I have had a similar experience, not with Duolinguo but taking Chinese classes IRL. It's easy to write up the brain as some sort of computer, but I do think that with language acquisition "recall words from memory"[0] is _much harder_ than "do a thing you have already done" (which you get through a lot of actual practice).
This is why I really think shadowing is so important with language learning, because it trains you to actually put words next to another. Just sitting down learning vocabulary is of course better than nothing, but having set phrases where you use that vocab ends up actually giving you at least _some_ scenarios where you can use them.
And of course "recognize countdowns when they show up in anime" and "do the counting up to 10 yourself" is extremely different. It's so much easier to understand something than to say it yourself! Understanding is of course super satisfying, and a good target in itself, but self-production is pretty important in my opinion.
[0]: a fun exercise for people is to try and name 40 states, or 80 pokemon. Turns out that a lot of info is locked in our brains but is not easily accessible in a context-free environment
> having set phrases where you use that vocab ends up actually giving you at least _some_ scenarios where you can use them.
Duolingo does exactly that though. It introduces vocabulary first, then introduces complete sentences using the words and the complexity keeps ramping up from there. As I progress through the japanese course it's becoming increasingly difficult to remember all the kanji but it still surprises me that I can figure out the long sentences it throws at me, sometimes without even thinking.
> It's so much easier to understand something than to say it yourself!
I guess. I think I can confidently count to 20 in japanese though. No one's evaluating me on my pronunciation so I don't know how good it is. I like to imagine it's at least ok since japanese phonetics are close to portuguese.
This is why I really think shadowing is so important with language learning, because it trains you to actually put words next to another. Just sitting down learning vocabulary is of course better than nothing, but having set phrases where you use that vocab ends up actually giving you at least _some_ scenarios where you can use them.
And of course "recognize countdowns when they show up in anime" and "do the counting up to 10 yourself" is extremely different. It's so much easier to understand something than to say it yourself! Understanding is of course super satisfying, and a good target in itself, but self-production is pretty important in my opinion.
[0]: a fun exercise for people is to try and name 40 states, or 80 pokemon. Turns out that a lot of info is locked in our brains but is not easily accessible in a context-free environment