This project was motivated by the Linguist Duck’s language buddy programme. For languages where not every person could be matched with a native speaker, they had created an Instagram group so that learners could practice together. I had been added to the group for Norwegian, and had quickly come to realise that because I only knew how to use present tense, there wasn’t a lot I could talk about.
How quickly could I improve enough to make conversation in Norwegian easier?
Baseline
After a short trip to Oslo in August 2019, I had decided to learn Norwegian. The motive was pure interest; I have no need to use it for work or personal reasons, and don’t currently know any Norwegians. Given that I didn’t need to learn it urgently, since August, all I did was complete 1 lesson per day in Duolingo. This meant for a very small investment of 2-5 minutes per day, I could make slow but steady progress.
As at 25 May 2020, I had completed 136 crowns in Duolingo Norwegian, in just over five levels.
When you consider the tiny amount of effort and time involved, this is already pretty good.
I did a placement test at 17-languages, because I wanted to do a free test that would give me a result against the CEFR levels, without my having to provide an email address. During the test, I only selected answers I knew for sure, and didn’t guess any responses.
The result placed me towards the top of A1, with an estimated knowledge of 600 words.
The week before starting this project, I had created an initial grammar cheat sheet covering definite and indefinite articles, and pronouns. I had also identified a free Norwegian course online, from NTNU University in Trondheim and had worked through Lesson 1 and part of Lesson 2.
Project Plan to improve Norwegian
My plan was to:
- Spend at least 30 minutes per day on Norwegian.
- Complete up to 2 lessons in the Norwegian course each day, enabling me to complete all 10 lessons by the end of the project.
- Use TuneIn to play Norwegian radio stations at any point in the day when I felt like listening to music.
- Post one comment in the Norwegian Instagram group each day.
Day 1
I finished working through Lesson 2, and the first two dialogues of Lesson 3, which took me just over 1 hour. This meant it was unlikely that I would finish all 10 lessons by the end of the project, but I decided to continue anyway. The lesson content focused on days and telling the time.
I listened to Kiss FM via TuneIn, which played mostly English-language music, but with some short ads in Norwegian.
I forgot to post in the Instagram group.
Day 2
First thing, I did my usual Duolingo lesson. In the afternoon, I completed Lesson 3 of the NTNU course, which took almost an hour, and covered rooms of the house, objects found in the kitchen and bathroom, adjectives and reflexive verbs. It also taught me “skal” or “will”, meaning I could form the future tense.
I had a lot of trouble getting TuneIn Radio to work, but finally managed to access Radio Norsk Pop towards the evening. It’s 100% Norwegian language and songs, and although I don’t always love the music, it’s certainly better listening practice.
Using my new future-forming knowledge, I posted a short question in the Instagram group: “What will you do tomorrow?”.
Day 3
I did a quick Duolingo lesson in the morning, and then did Lesson 4 after work that evening. Again, it took an hour, and covered general furniture, colours, irregular adjectives and “this/that”.
In the afternoon, I read through the answers to my question in the Instagram group. There had been several replies during the evening, with quite a lot of new vocabulary for me.
I had forgotten about TuneIn Radio until I opened my project planner, so listened to a couple of songs on Radio Norsk Pop then.
Day 4
This was a busy day for me, with commitments during the day and in the evening as well. I listened to Kiss on TuneIn while I was working. In the evening, I did a fast pass through Lesson 5, by skipping some of the listening exercises. This took just over 30 minutes.
Lesson 5 introduced the simple past tense, meaning I could start to talk about the past. However, I wasn’t confident with it and didn’t post anything in the Instagram group.
Day 5
I did my Norwegian learning first thing in the morning, so I could finish this post and share it in the afternoon. I quickly went through Lesson 6, which introduced the past perfect and explained when to use past perfect versus when to use past simple.
I also updated my grammar cheat sheet with the patterns for the four groups of regular verbs and a list of common irregular verbs. I sorted the irregular verbs into similar categories, to make it easier to spot patterns in past participle formation. In total, I spent around 1 hour 15 on studying.
Results
I went back to 17-languages for a new placement test, and for just 5 days, I was very pleased with the improved result.
I had moved from approximately 600 words to approximately 1,000, as well as moving from the last quarter of A1 to the first quarter of A2.
This was for around 5 hours of focused study, plus some passive listening.
Limitations
- It’s always easier to see a quick improvement at a lower level, simply because you know so little to start with. If I know 5 words and I learn 5 words, that’s a 100% improvement. Of course, by the time I know 2,000 words, learning 5 words becomes a 2.5% improvement. This is partly why so many language learners plateau once they reach B1 and B2.
- The placement test itself was a “quick and dirty” online test, and so its results can be viewed as indicative only. Did I learn 400 new words in 5 hours? Absolutely not. But I’d estimate there were at least 100 unfamiliar words in the NTNU lessons I covered. Additionally, the course acted as a review of any words I’d already seen in Duolingo.
In summary, I’m happy that I tried this level-up project, and will use it in the future for languages where I’ve worked through Duolingo, made a very small time investment and am stuck on level A2/A2.
For Norwegian, I’ll finish the remaining lessons of the NTNU course (spending less than 1 hour per day studying though), and then look at a new learning project to get me to a solid A2 level.
Photo by Adrien Aletti on Unsplash