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Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

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Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#141

Post by davnicwil »

scarface74 wrote: post #40
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something 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% eff…

> use iOS’s built in Translate app

Thank you so much for this tip, it is honestly astounding how well this works and I can instantly see how useful it's going to be!

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#142

Post by watwut »

ejolto wrote: post #102
remarkEon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

> I plan trips to Germany every year because you really do need immersion to get to even basic fluency. That's not necessarily true, unless consuming lots of media in the target language counts as immersion. I became fluent in English without ever traveling to an English speaking country.

Consuming a lot of media do count as immersion.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#144

Post by KaiserPro »

Ik heb nederlands geleerd van duolingo. is het de allebeste? nee, maar het is goed genoeg voor mij. voor ~£35 per jaar, het is heel goedkoop

Where does it not work as well? speaking. I have a terrible accent. Listening comprehension isn't that great either, because the text is almost always there to prompt you. this means that out in the wild, I need people to speak slower than if I had been taught in a traditional lesson.

but I would not have a second language if I had not been doing duolingo.

The new scheme was a bit shit to start with, but it gives you a much wider vocab lesson than before. For non spanish languages there are much less explanations of grammar and syntax, so you just have to learn by reinforcement, which can be frustrating.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#145

Post by 55555 »

remarkEon wrote: post #78
lake-view wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. I get your point, but with the pace of AI, there's a good chance this statement is not true in 5 years!

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

Imagine ChatGPT but it uses speech-to-text to understand your speech and then it uses text-to-speech to talk back to you. Now you’re getting infinite personalized conversation practice. If you ever don’t understand what it said, hold spacebar to see the phrase in both English and Spanish with each word mapped to its translation, or just say “que?” and it’ll explain the sentence in English and/or Spanish. This seems pretty much doable today. If the speech-to-text fails to understand you, that’s immediate pronunciation feedback. May as well make it one of those boy/girlfriend chatbots too, to encourage participation and make studying more effortless.

Pls go build this, thx.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#146

Post by watwut »

pkulak wrote: post #108
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something 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 agree. I’m trying to learn German now and I keep failing lessons because I screw up gender and conjugation stuff. I wish there was a way to tell the app that I don’t give a shit. Even if I learn all the genders perfectly, I’m still going to be fumbling over words in an American accent. A few incorrect “der”s are not going to make me unable to be understood. And I can correct that later.

Getting gender right is something any competent in person course will force you from the start. Having American accent is something to be expected and fine. Using wrong gender causes pain in listener. It really pops up great time.

Gender in gendered language matter, unfortunately. The best advice I heard is to always memorize the word with its gendered article. (assuming language has articles)

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#147

Post by watwut »

barrell wrote: post #119
dwighttk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

spelling too... like the 10th thing I care about is how to spell in a new language...

And no typos allowed or you start from zero! Because as everyone nows, real native speakers never make typos

duolingo is fairly permissive with typos

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#148

Post by Sakos »

outside1234 wrote: post #16
TooSmugToFail wrote: post #3

What would be your best app for learning a language?

Its not an app - but Dreaming Spanish has really improved my ability to learn Spanish by leaps and bounds.

I've seen quite the positive impressions. I gave it a brief try and I'm not sure it's for me. I went through a number of superbeginner videos and was just feeling more and more frustrated at how much I didn't understand. I like the idea though and I'm sure it works for other people. Maybe with some adjustments to the concept it might be more palatable to me, I don't know.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#149

Post by OJFord »

I find it good for vocabulary (the little it has), just awful for grammar and speaking practice/confidence.

Also since it's Hindi I'm learning rather than Spanish, it's great for learning the script - no better way than flashcards to memorise/remind each character really.

But it's absolutely not the only tool you should use, you at least need a book, and someone to speak to.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#150

Post by watwut »

fcatalan wrote: post #121

In my experience, Duolingo is as good, in fact better than the average class you can get. It won't get you to fluency by itself, but years of bare lessons won't either. A few years ago I got randomly interested in Danish, so I started Duolingo Danish. In a few weeks I was able to understand tweets from Danish newspapers. In 4 months I could read novels, slowly but well enough to enjoy them. Do I "know" Danish? Not re…

I had similar experience with a kid. A kid that was slowly falling behind in English got bribed to do duolingo. Grades slowly got better and English slowly became "that easy class" and eventually the kid started to be able to read mangha and watch movies in English.
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