Duolingo progress report

This is pretty amazing, I think.

I now have a 2-year streak on Duolingo; plus I worked my way through the entire Lingvist French sequence.

I’m also 2000 words into a Memrise French vocabulary list and have done a few of the regular French lessons.

I can now read this tweet efficiently, without looking anything up:

Ok, j'ai fini de lire les papiers décrivant le type de modèles qui ont servi à faire les simulations dont tout le monde parle depuis hier, je vais commencer à écrire un article qui explique comment ils marchent et présente les résultats de ces simulations ainsi que leurs limites.

— Philippe Lemoine (@phl43) March 17, 2020

For a while now, I’ve been studying both French and Spanish every day, so we’ll see how that goes. (Spanish is the language I studied when I was young — don’t want to “lose” it while I’m studying French…)

Nearly all of my progress comes from language apps. I’ve done a bit of reading: two graphic novels and some Twitter posts.

I’ve also, at times, delved into grammar explanations, primarily on French Today and Lawless French.

But basically I owe my progress to Duolingo & Memrise, both of which use “forced-choice” information-integration learning.

Fluent in short sentences first?

After 389 days of Duolingo (and counting) and 11 months of Lingvist (I finished the app last Thursday, doing Lingivst Spanish now), I think I’ve become fluent in reading short declarative sentences in French nonfiction. 

I can read this !

Hi everyone – long time, no see – it’s so frustrating not to have more time to write (!)

I’m putting this post up on the fly. 

How hard is it to learn English, part 2

Doug points out that how hard it is for an adolescent or adult to learn English depends on what language the learner speaks now.

He’s right, and the original op ed made the same point.

The Foreign Service Institute actually has a ranking of languages in terms of difficulty for English speakers, along with an estimate of how long it takes to reach S-3/R-3 proficiency (which I assume means Speaking and Reading proficiency measured on a scale of 0 to 5).

[pause…]

Interesting.

Looking at the chart now (I’ve seen only abbreviated versions in the past), I notice that they seem to consider French quite a bit more difficult than Spanish, at least in terms of the time they estimate it takes to go from 0 to S-3/R-3. That’s certainly the way it seems to me. 

24 weeks for Spanish, 30 for French.

600 to 750 “class hours” in all.

Greetings from Estonia

I’ve been using Lingvist as well as Duolingo to study French, and have just this week subscribed to Memrise as well.

I’m using Duolingo to study Spanish at the same time. Possibly a bad idea, but there it is.

Spanish is the language I’ve studied longest, and I’ve always wanted to finally be able to understand Spanish-speaking people, so … although I’ll be spending 6 weeks in Paris, I didn’t want to ‘give up’ my Spanish. So I’m doing one Duolingo “Experience” in Spanish each day along with 6 Experiences in French. Plus 100 French cards on Lingvist.

Oddly, the only serious interference between French and Spanish I’ve experienced so far involves the word for ice cream. What’s odd about that is the fact that I don’t remember how to say “ice cream” in either language, so why should not remembering how to say “ice cream” in Spanish interfere with remembering how to say “ice cream” in French ? 

Whenever I’m asked to supply the French word for ice cream, I recall instead that the Spanish word for ice cream begins with an ‘h,’ which makes me think the French word starts with an ‘h,’ too.

After that my mind becomes a complete blank. 

Ice cream in Spanish: helado
Ice cream in French: glacé

Why helado-starts-with-an-h should obstruct glacé-starts-with-a-g, I don’t know.

~

Sante !

I have no idea whether fanning out among multiple apps is wise. I was thinking that using different apps might give me a slightly different take on the language, or perhaps different points of entry to each word, which might make the words easier to remember.

I don’t know that I’m getting different perspectives on French, and it’s impossible to tell whether multiple apps speed up my recall of the same words.

But I’m definitely getting a whole new perspective on Estonia, the home country of Lingvist’s creator.

Lingvist takes a more sober view of French than do either Duolingo or Memrise. I mean that literally: Memrise teaches you how to say “Bottoms up” in the first 10 words.

Which is kind of funny when you think about it, since nobody says “Bottoms up” in English. 

Sante !

Lingvist’s sobriety is a lot of fun after all the green owls and health bars and space cadets and whatnots of the other two. Nevertheless, I frequently find Lingvist amusing.

For instance, according to Lingvist, I know 1,422 French words (I think that’s 1,422 words, not word families, but I’m not sure) which would allow me to read 77% of the words of any text.

To read fluently, you need to know 98% of the words of a text, so I’m months away from my reading goal. Yet Lingvist thinks it’s important for me, at this stage of the game, to comprehend the following:

Ce qui représente entre six et huit réalisations par an

Which represents between six to eight realisations per year

I have trouble envisioning myself ever wishing to say anything of this nature in French.

All the more so given that I don’t know what a realisation is in English.

Not happy, Duolingo edition

From a week ago, the review I wrote of the Duolingo app after that morning’s “Health” crash:

À plus tard !

I’ve entered a slightly obsessive state …. writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting … I’m stuck in a loop.

I don’t like loops.

Anyway, long story short, I haven’t read comments.

Tomorrow!

Duolingo is very fun

Doug S recommended trying Duolingo, and I love it.

I don’t know whether it’s the best or the most efficient way to learn a foreign language. John McWhorter likes Glossika, which I assume means he likes Glossika better than Duolingo. It’s possible Duolingo involves too much translating from English to French and back again. I don’t know.

I wish I knew the literature on L2 learning.

In any event, I feel as if I’ve finally found an incontrovertible, absolute argument for the Wonders of Education Technology, a subject on which I have heretofore cast a No Vote: using a language app, you can hear what the words you’re learning sound like.

Plus the supposed convenience of education apps actually is convenient where Duolingo is concerned, and in a way that matters. I’ve never managed to stick with a MOOC, or watch more than one lecture from The Great Courses (which actually are great, as far as I can tell), but I’ve found it easy to return to Duolingo 25 days in a row. Duolingo is so compelling that it was one of my few daily habits that did not crash during the blackout.

Speaking of which, C. just talked to his co-teacher in Mt. Vernon … her electricity is off, and her brother, who works for Con Ed, says it will be days before it’s back on.

Days.

She has two young children.

Meanwhile, the lights just flickered off, then flickered back on.

The suspense is killing me.

And see:
The Westchester bomb cyclone and the achievement gap 

Lost in translation

Alright, I’ve just watched the Orientation video for the famed French in Action class. I  am left with two thoughts:

1. 1. 1. Being fatigué (or fatiguée, in my case) is a lot worse than being tired. (see 15:23)
      2. Also, and related: it may not be possible for a person born and raised in central Illinois to be fatiguée, at least not in public.

Which brings me to my first question: how does one say “Great!” in French?

Or: Good!

As in:

Pascaline: Hi, Catherine, how are you?

Catherine: Great!

Or, alternatively:

Pascaline: Hi, Catherine, how are you?

Catherine: Good!

(Is it rude to say Great! (or Good!) in French? With the exclamation mark?)

That’s my second question.

Mysteries of the apps

Meanwhile, on Doug S’s recommendation, I’ve also devoted myself to Duolingo & Tinycards, which seem terrific and well worth my time.

But I’ve hit a snag:

• I’m stuck on the difference between bonne soirée and bonsoir
• I can’t figure out the meaning of Duolingo’s color coding, or its skill charts, or the rules that govern when I get to move on to learning words for food; nor do I know what an ‘xp’ goal is or what “60/20” means in relation to my xp goal, or whether it’s good or bad that I have “6 hours left.” Six hours left till what, exactly?

The plan seems to be for me to carry on learning (or “strengthening“?) Lessons 1, 2, 3, and 4 until a time to be determined, and not by me.

Maybe you have to know when to say bonne soirée before they let you learn the French word for bread.

Is there a Missing Manual for Duolingo?

Doug S on Duolingo and YouTube

This is helpful:

FWIW, I’ve been working on my German again for some months now and have been pretty happy with Duolingo. It has the virtue of being free and has been reported to me by people who have used both as being about as good as Rosetta Stone.

Which is all very well for the usual sort of classroom language learning (with all its many limitations). For actual conversational language, I’ve found YouTube videos on subjects that I’m already interested in and uploaded by native speakers of the language I’m working on to be quite valuable. The cadences, slang, and vocabulary are similar to those I’ve run into on the streets in a way that more formal products (like newscasts and translated scholarly works) are not.

I’ve always wondered about Duolingo & haven’t quite had the wherewithal to form an opinion.

And I’d never thought of using YouTube videos!

Brilliant!