Best way to learn a language is to watch tv and movies.
Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
41–50 of 252 posts
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#42Something 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...
Exactly. Wasn't sure if I was fully conveying my meaning, but yes - spelling can be learned along the way and is a real barrier in these apps.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#43Just before the pandemic I had a trip to Mexico City planned and spent a couple months learning Spanish, and I like many others took 3 years of Spanish in high school, but that was over 10 years ago
I went on the trip and while it helped a little, in conversation it was practically useless outside of the very basics.
I dropped Duolingo and took an intensive 3 month course of Spanish with a minimum courseload minimum 2-3 hours a day because there was nothing else to do. I changed all media I consume to Spanish (music, news, shows, books, etc) I learned more in those 3 months than all of my high school classes and any amount of Duolingo could have helped me.
Now it's 3 years later and I have spent a cumulative 1.5 years of time as a digital nomad in Spanish speaking countries and most consider my Spanish to not necessarily be native fluent, but conversationally fluent in that I can understand jokes, ask for whatever I need, etc.
I'd personally only recommend Duolingo for maybe vocabulary, but if you really want to learn you need to immerse and actually talk with people frequently, as in basically daily.
You need to make those stupid mistakes that native speakers may giggle at and then correct you.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#44Recently I encountered a tourist who didn't understand anything I said, but said he's from Korea. Recalling that I have been studying Korean on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, then finally exclaimed, "annyeonghaseyo!" (hello), then blurted in English, "sorry, I don't speak Korean" Later I encountered a fellow who spoke English. He told me he's from Germany. Recalling that I h…
I did Duo Korean for a while with my SO. We got stuck on a section that started introducing a lot of proper names for people - the grammar around it was really confusing.
After a few weeks of struggling, we discovered the website had PAGES of grammar notes for the section we were on. It was impossible without them and the way it was introduced even on the website made progress feel very slow compared to the pacing up to that point.
There was zero indication of the extra notes in the app and eventually googling the for tips on the duo section led us to a bunch of people complaining about it and linking to the notes.
When the pacing is good though duo is fun and easy to do consistently. I'm sure it is not super effective after a certain point but I could definitely see myself navigating Seoul with just the lessons there. The hangul character lessons seemed well done.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#45Something 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…
Maybe the future is AI. If ChatGPT is conversational in several languages it could work as the teacher and it can also look past these mispronunciations and misspellings.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#46Something 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've had the best success with Pimsleur, which is almost completely audio-based, and just rotates through vocabulary and situations at increasingly lengthy intervals. Somehow the constant back and forth talking to the tape just works better for me than looking at something in writing. As a result, I can't write anything in French and have no clue how most things are spelled, but I've been told my pronunciation is pretty good, and definitely not American-sounding. To me, being able to get by speaking while traveling is my main purpose in learning a language so I'm not taking it as seriously or studying as long as someone who wants full fluency. But for a really rapid 2- or 3-week launch point into a language you don't speak at all, Pimsleur is really impressive.
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#47What would be your best app for learning a language?
I download old Pimsleur mp3s from TPB and listen to them when travelling. It's super repetitive, but I find it really useful to learn some quick basic conservation.
If you can listen to them with a partner, it's even more efficient, because you can practice pronunciation together. It's been two years since we listened to Japanese bits (trip was cancelled), but we still joke about the words we remember.
(I also use Duolingo, but you have to very consciously make an effort to learn. And I'm mostly just doing it for fun and exposure to languages)
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#48No, you can’t learn a language that way. It’s good for some supplementary practice, but don’t take it too seriously:
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#49I 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.)
The French and the English, the neighbors who cannot pronounce a word of another’s language…
Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?
#50Not by itself, no. No methods can. Trully learning anything is an immersive, active, and consistent process. The app is only a scaffold, that can simulate this to some extent and only if you let it. On top of that, you have to start listening to contents in spanish. Try to repeat a few sentences that you've heard in a movie. You have to read books/articles, sometimes outloud to train the muscles involved in your mouth. Eventually, you want to graduate to having conversations. Each step challenges you and forces you to adapt. That's learning. When the app nudges you (through tips) to pronounce the words and sentences that you see, instead of (passively) just filling blank spaces, that's not meaningless. You'll get as much from it as you're willing to take.