Why Duolingo Doesn't Work

And The Unorthodox Method That Does

A big welcome to the 256 new subscribers to this newsletter. If you're new—hey, I’m Matt. I co-founded a YouTube channel, wrote a book about it, and now I live in Barcelona as a full-time writer.

A few times a month, I drop a 1-minute life lesson from my weirdly fun life. Glad you’re here :)

And before we continue: a HUGE shoutout to the first 209 (!!!) members of Matt’s Friend Club (MFC). Wow, we’ve got a freaking squad.

You’re the real heroes—allowing me to make a living doing what I love. Thank YOU.

PS – Our first Zoom call is March 2nd. If you haven’t already, come join the party :)

Kk, now onto today’s short story…

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My Spanish is pretty good.

Some days I can hold a (choppy) two hour conversation with a local friend.

I even went on a date the other day with a girl that didn’t speak English. I managed. Although I did call her “mona”, which means cute. It was a new word I learned, I was excited to put it to use. Problem was, in Spanish you only use that expression when referring to a little girl, not a grown woman.

Plus, I don’t know if it’s ever a great idea to call a woman you just met ‘cute’—even in English.

Lesson learned.

Lately though, I’ve been stuck at the same level with my Español.

The improvement has been uninspiring.

So I tried out a few Spanish teachers and eventually landed on Josep.

Josep is a 33-year old native Spaniard who is a Duracell Bunny of a human—endlessly energetic, high on life, and makes you smile without even trying. I swear this man belongs on a Broadway stage. He starts the class singing in falsetto, his thick brown hair is perfectly combed and he always looks like he just got back from vacation. Josep makes it easy to get on a Zoom call at 9 am. He’s the kind of teacher you want: he makes it fun.

Josep’s style is unorthodox. For the first few classes, he didn’t teach me Spanish. Instead, he taught me a system. He explained that the classic go-to’s: Duolingo, Netflix shows, podcasts, music, conversations...those weren’t going to help me become fluent.

This was a wtf moment for me.

That’s how I had approached my whole Spanish “career”: Late nights watching La Casa de Papel, train rides plugged into NPR’s Radio Ambulante, and hours and hours of language learning apps. But he was right...after years of Spanish practice, I still couldn’t say “I’m not very good at Spanish.”

Josep explained that the problem with this style of learning was that it’s often passive: in one ear, out the other. Your ego loves getting through a whole show in a foreign language and thinking to itself, holy shit, I just did that. But that’s not how deep learning works.

Instead, Josep’s system works in three parts:

1. Stop. Pause when you hear a new word or grammar usage.

2. Check it out. Do your research on it.

3. Make it interesting. Find a fun way to memorize it.

The analogy he used was, if you’re at a dinner party and you’re introducing yourself to everyone, stop after you hear each person’s name and store it in your long-term memory bank (ex. Andrew? Oh Andrew like my college roommate, okay).

Josep made it clear to me:

I would rather you take a month to listen to one podcast, stopping to put whatever word you don’t know into your bucket, than listen to one podcast a day without learning a new word.

So now I’m doing it.

And the improvement is already happening faster. I’m learning more words, understanding more phrases, and speaking more eloquently. It’s awesome.

But man, it’s exhausting. It’s like going to the gym. You’re in flow doing a speaking exercise and then a word pops up you don’t know and you’re like aaahhhh, finnneee, and you do a rep. More than an hour a day of this and I’m wiped. But just like a great workout, that’s a great sign.

Josep’s System—as I’m now calling it—is really just foundation building. Slow and steady. Laying one brick at a time. Choosing to temporarily look foolish in order to truly get good at something.

Ultimately the lesson is this: Life evolves when we step off the track. When we pause to tie our shoes. When we finally get tired of tripping over the same damn thing—and decide it’s time to change.

Stopping will always feel counterproductive. Especially if everyone next to you is speeding ahead—They’re not interrupting the conversation to ask what that Spanish word means, why should I? That fear of falling behind, of looking foolish, is always there.

Instead of going through the short-term embarrassment, we spend so much of our lives chugging along, hoping things will change. Spoiler alert: they won’t.

That’s why I’m now applying Josep’s method towards my whole life.

In tennis, I’m learning to switch from a dismal one-handed backhand to a consistent two hander. That single adjustment has elevated my game more than years of casual practice and rallies ever did.

In art, I took a step back from drawing whole humans to learning to draw every part of the human body individually. Last class, it was the ear and mouth.

And finally, with this newsletter…many of you don’t know this but three years ago, I was sending out voice notes and doing monthly Zoom calls. 350 people had signed up but I wasn’t mentally ready for it. I needed a break badly, and so I quit. I stepped off the track. I changed my approach, my lifestyle, published the book, stepped away for a while. I’ve had to start back at zero, but now it feels like a whole different project. It feels energizing and expansive.

Stopping is not an end. Stopping is a new beginning.

In my most recent class with Josep, I realized why he’s always singing, why he’s always happy.

Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that he’s always learning.

Love,

Matt

Current Spanish read. Practicing Josep’s method—pausing, checking, and making it stick :)

PS – Comments are now on for these posts. I’d love to hear from you: What’s something you’ve been stuck on in your own life that might need a pause and reset? Or maybe you’ve had a similar learning moment? Drop a note below!