Duolingo is a good tool for stuff that flashcards are good for - learning letters/alphabets/symbols, learning new words, basic sentence structure/grammar, etc. It’s one good tool for language learning, but it won’t do the whole job by itself. Certainly not garbage, as long as you use the tool correctly.
Yeah that’s pretty much where I’m at. I joined my buddy in his wife’s Japanese club, but I know absolutely nothing. Trying Duolingo primarily to learn the alphabets. It’s not perfect, but I can recognize them all and read Hiragana, so it’s not completely worthless!
Didn’t help me learn how to wite at ALL though. Too little practice, it’s definitely a tool (for some languages as least) that’s meant to be used with other learning methods
I was just looking this up and it sounds like a teaching technique more than an alternative. Is there some website or app that uses that technique? It sounds great to me.
You don’t need any app, although you could probably find dozens by searching ‘comprehensible input’ on YouTube. Comprehensible Input is achieved by watching and reading the content you enjoy in your target language and rely on context to understand and acquire it . I am a polyglot, and after mastering French, I transitioned to English around 2017. Now, enough people have told me that my English is decently good, so since January of this year, I am now learning Spanish by watching lets plays of indie games and reading tech news articles.
I will probably start watching cartoons too. Something like the early seasons of spongbob square pants would be great because each episode is self-contained and humorous.
Here are some tips:
Learn the bare minimum vocabulary needed to have a general understanding of what’s being said. Words such as conjunctions (and, but, etc.), prepositions (under, above, in, out, etc.), adverbs (fast, often, very, etc.), interrogatives (how, when, who, etc.), important adjectives (colors, tall, short, etc.), and the 100 most used verbs (be, have, want, do,say, go etc.). The goal is to later acquire new words from context.
At first, you will not be able to understand new words from context alone most of the time , so you’ll need to check the dictionary very often. Over time, you’ll rely on context more and more.
Depending on the target language, you don’t need to focus much on grammar, but don’t omit it completely. It’s easier to just learn why the sentence is the way it is, than to slowly memorize the correct structure.
Mastering a language is a long process. Depending on how far or close your target language is to your native one, it’ll probably take you from 6 months to 2 years to acquire enough of the language where you’ll unlock the full potential of passive learning and you’ll slowly master your target language by just consuming the media of said language.
If you really want to learn a language ditch this garbage and try comprehensible Input.
Duolingo is a good tool for stuff that flashcards are good for - learning letters/alphabets/symbols, learning new words, basic sentence structure/grammar, etc. It’s one good tool for language learning, but it won’t do the whole job by itself. Certainly not garbage, as long as you use the tool correctly.
Yeah that’s pretty much where I’m at. I joined my buddy in his wife’s Japanese club, but I know absolutely nothing. Trying Duolingo primarily to learn the alphabets. It’s not perfect, but I can recognize them all and read Hiragana, so it’s not completely worthless!
Didn’t help me learn how to wite at ALL though. Too little practice, it’s definitely a tool (for some languages as least) that’s meant to be used with other learning methods
I was just looking this up and it sounds like a teaching technique more than an alternative. Is there some website or app that uses that technique? It sounds great to me.
I already answered a comment above explaining everything I know.
Ok. How do I do that?
You don’t need any app, although you could probably find dozens by searching ‘comprehensible input’ on YouTube. Comprehensible Input is achieved by watching and reading the content you enjoy in your target language and rely on context to understand and acquire it . I am a polyglot, and after mastering French, I transitioned to English around 2017. Now, enough people have told me that my English is decently good, so since January of this year, I am now learning Spanish by watching lets plays of indie games and reading tech news articles.
I will probably start watching cartoons too. Something like the early seasons of spongbob square pants would be great because each episode is self-contained and humorous.
Here are some tips:
Learn the bare minimum vocabulary needed to have a general understanding of what’s being said. Words such as conjunctions (and, but, etc.), prepositions (under, above, in, out, etc.), adverbs (fast, often, very, etc.), interrogatives (how, when, who, etc.), important adjectives (colors, tall, short, etc.), and the 100 most used verbs (be, have, want, do,say, go etc.). The goal is to later acquire new words from context.
At first, you will not be able to understand new words from context alone most of the time , so you’ll need to check the dictionary very often. Over time, you’ll rely on context more and more.
Depending on the target language, you don’t need to focus much on grammar, but don’t omit it completely. It’s easier to just learn why the sentence is the way it is, than to slowly memorize the correct structure.
Mastering a language is a long process. Depending on how far or close your target language is to your native one, it’ll probably take you from 6 months to 2 years to acquire enough of the language where you’ll unlock the full potential of passive learning and you’ll slowly master your target language by just consuming the media of said language.
I’ll definitely have to try some of those! I’m using Duolingo to learn Japanese but definitely want to try some additional learning methods too
turn on subtitles and watch some foreign flicks