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Do you like Duolingo? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| nathdep Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4045 days ago 11 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese | Message 1 of 12 11 June 2014 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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I've recently fallen in love with Duolingo for Italian and Brazilian Portuguese but I'm
worried that things are going at a really slow pace. That, and some of the exercises don't make any sense (for example, translating "Do you talk to your cats?" and "It's a definitive wall.") I'm at level 8 in Portuguese and 5 in Italian but I don't know what that means in terms of proficiency. How far can you get with Duolingo? Do you like it or would you recommend something else? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tomgosse Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 3993 days ago 90 posts - 143 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 12 11 June 2014 at 1:47am | IP Logged |
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I like duolingo and use it for Spanish. My only complaint is that I would not recommend
it if you are an absolute beginner. It took me a while to figure out how to use it and I wish they explained the grammar better. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4145 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 12 11 June 2014 at 2:22am | IP Logged |
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I like Duolingo, but not as a standalone resource. I think that it's good in conjunction with other, more authentic
resources. A lot of the sentences are ridiculous (The turtle drinks milk, anyone?), but I do think that Duolingo is very useful for learning basic vocab and for drilling basic sentence structure. It's also good for practicing noun genders, since you have to get them right every single time. It helps that it's a bit addictive. It's really only good at the beginning stage. By the end of the tree, they just briefly skim over complex concepts. Your question "How far can you get with Duolingo?" is very difficult to answer. Do you mean with Duolingo alone, and nothing else? Honestly, not very far. But in conjunction with other resources, then I think that it can be one brick in the road that gets you to where you want to be. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4890 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 4 of 12 11 June 2014 at 2:28am | IP Logged |
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I'm approaching level 7 in Italian, and I like it sometimes. It really helps in getting
some of the details of Italian right - proper spelling, getting the right pronouns in the right place, etc. But I definitely use it as an adjunct to Assimil, Living Language, and reading. I agree with others that it wouldn't work as a stand-alone resource. I also tried French, where I'm more advanced, and got bored and frustrated quickly. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4637 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 5 of 12 11 June 2014 at 3:38am | IP Logged |
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To me, it's just a glorified highschool/college course. If you're an absolute beginner, then yeah I suppose it'd be fine. But I wouldn't necessarily count it as a solid resource.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rebel dragon Newbie United States sevenlanguagenati Joined 3854 days ago 20 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Danish | Message 6 of 12 11 June 2014 at 5:30am | IP Logged |
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I really like it, more now than when I started using it, but it's not my only resource.
I used Memrise more at the beginning. Memrise is better if you need to memorize sheer amounts of vocabulary. Duolingo is better at helping me figure out how to construct sentences. You will eventually probably move on to other things, but it's a solid enough start. English learning French, by the way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4910 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 7 of 12 11 June 2014 at 5:02pm | IP Logged |
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I like it in fits and starts. I get into it for 2-3 weeks, get excited about my streak
getting longer, etc, then I miss a day and quit for 5 months. The problem is that when you come back, you have a lot of work to do to rebuild your deteriorated tree. The one good thing is that they clearly keep adding new content to even the lowest of levels, so it's not a complete redo. I think is is pretty good at teaching some basic vocabulary and grammar. The fact that it has odd sentences makes it amusing and memorable. But the one thing which is really valuable, that you don't get in other learning resources, is that it drills and practices your spelling. That's maybe not so important for German or Spanish, but it is pretty useful for French. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mercutio Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3844 days ago 19 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* | Message 8 of 12 11 June 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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I like it but I also have a MASSIVE issue with it. MY issue is with its strenghten skills
function, in theory this should be a good system but it has a big flaw, namely in a "session" you activate practice mode and get around 15 questions, imagine if you get 11 of those perfectly correct then "fail" the last 4, then you lose the session and instead of it throwing back at you those 4 you got wrong you have to wade through all of the ones you got correct again, I would much prefer it if every question you go correct "strengthened" a skill a little bit, currently its too much like memorisation than clever spaced repetition. IF they fixed that skill strenthening issue I think it would be a much better learning experience 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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