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Lessons on learning after hitting a 365-day streak on Duolingo – a popular gamified language-learning app.
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Duolingo Language-Learning App
Episode 085: Tonara Transitions: A Special Teacher Talk
Transcript
Have you ever used Duolingo? Today, I’m excited to share some lessons on learning I’ve taken away after hitting my 365-day streak on this popular language-learning app.
I’ll admit that most of my takeaways were not big revelations, but it still felt good as a teacher to be reminded of what it’s like to learn and be a novice at something.
Before we dive in, a word of thanks to teachers Janelle Bracken and Sharon Stosur for your support of this podcast. As Insiders, not only are they supporting the work here, but they get a few bonuses from me as well on a regular basis.
I’ll be announcing some updates soon for my Patreon partners. The $4 silent partner option will remain the same, but the $7 insiders will get a bit more from me moving forward, so stay tuned in the coming weeks for that announcement.
Also, just a bug in your ear to save the date for another Notion workshop my friend Joy Morin, and I will be holding this fall. It will be Friday and Saturday, September 20-21, from 10 am-1 pm Eastern Time. The optional follow-up bonus session will be Friday, October 11, from 2 – 3 pm Eastern Time.
Now, here are some lessons on learning thanks to Duolingo. Oh, by the way, I’m Amy Chaplin, your host – a fellow piano teacher and slow French language learner extraordinaire.
If you’re not familiar with Duolingo, it’s a language-learning app that is completely based on gamification. There are things like specific daily goal parameters to friend quests where you can connect to others and nudge each other along. Achievements are rewarded with points, coins, badges, and whatnot.
I don’t try to get too crazy with it, but I admit that the day-streak tracking feature has certainly been effective in getting me to 365 days! They’re even very kind to repair your streak if you miss a day. It just costs you some of your points. So, in essence, my 365-day streak has probably taken at least 400 days.
By the way, kudos to those teachers I’m connected with who have bigger streaks than myself, including Nicole, who’s at over 450, Lisa at over 1,100, and Spring, who’s over a whopping 1,600 days. THAT is serious dedication!
This whole day-streak thing is definitely something we can tie into our students as practice challenges. The former Piano Explorer Magazine made the 100-day practice challenge popular, where students tracked their practice, and then when they hit the 100-day mark, they had their name published in the magazine. Mini-practice challenges of any size are easily doable in a music studio. I’m not going into details but get creative and find ways to feature students practice streaks.
The first lesson in learning for me was that there are peaks and plateaus in learning motivation. My desire to learn isn’t always constant. Yes, I want to learn French, but sometimes it IS hard to squeeze even 15 minutes of practice in a day—especially when I am learning simply for the sake of learning and will have no immediate need for this skill.
Hmmm…. are you catching on to some of your music student learning parallels without me having to state the obvious? Hopefully, but even so, I guess I’ll state the obvious anyway.
Our students need something to work toward. The desire to learn a skill is not always enough. I know recitals can be a lot of work but can we find ways of creating more opportunities for students to need to play for something whether that be a regular group class, mini-recitals, or something I’m going to try new this year – a jam band. This is something I have had in the back of my mind but decided to hit go after hearing Nicola Cantan talk about hers during the Turboboost event in Cincinnati a couple weeks ago.
Students ages 12 and older will come once a week during the year for just 30 minutes and play along with popular tunes on Spotify using chord charts (and this is going to be optional, of course). They, of course, have to know their chords but the goal is just to jam to their favorite music together. Right now, over 60% of my students are ages 12 and older and are at that critical point where we pray they’ll stay in lessons. I’m hoping to just give them one more reason for the need for their piano skills to keep their learning motivation fueled.
My own sometimes-wanting motivation means on occasion I skip over the actual timeline lessons on Duolingo that supposably keep me moving forward, and just do a practice hub session instead. In the practice hub, you can practice words by themselves, going over previous mistakes, or reading a short story. These count as practice time, so I still got my daily check, but don’t take as much time or brain involvement as the timeline lessons.
This dilemma of mine makes me realize that for our students, sometimes we need those occasional lesson weeks where we break out of our normal routine and just do something reinforcing. Not every lesson has to involve a brand-new technical pattern or concept or song.
While we also want to instill good practice habits, the biggest factor is getting them to the piano. Even if it’s not the perfectly-checklisted practice session, we want it to be. So, yes, we want students to follow a fairly intentional process every day; sometimes, a little change-up can break up the monotony.
The second thing I’ve learned is that sometimes, we all need reminders. Not only do I have a task on my daily recurring checklist that includes some habits I hope to do daily, like exercise, language practice, and Bible study, but I also allow my Duolingo app to give me an angry face notifications at the end of the day if I haven’t practiced. It’s surprisingly effective. LOL.
Communicate regularly with your studio families on how to help their students build healthy practice habits. This year I’m determined to send out one specific tip every month. We can’t expect students and families to know how this works. We all need reminders. I’m always reminding my students how to practice. What are ways we can practice this?
One great piece of advice to share with them is an idea taken from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits where you attach the habit to something else you do daily. So, encourage students to schedule 15 minutes of practice alongside something they do every day like right before they set the table for dinner or brush their teeth.
The third thing I’ve learned from Duolingo is that sometimes you need to practice those foundational skills. There have been several points off and on when I can tell the format is not being effective because there isn’t enough focus on repetitions of basic skills or even explanations of why.
That’s part of why I started doing more of the word practice and not the lesson timeline. I felt like I was getting stuck. The lesson timelines don’t actually teach you anything directly – they just try to put the language into practice right away in a variety of ways. It’s kind of hard to explain if you’ve never used it, but they really don’t teach or explain much of anything. There are a few tips here and there but it’s not super instructional.
With our students, they need those foundational skills of technical patterns and musical elements like tonic and dominant and duple and triple meter that are foundational to everything we do at the piano. It’s not just about learning repertoire, sometimes we just need to extract and focus on those key musical elements.
When I noticed myself starting to stagnate, I started seeking out other options because I could tell the time I was giving was not getting the return it felt it should.
The fourth thing I learned is that I need more variety in learning methods and approaches. I’ve tried two other well-known programs a bit—Babel and Rosetta Stone—and they’re fine, but they still haven’t hit it on the head. I also came across a free app on my PC called Learn French for Beginners, and it’s OK as well, but still not great.
I recently had a friend tell me he noticed the same thing in his progress with Duolingo, so he enlisted a language tutor who recommended watching Disney movies with closed captioning. I’ve only done this once so far, mostly because I don’t think about it, but it’s definitely going to be a helpful approach when I can. I also like the variety.
I also recently stumbled onto a program called The Pimsleur Method for Language Learning. I’ve only briefly looked at one lesson, but from what I can see, I think I’m going to enjoy the model. It sounds like it approaches learning a second language in the same way we all learn our first language—through hearing and speaking and lots of repetition, not just reading and writing, so, we’ll see.
As a reminder, anything I mention today will be included in the show notes. Find the link inside your podcast app or go directly to pianopantry.com/podcast/episode131
Just as I needed a variety of learning methods and approaches, sometimes I also just got bored and worn out from pounding through the same format day after day. It became almost mindless and felt boring and monotonous. Changing things up can help us and our students stay engaged in learning.
We can’t teach concepts in only one way; we have to find a variety of ways to approach our students and their learning. We need to recognize when learning is not happening, adjust our teaching, and be willing to continue to find ways to keep things fresh.
We’re not machines; our learning is a living, breathing, unique process that takes intention and observation.
As we roll into the end of today’s episode, I have four more quick points I’ll throw out as quick statements from my observations. They are:
- We can only intake so much at once.
- You can’t just learn something and then not apply it. Application-application-application.
- If you don’t keep it up, you will lose it, but you can also quickly regain it with diligent practice.
- A test doesn’t tell you how much you know—I frequently pass lessons without deeply understanding the content.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Be sure and join in the conversation on social media where you see this content active.
Thanks for listening to today’s episode. If you enjoyed this content, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast in your favorite podcast app and hit the subscribe button so new episodes will download automatically.
Next week, I’m excited to bring you a follow-up to one of last year’s episodes on the fallout of the Tonara practice app. Thanks to the suggestion from teacher friend Laurie Bender, all the teachers who shared with you in episode 85 are coming back to give us an update on what is now working for them one year later.
See you then!
