Today I completed the 90 Days with Drops Challenge! I'm really proud of this because, as I often say, setting any meaningful time aside for study is a task in itself for me. Finishing the challenge at all is something I am really proud of, but the results!!! Let me back up and start at the beginning.
Drops is a language learning app that uses repetition and picture association to help you learn vocabulary in your language. The app is really easy to use and the design is clean and pleasing to the eye. It has premium services available for purchase, which allow you to study for as long as you wish, study as many languages as you wish, and utilize the "Dojo", which is a place where an algorithm helps to target words you have struggled with at an optimal interval for getting them learned. I don't have the premium service so I have only ever tried the dojo, and it was great practice.
At the end of 2019 Drops issued a challenge for the start of 2020. Can you study with Drops every day for 90 days? I registered for the challenge pretty much immediately because I was feeling a little lost and wandering on my language journey. I decided to commit to Norwegian for the challenge because I would be able to couple the Drops lessons more easily with other apps and lesson sources. When I began I think I had 50 or so words in my word bank with Drops. As of today I have 580.
Frankly I am super impressed that I was able to add some 530 words to my Norwegian vocabulary in just three months. More shocking to me is that I am recalling the words and meanings when I hear them. This tells me that (At least for me) Drops is amazingly effective at increasing vocabulary.
The crazy thing is that I could have learned more. On average I was only able to study with Drops for 5 minutes every day. Without premium services you can study for 5-6 minutes (depending on if you have saved your bonus time) every 10 hours. So if I had been able to do two study sessions a day imagine how many more words I'd have gone through!
I am a huge fan of Drops, but it's definitely not the only app you should use. My Norwegian vocabulary increased by leaps and bounds with Drops, but how to put those words into cohesive sentences is only touched on with Drops, mostly in lesson series that focus on travel phrases; and I don't think the folks at Drops claim to be or seek to be anything more than an amazing app to help boost your vocabulary. However using Drops in concert with other apps like Duolingo, Babble, Memrise, and others will (I feel) increase your learning speed and give you an amazing learning suite for your target language. (Drops has a huge variety of languages to choose from, including some obscure ones.)
I think the big lesson here for me is that it doesn't really take much effort to increase your target language. I am a pretty busy guy, (Though less so with this bloody virus epidemic going on). I have two jobs, a wife and daughter, other hobbies, other obligations, and not a lot of free time at all. I think a lot of us live in a similar fashion. But in just three months at 5 minutes a day I increased my Norwegian vocabulary by a factor of 10!
You can do it too. I know you can.
I believe in you.
If you want to try Drops, you can find it in your friendly app store, or on your browser at https://languagedrops.com/
I highly recommend that you do!