Learning Czech: Visible Progress After Week 6

I’ve reached my first major milestone: as of yesterday, I’ve completed Section 1 of the Duolingo Czech course! Cue the fireworks! I have to say, seeing the finished first section gives me a huge sense of satisfaction, which is sadly dimmed by the remaining two sections. They have 72 lessons between them, compared to 14 in Section 1. Yikes!

Regardless of this mountain that I have yet to climb, I’m proud that I’ve managed to keep up my Czech learning for six weeks, despite struggling at times with the workload from university and from my job. Although it’s unlikely that I’ll finish the entire Duolingo course by the time my trip comes around, I’m going to try and complete as much as I can so that I can communicate in Czech, and rely as little as possible on English.

A couple of areas are still a thorn in my side: verbs, pronunciation and, of course, cases. My plan at the moment is to solidify these areas a little bit more before moving on to Section 2. As much as I’m eager to race through the course and absorb as much information as I can, I have to remind myself that I need to learn to walk before I can run. As the famous proverb says: slow and steady wins the race.