Do You Speak A Second Language?

Don't you need to review or something like that, won't that make your percent go up?

After my insane holiday push, which unfortunately I'll have to taper off on, I've got a few languages from 40-60% (studied them before, although one score is laughably high) with plenty of the tree left. Don't expect to fluent from this- almost put the word in scare quotes, maybe should refer to it on this thread as "the f-word," but it does seem to be a great way to tighten the screws, stabilize the base, fill in the bottom half (height-wise, not volume-wise) of the inverted pyramid of language learning. Wondering if you could link to a blog post or direct us to the discussions your are referring to.

I stand corrected in that case. It was just from browsing Duolingo's discussion boards where the topic seems to come up pretty often, nothing specific. Like I say I'm not too bothered by the fluency figure as I struggle to imagine it being particularly meaningful. That's just my personal and entirely unsubstantiated opinion though!

I am taking the figure to mean "you have satisfied x% of the requirements of the course" which is not going to be an extremely rough indicator of real life language ability.

not going to be

Mine was at around 50% after I'd completed the language tree and done a bunch of practices, but I checked just now after not touching Duolingo in a few months and it's down to 33%. So it must be based in part on the strength bars in the individual lessons, which are all pretty low for me. I doubt that it's particularly meaningful.

I'm playing around with it now and I'm reminded of an issue I had with Duolingo. Very often in the multiple choice questions, the wrong options are wrong for reasons that have nothing to do with the subject of the lesson. e.g. Conditional verbs:

Mark all correct translations
We don't know if our daughter would like this idea.
1. Nous ne savons pas si notre fille ferait cette idée.
2. Nous ne savons pas si notre fille aimerait cette idée.
3. On ne sait pas si notre pomme aimerait cette idée.

1 and 3 are incorrect, but not for reasons that require knowledge of how to conjugate conditional verbs to figure out.

Don't mind this so much.

Came to say that when using the desktop/webpage it does have explanations of the grammar that are missing in the app, both directly in the lessons and then through links to the discussion forum or elsewhere

Ah.

Android app also has a thing to click through to see comments and discussion on the particular question you just answered. This does not exist on the iPhone app, haven't noticed on web interface.

Android and webpage both keep giving you the same questions until you get them all right, not exactly so on iPhone.

Webpage doesn't have little "word magnets" to choose from, as far as I can tell, almost always you are typing.

Here is someone comparing the Duolingo levels upon finishing a tree. Notice when people post it shows all their levels: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/19989318

The level is merely a measure of the XP points you have gathered, so the amount of Duolingo practice done. Click through to your profile and you'll see your language levels and how many XP you need to reach the next.

Ah I see, thanks. I found the Duolingo pages that discuss that and various other metrics. Maybe will link.

Also, discover duoLingo and Spotify can share the audio output if one wants to "multitask."

https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/209669946-What-are-levels-
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/205933480
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204830160-How-can-I-learn-multiple-languages-at-the-same-time-
https://englishtest.duolingo.com/scores
https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204641974-How-can-I-skip-the-basics-

Second link is to "What does my Fluency Score" mean?

Anyway, feel like that even if you are at the point in a language that this app will not and cannot substantially increase your overall fluency, as measured both inside and outside the app, it can still help to sharpen some skills and to function as a pilot light to keep the flame burning whilst you are doing whatever else you are doing to improve.

I do think the web version of DL is basically essential. Most people I've suggested duolingo to and who have ended up not liking it have almost all just tried the mobile app. I've also found Memrise to be good for basic flash-card style memorization that you can do in very short bursts--now that it has audio it's even better, though it can be difficult to find the right courses. I liked Lingvist for a while though once I had run through all the words it felt a lot less useful; it has a huge audio section though and if I wasn't trying to learn Quebecois French I would use that a lot. Every once in a while I watch a French in Action video, which was the way I originally learned French in college and is nostalgically charming

Ha, that's how I learned French too, from the man himself. Before the videos were shot though.

Agree about the web interface. Have not tried to learn any language I haven't studied before yet, so the app was fine for a while, but now that I am bumping into the limits of my knowledge I am starting to seek out the extra instruction provided at the site.

There seem to be some Memrise tie-ins with Duolingo courses but haven't tried any yet. Same with Anki flash cards, which I have used in the past but not recently.

You actually took French from Pierre Capretz? I just watched one after posting and the format of the videos is really pretty great even outside a classroom.

I tried doing a Memrise course that consisted of the Duolingo vocab, but perhaps predictably the redundancy made it feel a bit pointless.

It's not wildly helpful since it's just the infinitive forms, but working my way through the "450 Most Common Verbs" felt good. I just started a conjugation one too and have been slowly working on "Intermediate French," which is a random hodgepodge of vocabulary that starts out with a bunch of religious terms for no apparent reason but was kind of refreshing compared to the usual subjects. Reminded me of how Lingvist seemed to draw its core vocabulary from crime novels resulting in my memorizing multiple synonyms for gun, money, and the police, probably none of which are used in Quebec.

He didn't teach the sections every day, but he did teach the big once-a-week class sometimes, yeah.

Yes, those videos are really good. There was a similar German one I used to see on television sometimes called Focus or Fokus or something like that. There was some other German language learning video that people had some kind of ironic appreciation of around here.

Kind of always find the midlevel vocabulary learning tedious and the related precanned lists unsatisfactory. Perhaps should learn memory palace techniques but have resisted thus far.

"I do think the web version of DL is basically essential."

agreed, the interface mobile app just feels so slow in comparison, which can make it boring to use

Yes, you can fast on the web page and it usually forces you to type and spell everything instead of just shuffling tiles.

I like both. I mostly use the phone app, but occasionally visit the site. What I really need is a vocabulary booster (other than, say, cracking open a Swedish dictionary) - I can form simple sentences now, and need to stock up a bigger supply of words to insert into them.

Also like the way on the web you can mouse over the foreign word and hear it pronounced, perhaps on your way to mouse somewhere else, without clicking on it. This may seem trivial but it still seems to add a little speed somehow.

One more thing: iPhone gamificaton is perhaps too punitive. One too many mistakes, fat fingered or otherwise, and you are forced to keep reviewing to Gain Health to go forward. It's good to review but sometimes it nice to go through a few new lessons to get them into your head first.

Just signed up for a 12-week Spanish course at a local private language school starting next week. I'm sure 6 months on Duolingo have done me a world of good, but I need to move beyond it and need some outside structure and motivation to manage that.

Interested to say how that works for you. I can tell you about my experiences with such courses but perhaps it is best to wait and see how it goes and you report back first.

Phil, there is some kind of Cambridge University Press Swedish Grammar reader that seems useful, but dang if it isn't expensive.

A lot of the universities in Glasgow offer evening language courses as well, but my partner went to this particular private school to study English when she first arrived here and had a good experience, so I'm giving it a go first. Whatever it's like, I'm sure I'll learn something if I put the effort in and if it's not up to scratch then I'll try elsewhere for the next level after three months.

Sounds like a good plan.

I get the distinct impression my English is going downhill. :-(

With the app you can study that too!

Question: what do you do when you get to the end of the tree? Just stop? Keep the tree gold for a while? Delete and start again?

I'm trying to do two lessons from the tree and two practice sessions, where it throws random stuff at you, daily. It seems to be working well enough. I can make up sentences in my head and check them with Google Translate, and they come out right more often than not.

I never finished my tree, but in the forums some people recommend starting the English course but with your own language preferences set to French

You signed up for Swedish, Phil?

Yeah.

The reverse tree, as people call it, seems to be a popular advanced option, as rob describes.

Ah thanks. I see that people also do something known as laddering.

This might be handy for Phil and others: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/19825381

That being a list of the Swedish lessons along with their word lists. Did you come across this sentence yet, Phil?

Island är en ö.

Huh. Island is a country.

No, I haven't seen that yet, but it says "Iceland is a country."

It's an island as well

I just remember this whole thing from school whether you're 'in' or 'on' somewhere, whether it's an island or a country or something. On and on and on it went, and I can't remember whether you're on or in Iceland...

Gotta say the Tips and Notes are useful if sometimes spotty. The ones for French are particularly well done.

I finished my Spanish tree on Duolingo last week. The golden owl is pretty impressive. I still have to strengthen a lot of the skills and there are a number that I don't actually have a real handle on at all, despite being able to complete them on the app (in particular the subjunctive, the multitude of past tenses, imperative, conditional), so a lot of work to keep me going on Duolingo yet.

I'm 4 weeks into my Spanish class too and it's going well - I'm way ahead of it grammar-wise, but the speaking and listening experience is useful and it's a fun couple of hours each week.

Still not made any concrete plans for a Spain visit this year yet unfortunately and our calendar is filling up. Really hoping we can get over, even if it's just for a week to visit family.

Good for you. In fact your post inspired me to finish my French tree, which I had been lingering over the tail end of, just to see the elephant owl.

Also, I read the various pages about the Fluency Shield and ultimately agree that it is mostly an annoyance.