I found Michel Thomas very effective for Spanish.
Michel Thomas gave me a very solid understanding of basic spoken French in approximately two hours, and it has stuck for decades. However, my pronunciation is atrocious (as is his.)
Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
31–40 of 252 posts
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#32I have a roughly 600 day streak in Spanish, having started with no background, and I am quite pleased with the progress given how little time I dedicate to it each day.
My only issue with Duolingo is that I wish there was somewhere to get much more formal information on the grammatical rules. Their inclusion currently is really poorly executed, haphazardly located in certain lessons as if random. I’d love if I could get specific lessons on demand for anything I am struggling with.
Also, it is really annoying how sometimes it gives you the translation after you are done and other times it just says “Great!” Or something similar, so if you are slightly unsure of something you don’t always get the actual translation to help clarify.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#33Followers of Krashen know that it's sensible input that results in language acquisition. Duolingo gamifies the frequency of sensible input. Therefore Duolingo will work if frequently and consistently used. Fluent is an outdated term. It probably takes about six months to achieve any lasting result. Illusion of progress is impossible to prove or disprove probably.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#34Wouldn't it be good if Duelingo hooked you up with native language speakers so you could try to strike up conversations in text and voice?
It's great to learn words, phrases and so on in isolation but actual conversations in a new language are where the real learning happens. You've got to be on the ball
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#35What would be your best app for learning a language?
I don't remember the name, but I've had some friends do remote teaching for foreign languages through an app, where you'd get scheduled 1 on 1 video time with a person who knows the language. I think that's an interesting approach I would look into over the self directed learning
iTalki. HelloTalk also works.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't remember the name, but I've had some friends do remote teaching for foreign languages through an app, where you'd get scheduled 1 on 1 video time with a person who knows the language. I think that's an interesting approach I would look into over the self directed learning
I used Livemocha a bit in ~2008, and it does this.
Livemocha got acquired by Rosetta Stone and was closed in '16.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#37Wouldn't it be good if Duelingo hooked you up with native language speakers so you could try to strike up conversations in text and voice? It's great to learn words, phrases and so on in isolation but actual conversations in a new language are where the real learning happens. You've got to be on the ball
HelloTalk does this (chat/voice/video, with language corrections as a first-class feature). It's aggressively monetised, but I'd still recommend it.
I've heard good things about Tandem, but haven't used it myself
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#38Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…
spelling too... like the 10th thing I care about is how to spell in a new language...
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#39As a bilingual I tend to believe unless you're living in the country trying to learn a language(using any method) is probably a waste of time.
It's helpful in learning nearby languages. I am a native English speaker, and my French can approach fluency given some immersion (it's pretty rusty right now, though). DuoLingo helped me improve transactional Spanish and Portuguese (BR) very quickly, meaning I can get through airports, grocery stores, restaurants, and read news articles. I'll need something more to have free-ranging conversations or read novels, though.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#40Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…
I skip all of the pronunciation parts. Hell, I sometimes do call center implementations that do speech to text (Amazon Connect with Amazon Lex) and it doesn’t understand my native English southern accent. What chance does DuoLingo have?
But occasionally I do use iOS’s built in Translate app and test my pronunciation by speaking Spanish and seeing if it can translate it to English.
Going the other way is about 95% effective for me.