Duolingo is an iOS and Android app that teaches Spanish, French, German, Portuguese & Italian. Teaching a variety of vocabulary, verbs and grammar rules it has a learning tree you must progress through with each skill it teaches having anywhere from 1-10 lessons to be completed.
Within each lesson you are introduced to new words and rules in a variety of methods such as:
1. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english by filling in the blanks (close passage)
2. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english by chosing the correct words from a number of possible options shown.
3. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english without any assistance.
4. being shown an english sentence and having to translate it into Spanish.
5. hearing a sentence in Spanish and having to write it in Spanish.
6. being shown a Spanish sentence and having to speak it into your phone in Spanish.
7. possibly one or more other methods I can't remember.
For each lesson you have 3 hearts which are taken away each time you make an error so you must pass a lesson without making too many errors. When you pass a lesson you get 10 points and 1 bonus for each heart you retain. When you hit a certain benchmark in points you are given a higher level rating. For those with basic knowledge already you have the option of doing a quiz to unlock more advanced levels and skip the basic stuff. For those without any knowledge there is sometimes the opportunity to click on some of the English or Spanish words you are asked to translate and you will be shown the translation which helps when you can't recall one of the words, sometimes there is not this option. The app is very light on explanations of rules and is instead based upon context which is the best way to learn according to some of blogs of multiple language speakers (polyglots) that I have read. It is an example of what they call gamified learning, and is very addictive, but the important question is, does it work? Well here is my initial thoughts based on 2-3 weeks of use (note, English is my native language and thanks to high school language courses not only being terrible, but also sucking the language passion out of me I've never learned any other):
After 15 days of around 1 hour daily investment I have got around 1400 points, 720 words and am on level 8. Looking at all the skills I've done approximately half, however this doesn't mean I'm half way through as the later skills have a lot more lessons per skill compared to the earlier ones, and also the lessons are becoming harder. I have not counted up the total number of lessons, but based on my points I'd estimate I've done around 120, and would make a rough guess that to finish all the skills I'll need to do about 350 in total. My focus is to double my daily investment and try to finish all the skills in 3-4 weeks.
So far I feel pretty happy with my progress, when I see a Spanish speaking person comment on Facebook or YouTube (for example a comment on a fan page for a musician, or on a viral video) I can understand probably 35% of the words in an average sentence. In more formal or technical writing (eg a Spanish language newspaper) this number is probably more like 25% so I'm very much lost there. This is because a comment is usually informal and not very deep whereas a newspaper is obviously going to use 'bigger and scarier' words. In neither case can I call myself fluent in reading but it is exciting to start recognising words, patterns etc...
Of those 720 words, not all have stuck in my head as quite often I'll come across a written word, or try to write a word I've learned and can't recall it. Some of the words you learn early on are key to a lot of sentences and thus come across regularly in the later lessons. These ones cement themselves in your long term memory. Others are not as common and thus some of them fade from your short term memory. That said there is a function in Duolingo to review words you have learned but as I am planning on focusing on just doing new skills for another 2 weeks I haven't done any review yet.
I mentioned that later skills involve more lessons, and that these lessons are harder. Early on progress was easy, but as I'm beginning to hit skills that require me to pass lessons on pronouns, different verb tenses and verb grammar rules I find that using the app alone it is impossible to keep anywhere near the same pace as when you start. For me, I find the only way to keep up the pace is to read some online tutorials on the subject matter beforehand and make a little cheat sheet to refer to as you do the lessons. When I was first doing a skill on personal pronouns (me, te, le, les, nos, os, las, los) I found that as the app is based on contextual learning I would often end up guessing the answers and mostly making errors. I bogged down for 2 days on this simple skill. I found that once I took 10 minutes to look up the meaning of each of these terms and scribbled down a cheat sheet of when to use them I passed the 5 lessons of that skill in about 20 minutes.
To know a language you must be able to read, write, speak and understand what you hear. Duolingo targets your skills in all of these areas but primarily I find it is best for gaining skills in reading & writing. As far as speaking and listening goes, it is not so effective. Despite having lessons including requirements for you to speak into the microphone and listen to what comes out of the speaker I'll definitely need to use another method to gain skills here. I find that when I speak into the microphone often it will mark me as correct even with horrible pronunciation (ignoring accents, failing to 'roll' the r's, failing to speak 'j' as a 'h' sound) and when I listen the voice is somewhat computerised and muffled so it does not transfer over to understanding what is spoken by people with real accents.
So in conclusion to answer the question I asked earlier, does it work, I'd have to say yes it does. It works very well for reading and writing, so well that I'm going to double down and put in twice the amount of time in it. I think that in 2-3 months anyone who puts in 1-2 hours daily, could finish an entire Duolingo language course and be reading pretty damn well in their desired language. I'm going to try and prove that in the next month or two and will make updates to my progress here. The only caveat is that it is of minimal use to learn speaking and listening, so unless an RVFer is planning on trying game in Spanish by using a notepad to communicate to a girl (notepad game???) then another method will be required to be used concurrently for these skills. Definitely if anyone has suggestions for listening and speaking let me know :thumb up:
Within each lesson you are introduced to new words and rules in a variety of methods such as:
1. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english by filling in the blanks (close passage)
2. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english by chosing the correct words from a number of possible options shown.
3. being shown a sentence in Spanish (or whatever language you are learning) and having to translate it into english without any assistance.
4. being shown an english sentence and having to translate it into Spanish.
5. hearing a sentence in Spanish and having to write it in Spanish.
6. being shown a Spanish sentence and having to speak it into your phone in Spanish.
7. possibly one or more other methods I can't remember.
For each lesson you have 3 hearts which are taken away each time you make an error so you must pass a lesson without making too many errors. When you pass a lesson you get 10 points and 1 bonus for each heart you retain. When you hit a certain benchmark in points you are given a higher level rating. For those with basic knowledge already you have the option of doing a quiz to unlock more advanced levels and skip the basic stuff. For those without any knowledge there is sometimes the opportunity to click on some of the English or Spanish words you are asked to translate and you will be shown the translation which helps when you can't recall one of the words, sometimes there is not this option. The app is very light on explanations of rules and is instead based upon context which is the best way to learn according to some of blogs of multiple language speakers (polyglots) that I have read. It is an example of what they call gamified learning, and is very addictive, but the important question is, does it work? Well here is my initial thoughts based on 2-3 weeks of use (note, English is my native language and thanks to high school language courses not only being terrible, but also sucking the language passion out of me I've never learned any other):
After 15 days of around 1 hour daily investment I have got around 1400 points, 720 words and am on level 8. Looking at all the skills I've done approximately half, however this doesn't mean I'm half way through as the later skills have a lot more lessons per skill compared to the earlier ones, and also the lessons are becoming harder. I have not counted up the total number of lessons, but based on my points I'd estimate I've done around 120, and would make a rough guess that to finish all the skills I'll need to do about 350 in total. My focus is to double my daily investment and try to finish all the skills in 3-4 weeks.
So far I feel pretty happy with my progress, when I see a Spanish speaking person comment on Facebook or YouTube (for example a comment on a fan page for a musician, or on a viral video) I can understand probably 35% of the words in an average sentence. In more formal or technical writing (eg a Spanish language newspaper) this number is probably more like 25% so I'm very much lost there. This is because a comment is usually informal and not very deep whereas a newspaper is obviously going to use 'bigger and scarier' words. In neither case can I call myself fluent in reading but it is exciting to start recognising words, patterns etc...
Of those 720 words, not all have stuck in my head as quite often I'll come across a written word, or try to write a word I've learned and can't recall it. Some of the words you learn early on are key to a lot of sentences and thus come across regularly in the later lessons. These ones cement themselves in your long term memory. Others are not as common and thus some of them fade from your short term memory. That said there is a function in Duolingo to review words you have learned but as I am planning on focusing on just doing new skills for another 2 weeks I haven't done any review yet.
I mentioned that later skills involve more lessons, and that these lessons are harder. Early on progress was easy, but as I'm beginning to hit skills that require me to pass lessons on pronouns, different verb tenses and verb grammar rules I find that using the app alone it is impossible to keep anywhere near the same pace as when you start. For me, I find the only way to keep up the pace is to read some online tutorials on the subject matter beforehand and make a little cheat sheet to refer to as you do the lessons. When I was first doing a skill on personal pronouns (me, te, le, les, nos, os, las, los) I found that as the app is based on contextual learning I would often end up guessing the answers and mostly making errors. I bogged down for 2 days on this simple skill. I found that once I took 10 minutes to look up the meaning of each of these terms and scribbled down a cheat sheet of when to use them I passed the 5 lessons of that skill in about 20 minutes.
To know a language you must be able to read, write, speak and understand what you hear. Duolingo targets your skills in all of these areas but primarily I find it is best for gaining skills in reading & writing. As far as speaking and listening goes, it is not so effective. Despite having lessons including requirements for you to speak into the microphone and listen to what comes out of the speaker I'll definitely need to use another method to gain skills here. I find that when I speak into the microphone often it will mark me as correct even with horrible pronunciation (ignoring accents, failing to 'roll' the r's, failing to speak 'j' as a 'h' sound) and when I listen the voice is somewhat computerised and muffled so it does not transfer over to understanding what is spoken by people with real accents.
So in conclusion to answer the question I asked earlier, does it work, I'd have to say yes it does. It works very well for reading and writing, so well that I'm going to double down and put in twice the amount of time in it. I think that in 2-3 months anyone who puts in 1-2 hours daily, could finish an entire Duolingo language course and be reading pretty damn well in their desired language. I'm going to try and prove that in the next month or two and will make updates to my progress here. The only caveat is that it is of minimal use to learn speaking and listening, so unless an RVFer is planning on trying game in Spanish by using a notepad to communicate to a girl (notepad game???) then another method will be required to be used concurrently for these skills. Definitely if anyone has suggestions for listening and speaking let me know :thumb up: