Using Duolingo? (the horror!)

I have german and french speaking friends who are kind, but will correct me where I go wrong. So my assessment on input really comes from watching videos and reading books and newspapers in French German and how well I understand them. I test output through writing on Busuu and a few chat groups along with conversations with friends. I’ve been trying to expand those areas of french and german.

I actually just got a chance to meet a group of folks from Tokyo and speak with them in Japanese. My speaking and comprehension was better than I expected. So, I consider that a win. I’ve been able to catch more and more kanji in the places where I encounter it although I can only get through some of the basic stories on NHK.

You have a good point, and it might be good to add that different people require different environments to succeed. My classroom experiences were disasters, and I bet they still would be. Learning on my own, I’ve been able to learn more faster and do more overall without the classroom.

I do miss having someone to ask questions of who knows the reasons why certain rules apply and where they apply. I tried italki, but I couldn’t get it to fit in my schedule on a regular basis.

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Apologies for sounding like sour grapes before!

Sounds like a more practical approach than doing mock/placement tests, honestly. I think if you’re reasonably fluent in German and/or French, any self-testing is probably not worth it anymore :slight_smile: . Also, overall this looks like a really good study regime!

I think an actual classroom setting doesn’t really benefit anyone who’s not a 50%, Gaussian-fitting “regular” student. From personal experience it’s always been a struggle. What I meant was not a classroom setting, but using a more formalized approach, for instance with an online course or a textbook which follows a specific curriculum. It is of course as inflexible, but is more likely to give you a good feel for the basics and you can pace it and supplement with external resources as you wish.

If it’s Japanese, you can of course ask questions in any of the other threads and someone is very likely to help you :smiley: .

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I completed Duolingo’s Japanese course last year and now I am doing some freshly added stuff.
To be honest, I liked it the beginning, maybe up to two thirds of the course and then I started hating it.
Without any further aid (in my case Wanikani, Genki and Tao Kim) Japanese Duolingo is useless after a point. It gives absolutely no hint on grammar and since commenting was terminated last year, fellow learners can not give you hints neither.
On the other hand it tries to teach you a lot of totally useless words related to social sciences, feelings, philosophy and other stuff like that.
Sometimes I felt that bored and evil humanities students devised the stupid sentences just to torture the learners.
In comparison with other languages (e.g. German or French) Japanese course is a mess.

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I went back to Duolingo recently to pick up Mandarin and so far am okay with it. Obviously, pronunciation is not going to be spot on and for that one has to listen to Chinese speakers, but to get that grind of hanzi going and learn how pin’yin translates to phonetics, it’s probably good enough. Speaking exercises are as always hit or miss - correct answers marked wrong, incorrect answers marked correct, etc.

The German course got a bit of a facelift and now there are reading comprehension exercises with short text snippets, but some of the sentences are not something any native German speaker would say. They sound very unnatural.

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你好。我也学习汉文。

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你好。but I am not that advanced yet. Just started section 2 yesterday. Stuff like 我叫iinchou. :sweat_smile:

But it does stay in my head for now.


I’m using the app a lot more and doing quite well with German. Also tried the Japanese course again. Had to report every second sentence because it’s either grammatically wrong or the translation is bad.

I’m double-posting since I think it’s worth it. After grinding Duolingo for a while I decided to give Memrise a try and I have to say it’s night and day better than Duolingo. The addition of actual native speakers and a proper explanation of each word/phrase makes a world of a difference.

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I found Duolingo really rubbish for Japanese. However, it’s not bad for some other languages. I found it great for Danish.

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Duolingo is pretty repetitive, but useful for learning kanji stroke order. But I’m only working on WaniKani level 5 now, so what do I know?

i found it way too repetitive! it was really boring ._.