Duolingo

[Fruitdeleloop]

AIBU to think I'll never be fluent or am I just thick as shit.

It's fair to say I struggle with retaining info. I don't know how much this is just the fact I have no brain space with the mental load of work and kids and life. I work in a role that is quite science based but despite being excellent at my job with great results, I'd be hard pushed to remember the facts/figures/research papers etc if put on the spot for example. I just cannot retain this stuff. It's like my brain filters what I need in life and sacks off the rest instantly. I'd love to be one of those super brainy remembers everything off top of their head types.

2 weeks ago I started using Duolingo for Spanish.
But It seems to me more like a remembrance test! I can match the words, guess what the sentence is with some familiarity of the words that are in front of me etc.. but without the english/spanish translated words below to prompt I don't think I could and when I'm not on the app I can barely remember anything off the top of my head except the very bare basics.

I'm spending about 15-30m per day on it. I appreciate it's early days but it's reminding me of the time I was 8 and learnt to the recorder from watching and memorizing the finger coordination.... 7 months later I was screwed at a recital as I hadn't admitted I couldn't read music and the teacher was furious!

This just isn't going to happen for me is it? Am I just stupid?

I’ve used DuoLingo for a while, as a way to keep up my french vocabulary as I am a rusty fluent in French. I’ve found it quite useful for that as what I need is just a reminder for vocabulary which I don’t use much anymore.

However I’ve tried to learn both italian and German using the app and I HATE it.

I tried Italian first as I work for an Italian company and thought it would be useful. I made next to no progress despite sticking with it religiously and often doing 30-40 minutes per day. At the time I concluded that the similarities between Italian and French Made it too blurry and confusing for me. But more recently I decided to try again with German this time. I did a few years of pre-gcse German at school so I found it good at the start, it reminded/refreshed the vocab I’d learned but I eventually got bored/annoyed with it and gave up. I found it incredibly irritating that there was no teaching at all about grammar and structure. If I get a question wrong because I’ve used the wrong article I want to know WHY, and an explanation of what the articles are and when to use which. I don’t want to just learn endless lists of words and phrases by rote. I want to be able to put together a sentence myself. After weeks the only sentences I could come up with myself were the things I still remembered from school.

TL:DR you’re not thick as shit, everyone has different learning preferences the DuoLingo app uses 1 narrow method. I am fluent in a second language so not incapable but I hate DuoLingo and got nowhere with it.

I've been doing Spanish on Duolingo for 460 days. I think it's fantastic. Be sure to click on the 'tips'. Do each level up to 5 before moving on - yes, it's repetitive. That's how you learn. But don't give up - you will progress! Use the stories for variety.

However use other sources too - there are some great teachers on YouTube. The Language Tutor explains grammar really well Marie and Cody (Why Not Spanish) are good. A bit later try Español con Juan - he is brilliant, I can understand almost everything he says.

@TheCanterburyWhales, I have an Iranian friend who says he learnt English mainly by watching Friends. It’s still his favourite show.

I started Spanish on it about 2 weeks ago. My 'do something useful' project while being furloughed. Works pretty well for me. I would also like a bit of explanation of structure as well. I'll try and find another site for that.
Duolingo seems to get you learning a language in the same way a child does. Copying, repetition, trial and error, with occasional explanations. I like it. Although I'm not sure when the phrase "My father is elegant" (Mi padre es elegante) will ever come in useful.

I struggle a bit with it - learning German. I find using a children's textbook to learn the basics first works better for me, otherwise it's more of a guessing game and I forget it straight after
I think it's good in combination with clearly set out books but not on its own, but it's great for hearing the audio and learning pronunciation

I'm enjoying it but brushing up on something I learned at school. I think it'd be much harder to learn a language from scratch on it.

I gave up on Duolingo, I found it jumps ahead too quick and doesn’t teach any grammar.

^ This. I’m trying to learn Korean, so added alphabet difficulty. There are bits which are so repetitive and then other bits where I have no idea what’s going on because it is too advanced.

Someone asked about price earlier - I started learning Italian on Duolingo two weeks ago and quickly got fed up with running out of lives so I paid £45.99 for six months. I think the options were 1/3/6/12 months - the longer you sign up for, the cheaper the price per month. Not entirely sure but seem to remember that one month was £12.49.

I got to the end of the Irish course. It was a 'refresher' to help me help my daughter with her homework I realised that I had somehow blagged my way through the whole thing and was no better at 2nd class level (8 years old) Irish at the end of it all.

* This. I’m trying to learn Korean, so added alphabet difficulty. There are bits which are so repetitive and then other bits where I have no idea what’s going on because it is too advanced.*

I am learning Japanese so had the same problem with the alphabets. Try LingoDeer I have found it much better.

Thanks Yugi. Just tried it. It is so much better!

I prefer Babbel. I do have a paid subscription though as the free one is very short.

You should try Michel Thomas’ method. He was famous for teaching Hollywood A listers to speak a foreign language
Apparently he spoke about ten languages. His story is very interesting

I've been trying to learn the NATO alphabet ( F for Foxtrot etc) for Two years. It just won't stick. It's only 26 associated words to memorise. I've got a languages degree fgs. I think my brain is peri menopausal jelly. ( am 52) I can't remember much new info. But luckily I just write everything down. Everything requiring intellectual input is so much harder, requires more concentration , takes longer and gives me an actual headache. It's like Im in permanent daze.

Agree with the poster who said Netflix is good for languages.
I once met someone who learned to speak English by watching American tv programmes . He even spoke English with an American accent

Interesting womenwotlunch, I'll google!

Prep, yes a permanent daze! I'm nowhere near menopause yet but some days I think having kids has made me stupid.

I've had a couple of students come to me after using Michel Thomas and found they knew a fair bit more about the grammar than others

There's another site, a paying one called news in slow Spanish (or other) that's a weekly podcast of actual news with grammar exercises

There's also a site called the fable cottage that has fairy stories (don't knock it until you've tried it! Lots of repetition)

For Spanish there's an old BBC series called mi vida loca which i think you can only get on you tube now. But it's good

I’m doing Danish on Duolingo and am really enjoying it but I do get a bit frustrated at the lack of explanation of grammatical rules.

It's partly because there are no rules for some parts of Danish, you just have to know.

I wonder if people's experience varies relative to whether they're using the app or a computer.

Do you take time to reflect on what you’ve learned? I’ve been doing duolingo in Spanish with DD. Like you she’s really good at guessing the right answer. But she hits the next button really quickly after each question. I’m trying to get her to slow down and really think about the question and answer after she got it right.

After the lesson I say, “Right, what did we learn?” and go over the new words and we spend another 5 - 10 minutes going over the vocabulary and sentences we just covered.

Then before the next lesson we go over it again. We only do 5 minutes of actual time on the app a day.

I’m finding it helpful to help it sink in a bit more. (I’m learning with her, she has a head start as she’s learning Spanish at school and I’ve never learned before).

You need time to build those connections in the brain. There’s no point riding ahead if you haven’t really absorbed the earlier lessons.

Hi OP,

You are not stupid and you CAN do this. Never let a past learning experience make you think that you can’t learn something now.

I’ve been using Duolingo for a couple of years now, to learn Italian. And it sounds like you’re being too hard on yourself with your expectations. First of all, it’s only been two weeks! You will be relying on the English/Spanish translation much of the time right now, believe me. Secondly, Duolingo often introduces new concepts without explaining ‘why’. There is a ‘Tips’ section on every rung of the tree (in case you haven’t seen it) which is helpful to review- definitely do that- but it doesn’t cover everything.

The thing is, there is no context around what you are learning in Duolingo. So you have Basics 1, Basics 2, Phrases, (ok and Food 1, Animals, and so on) but a lot of it is random (‘The bee is in the sugar’, anyone?).

You may find you need to ‘fill in the gaps’, so to speak. You can go on YouTube and watch a couple of vocab or grammar videos. If you don’t understand why a word ends a certain way in one context but not another, or if you need to break down a phrase, etc, - google it. There are so many articles that explain these types of things in great detail.

You may find audio resources helpful too. I like ‘Learn Italian with Paul Noble’ - he does Spanish too. If you have a music streaming account/similar, see if there are any ‘Learn Spanish’ type content available. There are also other apps available- Memrise is free.

You’ll also likely find it easier to recall things you’re really interested in (for me it was food, haha!). So say if your hobby is baking, I’d look up baking related vocab in Spanish and learn that. It’s also a real confidence boost and every little you learn will get that ball rolling and attune you to learning even more in your target language.

Remember that it takes time and repetition to get somewhere with learning a language. And deliberate practise. If you’re not getting something you’ll need to work out what it is in particular you’re struggling with and actively go out of your way to understand, as with Duolingo it’s easy to become quite passive and just get by with guesswork if you don’t stay switched on.

Also it’s normal to be able to understand more (i.e. if it’s written down) than you can say/recall yourself. So right now you might not be able to say ‘The apple is on the table’ but if you read that sentence in Spanish, you may well be able to translate it.

I really started to improve when I set aside 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes on my lunchbreak and then 10 minutes or so right before bed. 15-30 minutes a day is great, just keep going with it. Consistency is key. Then I complimented Duolingo learning with looking up vocab, concepts, grammar, listening to Italian songs (and googling individual words that sounded interesting to me), watching ‘learn Italian for kids’ videos on YouTube and so on.

Other things I’ve tried include watching movies of interest in the target language (with English subtitles of course!). Even better if you can watch something you’ve seen a billion times in English (in my case, Harry Potter). You could also try sticking pictures with Spanish words around the Kitchen, etc.

Recommend you go on YouTube for Ted Talks on ‘How To Learn A Language’ too.

Hope there are enough tips there to fire you up

You can do this!

Other things I’ve tried include watching movies of interest in the target language (with English subtitles of course!). Even better if you can watch something you’ve seen a billion times in English (in my case, Harry Potter). You could also try sticking pictures with Spanish words around the Kitchen, etc.

That reminded me - I remember a lot of my kids' DVDs had other language soundtracks available. Dora l'exploratrice was as annoying in French as she was in English.

@llamakoala To pick up the point about watching films you know well in other languages. You'll have to bear in mind the language used in the dub won't be a direct literal translation of the original dialogue. Idiomatic metaphors will be changed for one thing.

There's also the problem of getting dialogue looking like its coming out of the actors' mouths in one language when they are actually speaking another. Dialogue in the dubbed version will be adjusted to make it look like the actors are actually saying it.
"What is that?", if you mouth it in front of a mirror, looks nothing like the French equivalent, "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" Same number of syllables (ish) but totally different mouth shapes.

I first really understood this after I once watched a French film with the English dub AND the English subtitles on screen. There was English dialogue looking like it was coming out of the actors' mouths - but it wasn't the same as the words appearing on the screen which was obviously a more literal, accurate translation. The meanings were essentially the same but I had to stop after a while. It got too trippy trying to follow both simultaneously.

The Welsh on duolingo is terrible, really slangy. I don’t know if that is true for other languages on there though. I grew up speaking some Welsh and also did it in school up to GCSE, I wanted to improve my fluency but it was such terrible Welsh that I gave up.
I would like to find a better online Welsh course, if anyone has any ideas.

I tried it to learn spanish. I do feel like i learnt some basic phrases and words but not enough to fully have a conversation or to completely understand a fluent person.

I think for the basics its good but for fluency its probably best to watch loads of movies/shows in the language. I think theres also people who you can buddy with online to teach each other your language. I would also get a text book.

I've been using DuaLingo since the new year, I think you have to persevere a bit and also supplement it with using other language learning resources to help with the grammar. I used a free trial of Amazon kindle and there were some free language for beginners type books on there (I'm learning polish but I should imagine there will be similar for other language). They helped explain the grammar in basic terms which helped with the understanding on DuoLingo. YouTube is really good for listening to native speakers as I found Duo a little too computer sounding.
I knkw others have said not to, but I found getting to level one on each lesson so you can move onto the next helped broaden the words I knkw, then I'd have a go at making my own sentences and then check them with Google translate to make sure I was correct with I think helped with the not just memorizing the random phrases Duo comes up with (the orange fish needs a woman... not sure what situation I'll need to be in to use that phrase... )