLingo bank.  I'm ready to spend.  One option I've already splurged on is getting a heart refill in case I make an error.  Because you are only allowed three hearts per activity, and lose a heart every time you make an error, a  heart refill may keep me from having to redo a whole activity.

And it is easier than you may think to make an error.  Sometimes I really know the answer but just make a careless mistake (Yeah, sure!), sometimes I hit the 'Check' key by mistake before I am finished, sometimes I don't agree that my answer is wrong, and sometimes I really don't know the answer.  So heart refills are great helps.

When I first started using the program on my laptop, I would make a comment every time I thought Duolingo didn't have something quite right.  For example, I think "I gave a book to my friend" and "I gave my friend a book" have the same meaning and should be alternative answers.  I soon gave up those cyperarguments, however, because I wanted to spend my time racking up more points.  Life and language, after all, are never perfect.

Now, on to spending some of my Lingots.  Here is one option I may choose.

Idioms are expressions in languages whose meaning is more than that of the individual words used.  They are best learned as 'chunks' of information.  Idioms are a higher level language skill and may fool someone into thinking you know more than just textbook language.

Here is an option I probably won't choose as it would be of minimal use to me at my age, but then again, if might be kind of fun if I find myself in a bar listening to the Portuguese spoken around me.

And most important of all, is my Portuguese improving?  Yes.  Using DuoLingo has certainly started what Stephen Krashen call the "din in the head"; that is, I'm now hearing Portuguese again in my mind.

Oops.  Looks like I need to try for a few more points today.