tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 41 of 55 19 January 2012 at 2:37am | IP Logged |
Spanish Level 4 with 844 skill points and 79 sentences translated.
Here is a review of DuoLingo by New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328476.200
That article has a link to this DuoLingo Intro YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WyzJ2 Qq9Abs
Edited by tommus on 19 January 2012 at 2:41am
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 42 of 55 25 January 2012 at 2:29am | IP Logged |
I'm still enjoying DuoLingo and learning a lot of Spanish. But I have been neglecting my German. In Spanish, I am on level 4 with 1014 skill points and 100 Internet sentences translated into English. These sentences are getting longer and more complex, with more nuances of meaning. So it is more challenging. I notice there is now more "scatter" of English translations as contributors try to produce the correct translation. This scatter may require more contributors per sentence to resolve the differences and solve the ambiguities.
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 43 of 55 31 January 2012 at 3:08am | IP Logged |
I am one third of the way through the Spanish Lessons tree structure. I don't know if that means one third through the material. For example, Present Verbs was a lot bigger lesson than the others. So the lessons may get bigger and harder. Don't know. The ones ahead are locked. I don't know if there are more advanced Spanish lessons after this one. I hope so. Otherwise, I'll just concentrate more on the DuoLingo German.
I am now at Level 5 with 1274 skill points and 115 sentences translated from the Internet. There sure are a lot of fashion, clothes, food and glitzy web pages to translate. I usually read news, history, science, etc. in Dutch, so I may be learning a lot of Spanish words I might not use a lot. At least there are a few electronic gadget pages.
The Spanish course and the web page translation together are addicting, which keeps me coming back daily. DuoLingo probably is counting on this addiction. It seems to be working.
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 44 of 55 08 February 2012 at 3:32am | IP Logged |
The Spanish lessons are getting much longer and more complex. I am still at level 5 with 1500 skill points and 133 sentences translated. Every few days, DuoLingo makes changes and improvements to the courses and the interface. With translations, it now shows the percentage match of your translation compared to all translations that were assessed as good.There is also a system to "follow" other participants. the system keeps track of how you are doing with respect to how the people you are following and who are following your progress are doing. It is supposed to be motivational but I find it a bit depressing when I get passed! A woman from Halifax, Nova Scotia requested that she be able to follow me. I was ahead of her at the time I said yes. Shortly after, she passed me. I noticed tonight that she is doing a lesson or translation every two hours. Looks like she really has the spirit and addiction of DuoLingo. We will have the Internet translated real soon if we have a lot of participants like her!
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 45 of 55 14 February 2012 at 4:30am | IP Logged |
Now 1608 skill points and 142 sentences. Duolingo made another improvement in the lessons. When you get a Spanish audio sentence to translate into Spanish or English, normally you just push on the button to repeat the audio as many times as you need. Now, after the first time, the audio slows down and carefully pronounces each syllable. Very helpful.
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ClassicalBookwo Diglot Newbie Canada classical-bookworm.b Joined 4665 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish, English*, French Studies: Latin
| Message 46 of 55 16 February 2012 at 4:01am | IP Logged |
Hi all! I'm new here and saw this discussion of Duolingo. If anyone would like to see some screen shots (hoping the Duolingo people don't mind), I posted some on my blog:
EDIT: Stupid forum won't let me post a link. Well, you'll have to go to my profile, click on the link to my blog and look for the post called Duolingo: First Impressions.
I'm still loving it and the Spanish is definitely sinking in magically. I think I may have esta/este/esto/esa/ese/eso figured out now!
Edited by ClassicalBookwo on 16 February 2012 at 4:03am
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tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
| Message 47 of 55 16 February 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged |
ClassicalBookwo wrote:
Hi all! I'm new here and saw this discussion of Duolingo.
Stupid forum won't let me post a link.
I'm still loving it and the Spanish is definitely sinking in magically. |
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I would suggest that calling this forum stupid on your second day here is not a nice way to join this extraordinarily-useful forum.
That being said, can you tell us a bit more about your DuoLingo experience? Several people here have been waiting a long time to get an invitation to join DuoLingo. When did you request to join DuoLingo and how long did it take to get an account? How far have you progressed so far in terms of skill points and sentences translated?
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ClassicalBookwo Diglot Newbie Canada classical-bookworm.b Joined 4665 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Studies: Spanish, English*, French Studies: Latin
| Message 48 of 55 16 February 2012 at 6:08am | IP Logged |
OK, I retract the "stupid," but after jumping through hoops to prove I'm not a bot in order to register and then having a link stripped out in case I'm a spammer is... inconvenient. Maybe this will work: bit.ly/zkCsME
I can't really help with regard to waiting time. I sort of jumped the queue by sending Duolingo a creative email in the style of Don Quixote. I'd say if you want to get in quickly, sing, dance, mime, use whatever talent you have in order to get noticed. On the bright side, they keep improving things so the longer you wait the more polished it will be when you get in. Not everything was working when I started.
As for progress, I've gotten just over 2700 points in 4 weeks (level 7), and 183 sentences translated. That's just for Spanish; I haven't tried the German. It's quite surprising how quickly it adds up. I don't think I'm hitting it that hard, but I do the daily practice and a few lessons every day. I already had some Spanish so I certainly had a head start. It would be slower if I were starting from scratch.
If you want to follow me there I'm ClassicBookworm.
(And yes, I'm having a little problem with my username here. The system cut off the last two letters of my username with no warning. Inconvenient.)
Edited by ClassicalBookwo on 16 February 2012 at 6:37am
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