Can't wait for next year to make the same mistakes again! ππππ―
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2024
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Does anyone pay for this? I'm getting deep enough into French now that I just last a few seconds before running out of hearts. At this rate I will be fluent by the year 3000
If your goal is to have something to pull out on the bus and learn about another language Duolingo isn't bad.
It's pretty bad for fluency though.
I recommend a method called comprehensible input. Basically, all you do is watch, listen, and read in French - totally in French, no translations whatsoever. That sounds intimidating, but the beginner stages they really talk at you like you're a baby almost. They talk with their hands a lot and use drawings. That's the most important part, because in the beginning you won't be able to understand any French or hardly any. But by making it so simple you can basically understand even though you don't know the words. After a hundred or so hours of this, you can move on to slightly less easy content. And so on and so on until you can understand just regular media in French. At that point, your learning will really take off, because you can watch things that you're actually interested in and that will capture your attention more.
You generally won't do any explicit grammar or vocabulary practice. That's on purpose, the arguments of comprehensible input is that language isn't learned, it's acquired. You didn't learn English by rote memorization, you listened a lot. If you can hear a few words and make the connection to the meaning by watching, and then you hear that word dozens or hundreds of times more - you will have a better understanding of that word than a simple translation flashcard could ever give you. Because words don't have just one meeting they're complex and change in different situations. But the best part is through this method you won't even realize that you're learning these words. Same goes with grammar, with this method things just kind of sound right. You can use the correct grammar, but you might not necessarily be able to explain why. Just like native speakers. That's how I've been learning Spanish.
I've personally listened, or watched over a thousand hours of things in Spanish in a bit over a year. And at this point most media is almost as easy to watch as English for me. I also read the full Harry Potter series in Spanish. (It was rough at first, but after I got used to the writing style a lot of the times I'd forget it was in Spanish in the more exciting sections) I need to practice speaking more, I can definitely do it and be understood but it lacks pretty significantly behind my understanding but that is really just a question of how much practice I can get. But once you've banked 1k, 1.5k hours the rate at which your speaking will improve is way faster than the process of learning so far.
Check out this this playlist of videos that really explains things in more depth. It has English subtitles you'll have to turn on. (Audio is Spanish) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf
I've tried to learn French, german, and even Spanish before but until this try when I discovered this method, I didn't really get anywhere. At this point I'm almost comfortable saying that I'm bilingual. And it really doesn't take that much effort just make it a routine, and once you can get into more advanced and interesting videos just watch things that you're interested in. When you really get good, you can just watch the TV shows and movies that you already like to watch, but put on the French dub. It's that easy. I'm not doing anything differently now than I was before I knew Spanish but I'm learning every day because I just do the things I normally did but in spanish!
For French I don't think there's anything quite as central, large, or organized as Dreaming Spanish - but there are many smaller French channels trying to build up and plenty of reddit threads with compiled resources for learning French through CI.
Even with premium you will not learn a language with Duolingo even if you spend an hour on it daily, but its a great getaway drug to really start learning one.
I just got another app. In my case Duolingo sucked trying to teach me a languagee.
It's not like duolingo was trying to teach you.
"You made a mistake? The best I can do I underline half of the sentence, but no guarantees on that. Why was that wrong? What? Do you expect me to explain that to you? Lol."
And I had a premium subscription. I switched to Babbel, it's like another world. Duolingo is underwhelming compared to alternatives.
Back when they started, they had a forum where people explained grammar etc which was very helpful. They closed the forum, gods know why.
Duolingo sucks so much, I won't even recommend the paid version. It teaches you nothing, just trial and error over and over. You can probably watch YouTube in French for a year and will pick up the language faster than trying to do it with Duo.
I read that they'd introduced a subscription tier above Duolingo Super, although I'd never seen it on the web version. Nonetheless, people say that the app explains mistakes in this tier, or at least adds more context. If that's true, it all makes perfect sense: people wouldn't pay if the same information was available for free.
which one?
The human one
I went with Innovative Languages, in my case chineseclass101.com (they have one domain for each language, instead of the usual "courses" but it doesn't matter, except if you want to learn multiple languages at once, then you'd pay double)
But just look up comparisons between different providers, maybe try their free or cancelable trials. The most important thing is, I think, having lots of somewhat "natural" dialoge with increasingly more and difficult vocabulary and you NEED those lessons where someone explains why words or grammar is used in a certain way, which Duolingo completely lacks. Sure, you can get it right by context and a lot of repetitions but this will take many more times than "immersing" yourself WITH some sort of guidance.
If you got the basics down and are at an A2-ish level, I would start watching and listening to a lot in your target language (Netflix, bilibili, podcasts), at this point you don't really need more grammar lessons, just some refreshers, which you get from context, and soaking up vocabulary.
You can gain hearts back with "Practice to gain hearts". You're not moving forward with that but repeat old lessons. Paying is definitely not worth it for me.
Yes, but I'm cancelling in favor of the revanced version. I didn't use the premium features. The stats in the year end wrap-up indicate I make on average two mistakes a day. Maybe I should be pushing harder, but I don't spend that much time on it, only 7 minutes a day. And I'm still in the top 3% of XP earners somehow?
You can actually get apps with all the premium features already enabled from Mobilism.