The Reasons Why I Quit Duolingo
Published on November 11th, 2024
I have always been passionate about languages, but this feeling had skyrocketted on me around five years ago when the idea of learning Mandarin got stuck on my my head. I tried to learn it for about three to four months, but I didn't know what I was doing, so progress was minimal. I remember that around the same time I was talking to a teacher of mine about languages and she told me she was learning Japanese, and that was probably the moment where the idea of doing the same entered my head.
I already knew some basic facts about Japanese such as that it had two syllabaries (Hiragana and Katakana) and it used Chinese characthers (Kanji). In my head, having syllabaries would make the process of learning the language easier than it was with Mandarin since I was struggling with Hanzi (the name of the Chinese logographic system). Even though a while back ago I would say that younger me was wrong, nowadays I really think that syllabaries do really help in the learning process because it does not take a long time to learn them what makes it faster for you to be able to immerse in the language. But, at the time this made me switch learning Japanese. Later, I probably had learned Hirgana and Katakana in one to two weeks and then proceeded to quit studying Japanese for three years.
Last year I finally decided to give another chance to learning the language, and my first decision was to use Duolingo. I already knew about more effect resources such as Anki or Memrise, this last one that, as far as I have seen, has gotten worse than before, but I still decided to use the green owl app because in my memory, it was great. For my bad luck, the new update had arrived for me almost at the same time, making the experience horrible, but even with this I managed to mantain my streak for more than 1.5 years.
My point is, Duolingo was great back then, especially when I first met it, nevertheless it has become unusable now. Before the course wasn't completely linear, allowing you to chose what you would learn first. Also the units were shorter when compared to those we have to day that take you about an hour to teach you random AI generated phrases that don't have any pratical purposes. My progress with the app was minimal and it wasn't null since I used other resources like books and immersion. For instance, I managed poorly to solve an JLPT N4 mock test while my goal was to reach N3 by the end of this year.
Also, the transition of Duolingo from free to freemium locked many features under a paywall, what I don't see as problem since they are a business and need to profit. However, the features which they have decided to restrict were essential to allow you to really learn something. For example, they removed the possibility of commiting mistakes out of the free plan (first on mobile, and later on the web version), what, for me, made using the program terrible. The way they did is the classic energy/heart system that limits something by giving a definite amount of credits for the user to use in a certain period of time a charge for more.
Obvioulsy the app has some good points. One of these in my opinion is that there a stories that are meant to be comprenhensible for the level of the learner troughout the course, but these are scarce for the size of the learning program. I also like how they implemented sections for learning Kana (Hiragana and Katakana) and Kanji. It is also impossible not to mention about the gamification on the app, that is amazing for keeping you learning, but there was a time I got sick of it.
That is why I decided to quit it and go straightfoward to immersing myself the maximum as possible in the language. I still think I need some conciouss studying though, so I am still reading a grammar book by Tae Suzuki and Yuki Mukai called "Gramática do Japonês para Falantes do Português", which in my opinion is the best book for learning Japanese avaliable in Portuguese. Reflecting now, this is the way I learned English. I started immersing myself by the age of six or seven and without realizing I got fluent on it by the age of ten of eleven.
Thoughts On My First ENEM (Brazil's College Admissions Exam)
Published on November 10th, 2024
Introduction
ENEM (Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio) is an exam created by INEP (Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas), a government agency, that works as Brazil's main college admissions exam. It usually takes place on the month on November and lasts two Sundays, containing an essay and 180 questions about languages, humanities, natural sciencies, and mathematics.
This year was my first time doing it, however I didn't do it with the sake of getting into college since I am a high school freshman (9th grade). My main reasons behind it were testing my current knowledge and preparing myself for the time when I do it officialy. Moreover, I think that, for my goals, I did a great job.
Essay
The essay is certainly one of the most important parts of the exam since it has the biggest weight out of all sections. It is always an argumentative essay, but themes vary each year, covering important social or environmental topics. This year's theme was 'Challenges for the valorization of the african heritage in Brazil', which I find really interesting and necessary.
Albeit this theme is complex, I think that writing an essay about it is not so hard since it is widely discussed. You could use a couple of popular songs and books to support your claim, for example. My argument was centered on the third chapter of Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity, that, in a nutshell, explains how society marginalizes what is considered to be differnt form normalcy. I also used some examples and a novel, but still sorrounding the idea of Bauman's book. I think there are a couple of things that I could have done better, but I am happy withe my work
I don't think my score will be amazing since, as I have already stated, I could have done some things better, especially improving my text's cohesion. My guess is that I will be getting 700 points out of 1000 possible, what I consider to be a medium grade.
Languages
The part of ENEM that cover languages was the one I did the best (scored 39 out of 45). It is basically textual interpretation and literature analysis in Portuguese and a foreign language (English or Spanish). I didn't have any problem on this section and I don't even get why I didn't ace it.
A thing that I really liked of it was that there were some questions about novels that I really like such as Machado de Assis' Dom Casmurro (not really about the book directly, but a parody called Capitu: Memórias Pósutmas). A problem of the section is that it is very exausthing to complete because of the huge amount of texts to read.
Humanities
I love humanities, seriously, however I didn't prepare especifically for this exam, so I didn't remember everthing that was asked. I think the only think that I could have done to get a better grade in this part of ENEM was studying especifically to it. According to an extra-oficial correction, I got 35 out of 45 questions correct, but this does not say much about the final score because it is calculated with the Item-Response Theory (IRT).
In my opinion, the topics covered in this section are amazing. You can see questions about Horkheimer and Adorno's cultural industry, Marxist theory, Aristotle's eudaimonia, Kant's categorical imperative, tectonism, Brazillian history and more. But, as you might already have thought, the diversity of subjects makes it hard to study everything.
Natural Sciences
For me this was the hardest part of the exam, what really reflected on my grade, that was the worst out of the five sections (29 out of 45). The main reason behind this is that I haven't studied the majority of the contents covered in it yet. That is also why this was the last thing I've done on the second Sunday (November 10th, 2024). Out of the three subdvisions of this section - Biology, Chemstry, and Physics -, the one that I did the worst was chemstry and the complete opposite happenned with biology, what is logic since I have studied more biology than any other of the three and my chemstry knowledge is almost non-existent.
Mathematics
Mathematics is the subject that I have the most knowledge and also my favorite. Thus, the logical thing to happen to me was getting my best score in this section of ENEM, however this is not what happenned. A thing that I have realized is that whenever it comes to math, I get really anxious. This happens probably because I subconciously want to prove to myself that I am good at it, even though my concious self already knows it. This anxiety has been my nemesis for a while, and today was no different.
Out of 45 problems, I answered 31 correctly. The biggest part of my mistakes occured because of tiny details that I missed, and not because I didn't know how to solve. Overall, this section is really easy, covering mostly basic math. The two hardest questions of this year were about exponential functions and logarithms, but they are relatively easy when compared with other exams.
Moreover, I would like to criticize that this part of ENEM is poorly written by INEP. This makes some questions unnecessarily hard. Sometimes I even tought that I was reading gibberish in some questions because their explanations were completely nonsense, but after reading them again some time later I managed to solve them.
Conclusion
Finally, I would like to say that I think I did a great job. I scored an amazingly high grade for my current school year, even though I am not satisfied with it. Also, making the test this year allowed me to find my weaknesses and now I will be able to target them in my pratice later. I need to admit that I got a bit sad when I had seen the extra-oficial results (when the oficial ones get realesed I will probably write about it) because I expected a lot more of me, but after reflecting for a while, I have realized that I don't need to put so much pressure on myself, principally because this was (and is) hurting my mental health.