Duolingo

[voron]

Those of you guys who are doing Turkish Duolingo, how do you like it so far?

I've recommended it to my Syrian colleague who speaks almost no Turkish and waiting for his feedback.

[OldBoring]

Guys, what's the big deal with Duolingo? Is it good to learn languages? Or to review languages that you forgot? I've never used it.

[vijayjohn]

IMO it's good for learning languages if you like learning languages by basically translating lots and lots of fairly simple sentences.

[kevin]

I tried the first few lessons yesterday just for fun, and it was okay, but I came quickly to the conclusion that I wouldn't continue. The vocabulary is just too foreign for some dabbling on the side, especially considering that I've never been particularly interested in Turkish (Perhaps too useful in Germany? Somehow I'm never interested in "useful" languages.), and I have other languages on which I already spend too little time.

[Earwig]

I added the Swedish duolingo course a little while after it was released, purely to while away a dull moment. Now I seem to be learning and remembering lots of bits of Swedish, entirely contrary to my original intentions. This isn't a language I ever had any burning interest in, and I've put no effort into it at all--merely spent an few idle minutes a day on the app.
Of course, progress is very slow this way, but I'm in no rush, and it does seem to be working.

Now Swedish is very close to English and full of very easy cognates; I've no idea if the new Turkish course will be as effective, but I shall certainly be giving it a try.

[TheStrayCat]

Those of you guys who are doing Turkish Duolingo, how do you like it so far?

I've recommended it to my Syrian colleague who speaks almost no Turkish and waiting for his feedback.

It's really helpful for me. I didn't expect it to be absolutely perfect, and in fact it has typical Duolingo drawbacks like refusing to accept a correct sentence, but I didn't pay them anything and this is probably one of the best ways of practising I could get for free. I have no right to complain.

At first I was confused by the speaker's intonation, but now I'm getting used to it. Actually I haven't even had enough exposure to spoken Turkish to say how natural it sounds.

I reached level 8 today. Who else is doing it with me, guys?

[Earwig]

At first I was confused by the speaker's intonation, but now I'm getting used to it. Actually I haven't even had enough exposure to spoken Turkish to say how natural it sounds.

I thought the Turkish speaker's 'R's, particularly at the end of words, sound more like 'sh'. I'm still not quite sure what the sound is.
I shall have to dig out my 'Teach Your Turkish', which has been lying unread since I bought it on a whim ages ago...

I reached level 8 today. Who else is doing it with me, guys?

Only on level 3 so far! It takes time for lots of cognateless words to sink in. ('Pasta', for goodness sake!)

[vijayjohn]

I haven't been doing anything on Duolingo for quite a while now. Currently, it's one of the various things I'd like to do, but there are various other things I want to do, too.

[johnklepac]

I love it! It took me a bit over a month to finish the Turkish tree at first, and I'm slowly painting it gold again while adding vocabulary from various texts I see and whatever I think to look up. I've got over 1,000 words in my flashcard deck and most everything on Duolingo's quite easy to me now, so I must be doing something right!

Since my job doesn't start until Friday (I'm painting houses full-time) and my father doesn't want me to be video gaming a whole lot, I've recently gotten back into my Irish on the site as well.

[Hoogstwaarschijnlijk]

Those of you guys who are doing Turkish Duolingo, how do you like it so far?

I've recommended it to my Syrian colleague who speaks almost no Turkish and waiting for his feedback.

It's really helpful for me. I didn't expect it to be absolutely perfect, and in fact it has typical Duolingo drawbacks like refusing to accept a correct sentence, but I didn't pay them anything and this is probably one of the best ways of practising I could get for free. I have no right to complain.

At first I was confused by the speaker's intonation, but now I'm getting used to it. Actually I haven't even had enough exposure to spoken Turkish to say how natural it sounds.

I reached level 8 today. Who else is doing it with me, guys?

I am! What's your nickname om Duolingo, I'd like to add you, especially since I'm at level 8 too now

At first I did for months the English lessons for Turkish speakers and I'm really glad that I can finally do it the good way round. The only thing is that I'm now now that motivated to keep everything gold because I just want to move on and start to learn new things in stead of the grammar I know by heart (most mistakes I make are like: 'oh yeah I just mistyped/misread that, I could have known that). Now I only hope they will have Dutch - Turkish one day which would be even more perfect...

[Jugoslavia123]

I don't know what's so good about this whole ''duolingo''. Learning by translation?

So you are to translate : "hi, I am a student" to a foreign language, and you got "WRONG", when you use some different word, with the same meaning, like writing "hi", instead of "hello" in your foreign language. One sentence can be translated many different ways. You cannot just say that there is only one ''true'' translation.

Also, it must be really boring. There are so many more fun ways to learn a language, like following a course on a website or a book, watching video lectures etc.

Moreover they don't even teach you grammar.

[vijayjohn]

So you are to translate : "hi, I am a student" to a foreign language, and you got "WRONG", when you use some different word, with the same meaning, like writing "hi", instead of "hello" in your foreign language. One sentence can be translated many different ways. You cannot just say that there is only one ''true'' translation.

They try to take this into account by accepting multiple translations, and you can add a comment to say that a certain translation should be accepted, but it does affect your score or whatever, and it can take them a while to finally accept your proposed translation (if it's accepted at all).

Also, it must be really boring. There are so many more fun ways to learn a language, like following a course on a website or a book, watching video lectures etc.

Moreover they don't even teach you grammar.

These are my main concerns with it, too.

[Meera]

Moreover they don't even teach you grammar.

I think they do this on purpose because who aren't generally into languages are usually afraid of grammar. If you ever look at language learning stuff at the bookstore on the back it usually says something like "no endless grammar drills!"

[Car]

Does anyone know how you can improve this new fluency rating once you have completed a course?

[TheStrayCat]

So you are to translate : "hi, I am a student" to a foreign language, and you got "WRONG", when you use some different word, with the same meaning, like writing "hi", instead of "hello" in your foreign language. One sentence can be translated many different ways. You cannot just say that there is only one ''true'' translation.

They try to take this into account by accepting multiple translations, and you can add a comment to say that a certain translation should be accepted, but it does affect your score or whatever, and it can take them a while to finally accept your proposed translation (if it's accepted at all).

It is. I've already received about ten e-mail notifications that my answer is now accepted as correct. And incorrect answers don't really affect your level or score, you'll just have to answer correctly a question or two more to complete the lesson.

[vijayjohn]

So you are to translate : "hi, I am a student" to a foreign language, and you got "WRONG", when you use some different word, with the same meaning, like writing "hi", instead of "hello" in your foreign language. One sentence can be translated many different ways. You cannot just say that there is only one ''true'' translation.

They try to take this into account by accepting multiple translations, and you can add a comment to say that a certain translation should be accepted, but it does affect your score or whatever, and it can take them a while to finally accept your proposed translation (if it's accepted at all).

It is.

Well, not if it's wrong.

I've already received about ten e-mail notifications that my answer is now accepted as correct.

So have I, but that was long after I stopped actually doing anything with Duolingo.

And incorrect answers don't really affect your level or score, you'll just have to answer correctly a question or two more to complete the lesson.

But the problem is that sometimes they have a whole bunch of questions where it's impossible to guess what they're looking for because they're looking for a very specific answer, and something slightly different may be correct but just happens to not be what they were looking for. If you don't remember enough of the specific answers they were looking for, you can flunk out of one of their tests. This has happened to me before. Maybe by now it's changed for the better, but certainly when I tried using it, I had that problem.

[Tenebrarum]

Signed up for the German course today on my phone and the placement test placed me in Level 8.

The app is neat on Android.

I think it's coolaid. More engaging than a few other teach-yourself apps at least. Like Fabulo.

Still mucking around to see what it has to offer.

[TheStrayCat]

But the problem is that sometimes they have a whole bunch of questions where it's impossible to guess what they're looking for because they're looking for a very specific answer, and something slightly different may be correct but just happens to not be what they were looking for. If you don't remember enough of the specific answers they were looking for, you can flunk out of one of their tests. This has happened to me before. Maybe by now it's changed for the better, but certainly when I tried using it, I had that problem.

They have changed their scoring system for the better (in my opinion). Earlier, you would just fail a test if you made three or four mistakes. Now your goal is to score 100%. A correct answer gives you ~5%, a wrong one deducts about the same, but the score never goes below 0. So you can keep trying, making mistakes and suggesting new possible answers until you've learned enough stuff to get 100%.

[TeneReef]

At least it's free of charge (unlike Mango for those outside of the US and Canada ).

[Meera]

At least it's free of charge (unlike Mango for those outside of the US and Canada ).

Mango is only free if your library has it.