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izmeinaIzzie is a persistent serpent.
Today I have clocked up a big juicy streak on Duolingo of 500 days.
But sneaky creatures have gone and moved the goal posts.
Part of the reason I kept the streak going for so long were the incentives. For a 10 day streak you would get 1 lingot (sort of like the Duolingo currency but there is not much to spend it on) for 20 days you got 2, 200 days you got 20 etc. So it was nice to see all those freebies accumulating simply for the sake of it. I guess it appeals to the inner hoarding goblin
But several months ago I noticed that the pennies were no longer popping into the pot at the rate of 40 something every 10 days. Still not sure if they moved the goal posts because those rewards are still written on the desktop site
By now of course, I keep going because it has become a habit and very likely the most productive way to spend time online.
I cannot help but think of how difficult it used to be learn foreign languages. Books were easily come by but always stupid boring grammar stuff. It all came across like some giant and usually futile code breaking exercise
Any sort of spoken material was extremely expensive. The gold standard as promoted extensively in Reader's Digest adverts was Linguaphone. That was available in local libraries but there was always such a long queue.
The good thing about Duolingo where you read and hear words at the same times is that you are much less likely to get into bad pronunciation habits. But more importantly, people underestimate how much of language learning goes on at a subliminal or subconscious level.
Native speakers of a language pick it up by listening and imitation. No need for grammar classes so why should it be any different for learners of a second language?
I remember from living in Germany that I got far more of a sense for the language by hearing it all the time than any amount of grammar lessons. Things either sound right or they don't and I guess it is a pattern recognition thing that would be very hard to explain rationally.
It's good to have the grammar in there for explanations but it should never be the star of the show
I prefer to guess or work out the patterns and rules for myself and then go check to see if I got them right.
The only problem is with Duolingo is the whole idea of always using translation to teach the new language. It makes it so much harder to think in the target language but is probably the only practical solution for people who don't have the luxury of full immersion.
I had intended to start learning Indonesian from scratch for the new year but I am much further behind with Spanish than I expected to be. I did actually finish it in February but then an new expanded version double the size and with a whole lot more levels in each section came out. So all that bright shining gold disappeared.
In September last year I started doing Russian. I had tried to learn it the hard way so many moons ago. The Duolingo way of doing it is so much easier. That is one of the reasons that I would like to learn Indonesian. Not just because they are Australia's nearest neighbour but because it uses the Latin alphabet but is not an Indo-European language. So that would be a real test of the effectiveness of Duolingo and a chance to peek at the world view of a completely different culture
I will most definitely not be imitating the Cat with the crazy ambition of doing ALL the courses. A seriously Sisyphean task that one especially as new languages keep coming out all the time or they expand old ones.
Today I have clocked up a big juicy streak on Duolingo of 500 days.
But sneaky creatures have gone and moved the goal posts.
Part of the reason I kept the streak going for so long were the incentives. For a 10 day streak you would get 1 lingot (sort of like the Duolingo currency but there is not much to spend it on) for 20 days you got 2, 200 days you got 20 etc. So it was nice to see all those freebies accumulating simply for the sake of it. I guess it appeals to the inner hoarding goblin
But several months ago I noticed that the pennies were no longer popping into the pot at the rate of 40 something every 10 days. Still not sure if they moved the goal posts because those rewards are still written on the desktop site
By now of course, I keep going because it has become a habit and very likely the most productive way to spend time online.
I cannot help but think of how difficult it used to be learn foreign languages. Books were easily come by but always stupid boring grammar stuff. It all came across like some giant and usually futile code breaking exercise
Any sort of spoken material was extremely expensive. The gold standard as promoted extensively in Reader's Digest adverts was Linguaphone. That was available in local libraries but there was always such a long queue.
The good thing about Duolingo where you read and hear words at the same times is that you are much less likely to get into bad pronunciation habits. But more importantly, people underestimate how much of language learning goes on at a subliminal or subconscious level.
Native speakers of a language pick it up by listening and imitation. No need for grammar classes so why should it be any different for learners of a second language?
I remember from living in Germany that I got far more of a sense for the language by hearing it all the time than any amount of grammar lessons. Things either sound right or they don't and I guess it is a pattern recognition thing that would be very hard to explain rationally.
It's good to have the grammar in there for explanations but it should never be the star of the show
I prefer to guess or work out the patterns and rules for myself and then go check to see if I got them right.
The only problem is with Duolingo is the whole idea of always using translation to teach the new language. It makes it so much harder to think in the target language but is probably the only practical solution for people who don't have the luxury of full immersion.
I had intended to start learning Indonesian from scratch for the new year but I am much further behind with Spanish than I expected to be. I did actually finish it in February but then an new expanded version double the size and with a whole lot more levels in each section came out. So all that bright shining gold disappeared.
In September last year I started doing Russian. I had tried to learn it the hard way so many moons ago. The Duolingo way of doing it is so much easier. That is one of the reasons that I would like to learn Indonesian. Not just because they are Australia's nearest neighbour but because it uses the Latin alphabet but is not an Indo-European language. So that would be a real test of the effectiveness of Duolingo and a chance to peek at the world view of a completely different culture
I will most definitely not be imitating the Cat with the crazy ambition of doing ALL the courses. A seriously Sisyphean task that one especially as new languages keep coming out all the time or they expand old ones.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-09 08:56 am (UTC)Frankly, most of the grammar goes over my head. It's good as an intermediate step, when you already understand the patterns, and then read the rule and realize, "oh, so THAT'S WHY it works like that". Same with programming languages - I'd rather see a few examples and adopt them for my needs than start with a formal description. It's kind of embarrassing (I feel inferior to those whose minds work in the opposite way), but heck, the result is all that matters...
I completed my Swedish golden tree, now will be starting Spanish :)
no subject
Date: 2018-10-12 01:49 pm (UTC)Don't feel inferior by being a freak. After all the tree is judged by the quality of its fruit. I think it takes far more skill to be able to derive abstract rules from a pile of data than to be simply given the rules and applying them in cookie cutter fashion.
As you have often mentioned, there are some very strange sentences out there in Duolingo land. I often come across folks complaining that they would never use such sentences in the real world. But that's the whole point. It's easier to see the grammatical patterns when the sentences are crazy and it also makes them much more memorable that way.
I must go slink over and check your latest Duolingo tweets. Normally I only go to the home page or to a bunch of favorite lists. I very rarely visit one Twitter handle at a time
Good luck with the Spanish. You will be probably be surprised at just how many words you will already almost know since you are also a fluent speaker of English