Many years ago, when I was about 12, I accompanied my mom to a funeral where most attendees spoke French. I wanted to say something in French to one of my mom's relatives, but froze completely, unable to utter a word.

When I rejoined my mom, I explained what I had wanted to say. She replied, "Why didn't you say it this way?"

It was an a-ha moment for me: I realized that there is often more than one way to say something. From that point on, if I got stuck on my first attempt to say something, I would simply think about another way to communicate my message. It's like being stuck in the mud—sometimes, you need to back up and take another run at it.

As I became more proficient in my second language (French), I got stuck less often. But now, in speaking my third language (Brazilian Portuguese), I am once again experiencing that feeling of forgetting all the words I've learned the moment I open my mouth.

The other day, while shopping in a store, I heard a man and woman speaking Portuguese. I approached the man and said,

— "Você fala português?" ("Do you speak Portuguese?")

— "Sim," he replied, with a smile. "Eu sou do Brasil." ("I am from Brazil.")

— "Que bom," I said. The expression for "How nice" popped into my head, even though I had never used it before in conversation. I think it came to mind because so many characters in the Duolingo stories use that expression.

I wanted to add, "I am learning Portuguese" ("Eu estou aprendendo português"), but used a simpler form that was closer to "I learn Portuguese" ("Eu aprendo português.") Still, the man understood, and seemed pleased that I was making an attempt to learn his language.

All of this comes to mind because, today, I reached a 500-day streak on Duolingo. That's 500 straight days of learning Brazilian Portuguese: reading, hearing, speaking and writing it.

I have as much enthusiasm for learning the language today as I did on day one, perhaps more. And I've started dabbling in Italian, though I'm resisting the temptation to jump into that language for fear that I will start muddling Portuguese and Italian. I already find that when I try to speak Portuguese, French words leak out of my mouth.

I read an interesting article this evening on Learning Languages from the Learning Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It offered a number of helpful tips.

Balance your learning across understanding, producing, and identifying and correcting errors. The article identifies three dimensions of language learning and recommends that you balance all three if you're trying to acquire a second language:

Duolingo is structured to enable users to learn across all three dimensions. For my part, I listen to and read Portuguese (input). I speak and write Portuguese (output). I correct my errors during lessons as well as in practice sessions dedicated to reviewing my mistakes (identifying and correcting errors).

Understand the importance of errors. Speaking a second language requires that you get comfortable with making errors. The article states:

Sometimes, the biggest challenge to language learning is overcoming our own fears: fear of making a mistake, of saying the wrong thing, of embarrassing yourself, of not being able to find the right word, and so on. This is all perfectly rational: anyone learning a language is going to make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes will be very public.

If you aren't willing to make mistakes when speaking a new language, you won't make as much progress as you would if you embraced the fact that learning comes with (and often as a result of) making mistakes. The article recommends finding ways to get "low-stakes practice"; this means learning in situations in which you feel more comfortable using your new language and making the inevitable errors. This could include practising with someone at a similar level of proficiency as you in your target language.

Duolingo offers many opportunities to use the language. Using lessons as well as dedicated speaking sessions, I get to hear a sentence and then repeat it back. If my pronunciation is close, I move on to the next sentence. If it's not, Duolingo gives me two more chances to get it right before marking it wrong and moving on. Consequently, my pronunciation has improved steadily since I began using the app.

Spread out your learning. According to the article, research finds that one of the most effective learning strategies is distributed practice, which means breaking your studying into multiple small sessions, spread out over time. An example would be studying for 10 minutes on each of Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday for a Friday quiz rather than studying for 30 minutes on Thursday.

One of the ways Duolingo encourages users to spread out their learning is by giving them a points bonus for studying in the morning and in the evening. Without this incentive, I would not likely have gotten into the habit of studying twice a day.

Improve your memory. Being able to memorize new vocabulary is essential to learning a new language. The article notes that:

...scientific experiments show that our short-term memory can only hold about 7 pieces of new information at once. So if you’re working on a long list of new vocabulary words, start by breaking it up into smaller chunks, and study one shorter section at a time. Additionally, research also suggests that recall-based study methods are most effective. This means that actively trying to recall information is more effective than simply reviewing information; essentially, self-testing will help you more than re-reading your notes will.

The article recommends this beginner formula for memorizing a new word: use it at least five times the first day, then at least once per day for a week.

Duolingo presents new vocabulary in bold, underlined type, as though it were saying, "Attention K-Mart Shoppers! This is a new word." The app also presents the same word in multiple formats to help users remember it.

Focus on expanding your vocabulary. While the article acknowledges the importance of grammar in becoming fluent in a language and succeeding in a language class, it states that vocabulary is more important than grammar.

The more vocabulary you know, the more quickly you can grow your language skills. The reason is simple: understanding more words directly translates into more input, producing more words means more output, and more output means more opportunity for feedback. Additionally, when you’re interacting with native speakers, vocabulary is more beneficial to communication than grammar is. Being able to produce words will help get your meaning across, even if what you say is not perfectly grammatical.

A year-end summary of my activity in Duolingo found that I had learned almost 8,000 words in 2023 and practised more than 14,000 sentences. (It didn't tell me how many grammar rules I had learned, but I'm sure it's a lot.)

Somewhere in my journey of learning and using a second language (and now a third), I concluded that language is for communicating. Perhaps it all started at that funeral I attended with my mom 45 years ago. The message I manage to communicate to another person—however awkwardly—is better than the message that remains locked in my brain.

The University of North Carolina article on Learning Languages includes many more valuable tips. I'll come back to them in a future post. For now, it's time for my evening Duolingo practice.