Week 1 of intensive learning on Duolingo and Memrise

    It has been a week since I started learning those 3 languages online. There are some pluses and minuses.

    Russian- I have done 17 lessons so far on Duolingo. I'm not using Memrise for Russian, I use classical pen and paper. So far I have seen mainly vocabulary that I previously did while I was learning it at school. I have noticed some false friends. I should be careful while translating. I have found a language partner for Russian so I need to prepare to speak it. 

    Czech- I don't like this language so much I'm just doing it because I had it at the University as a mandatory course. I'm no longer doing top 1000 words on Memrise. I found it hard to remember a word without context. I have done 15/84 lessons on Duolingo. It is easy to passively translate at this stage but I still need to work on my active phase. On Memrise I follow a course that is done for a book NEw Czech step by step. I don't have a book but the course looks great. So far I have covered 235 words from the course. 

    Italian- Now we are talking about something that I like doing. Great language in every sense. I have covered the first 15 lessons from Duolingo and I'm doing a course on Memrise that follows Duolingo. So far I did almost 1000 words (981). The problem is the fact that Memrise is taking too much time and it is boring. Today I had to repeat almost 300 words. I'm doing the option for speed review, which feels like cheating. Those of you who use Memrise know what I mean. But it is the only way to do it because I'm covering a large number of words. Today I will have my first talk with a native Italian speaker. I will write a separate post about it. I found him on a website called Conversation exchange. The biggest problem I'm facing in Italian is articles so far. We don't have it in Serbian so I need to get used to them in Italian. Can't wait to have my first real conversation in Italian. 

So far this has been a very interesting journey. I'm just starting. Hope to become a desperate polyglot anytime soon. 

 Strategy

I have decided to learn Russian, Czech, and Italian on Duolingo and Memrise. I decided to know them first because I had formal education in all 3 languages. I had 2 semesters of Czech and one semester of Italian and Russian at the university.

    For Russian I will use classical pen and paper, writing down every new word in a lesson. I still need to think about what strategy I will be using after I finish Russian on the Duolingo website. I'm thinking of finding a language exchange partner to practice Russian, and in return, I would offer Serbian lessons.

    For Italian, I will be using Duolingo and Memrise course that follows it. (https://app.memrise.com/course/64852/duolingo/) It consists of almost 2700 words so It should be enough to give me a basic language vocabulary.

    For Czech, I will use Duolingo and put all the words from the course into an Anki flashcard system. Anki is the best flashcard app for language learning and everybody should check it out. Also, I will use two courses on the Memrise site for Czech. The first is one that follows a book called New Czech step by step (https://app.memrise.com/course/70302/new-czech-step-by-step/). I won't be using the book but I think this course is great for grasping some basic Czech vocabulary. The second course is the 1000 most common Czech words (https://app.memrise.com/course/40531/the-1st-1000-most-common-czech-words-2/). 

    That is in short my plan for the next at least 6 weeks, We shall see how it goes. I will be making posts about what I notice while learning and general comments about the languages. 

    

    

 Hello everyone

    My name is Darko Cvijetic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. I have been trying to become a polyglot for some time now. My idea is to try to learn several languages at the same time using only free resources that are available to everyone on the internet. I still need to decide which languages I will be learning since I had courses in Italian, Czech and Russian but I forgot almost everything. I will decide in the next couple of days what will be my strategy but for now, I know that I will focus mainly on Duolingo and Memrise websites to learn a language. 

    I'm desperate for time, money, and focus so that is why I call this blog a Desperate polyglot. Duolingo has gone through some changes lately and I will be testing the new version of the site soon. 

    My plan is to connect with other language learners and expand my knowledge over time.