Hello! I’ve recently picked up learning Spanish because I work with a ton of dudes from Mexico. How much can I reasonably expect to learn from this app? I looked at their “curriculum” and it seems pretty short compared to what I think I’ll need. What are some resources beyond “talk to your coworkers”, that will put me on the right track?
Duolingo is utterly useless! The only thing it is good for is pretending you are learning a language and sucjing you into a cycle of logging into the app and pretending you are learning something of merit. It doesn’t teach you any practical knowledge about the language or how to use it it just throws vocab at you with no explanation of how to use it properly.
I feel pretty strongly about this because I absolutely wasted over a year and a half logging in daily, doing their shitty exercises and thinking I was learning things, when the fact of the matter is all you will learn is some random phrases and words but with no real basis on how to use them and the language properly.
I too am also learning Spanish as my gf is Spanish and she told me multiple times as well that what Duolingo was teaching me was flat out wrong, so not only is it a shit teacher it was teaching me incorrect things that I then had to try and unlearn.
It is fucking trash!
A better app if you want that style of learning is Busuu, that actually explains concepts properly and tries to teach you how to use the language correctly. In one month on there I felt like I’d learnt more useful information that in all the time I wasted on Duolingo.
Even better than that (and mentioned by another commenter) is language transfer. This is all free on SoundCloud to listen to and will teach you how to use your own language as a benefit and how to work out the Spanish from your existing knowledge. It doesn’t try to force you to memorise inane and pointless vocabulary it tries to teach methods and ways to actually learn the language for practical real world use. Listening to this was like an aha moment for me as lots of different things suddenly started to make more sense.
In short, fuck Duolingo, if you want to pretend you are learning a language then feel free to waste your time on there but if you actually want to use it with the people you work with then use something else.
What kinds of concepts were you forced to relearn?
I’m afraid I can’t remember any examples as I haven’t used duo for well over a year now and have moved on with my learning with the 2 things I listed. On a few occasions though when I thought that I had learnt something new that I could use I would try and use it and my Spanish gf would flat out say what I had been taught was straight in correct.
Less relevant to you is that it teaches south american Spanish which to me is a bit disingenuous as the “course” is called Spanish and has the Spanish flag I expect to be taught Spanish spanish but instead they teach words like computadora that just would not be used un spain. Conversely busuu will teach you words from all different places but also tell you which are which rather than no explanation what so ever. This was more an annoyance to me in addition to other glaring issues that I can’t fully hold against it but will due to spite in terms of my wasted time.
I would recommend Language Transfer’s Spanish course. You’ll learn way more than with Duolingo and it will stick better. Just follow the instructions and pause the recording to formulate your sentences or you won’t get anything out of it.
How does it meaningfully differ?
It’s audio based, for one. The format is the instructor introduces concepts in a logical order such that they build upon each other. As new concepts are added you are instructed to make sentences with them. You pause the recording, formulate your sentence, and then unpause to check if you’re right. There’s a lot more thinking involved than picking things from a pre-made list. It’s much more helpful for conversation since you have to do everything in your head.
Is there a video or reading component to it at all? I’ve always had more success as a visual learner. If not what would you recommend as a supplement that includes that aspect?
I would look for a textbook (I keep seeing Madrigal’s Magic Key to Spanish mentioned as a great one) and some simple story books/graded readers. Once you know enough to express yourself a bit, start a journal. News in Slow Spanish seems good for keeping up on current events in easy Spanish but they have a subscription model. Telesur for native level stuff when you feel you’re ready.
Weirdly enough, I’ve been wanting Telesur to put out a podcast for awhile, and I’m just finding out about it now. Thanks for that, I suppose. I’ll definitely check that book out as well.
Part of my end goal is to take up freelance translation as an side-income source, which is why I’m stressing written works as well as audio.
I think it used to be a solid way to get some basic vocab, but as it exists now it has become a pointless slow grind. Their business model seems to be based around making you log into Duolingo every day, forever, so they can get ad revenue, while punishing you for making any mistake so eventually youll get frustrated and subscribe to the paid version.
I’ve noticed that too. They used to have little message boards after every question for discussion, but they took that away at some point. It was one of the best features that Duolingo had, and it feels kind of aimless without it. I might see about signing up for a local class, since those seem to be available where I live.
Yeah I genuinely appreciated it as a beginner’s vocab and grammar learner in like 2012. It was great and I blew through so many courses learning so many words/basics of the linguistics of langauges. They even had discussion boards about basically every word where explanations of grammar and usage we there, as well as questions from others. Communism would revive old Duolingo and expand it. Capitalism strangled my beloved owl and replaced it with an apparition formed from the dollars it’s body decayed into.
I would not even use Duolingo for basics. I really want to give this advice. Please find the .mp3 files for Latin American Spanish from Pimsleur. The entire course will take 30 minutes per day for about 5 months. If you need an app to supplement, I’d listen to whoever pointed out Busuu.
If you need listening practice, use Dreaming Spanish videos on Youtube, starting from Superbeginner and Beginner.
If you need to find new words, find and/or translate entire sentences or phrases instead of singular words.
laastly, in some Spanish-speaking areas they use the verb “coger”. I don’t really use it, never really heard it, and I just wouldn’t advise using it at all.
you can call a jacket a chamarra, don’t listen to Spanish classes that tell you “chaqueta”
This method may be too slow for you. If so, use Pimsleur’s lessons and find a good textbook as a supplement. Go online to find Anki and use that website to grind the new vocabulary you learn (again, using the words within the context of real sentences and real phrases - not Google Translate, but those found from native speakers).
I don’t mean to knock the method of Duolingo, but the method I am talking about will help if you are ever interested in achieving fluency or conversational level in any future languages, including Spanish
duolingo is a good supplement, it can help gamify your learning and something to do 5 minutes a day of easily and get some vocab in. nothing more, nothing less.
I find duolingo extremely effective for recognising and recalling vocabulary. If you complete a course you learn around 2000 words on context with sample sentences.
Vocabulary is tedious and maybe 1/4 of what goes into learning a language, so I’ll go against the common opinion and say it’s quite solid. But it does nothing for the other 3/4, you’ll never be able to think in Spanish, produce sentences, or understand when you’re spoken to with duolingo alone.
It does help with vocabulary and I’ve used it successfully for French. But it also wastes a lot of time on needlessly specific grammar, I think at the start of your learning process it’s not relevant to learn the difference between a/au Brazil or le/la voiture. If you can put yourself to it, flash cards are way more time efficient. Then once you know at least some words (100-200) Clozemaster is a good addition to learn words in context.
But for me the most effective has always been emersion, make yourself a little uncomfortable and try to read easy books or watch simpler series in your target language. Then once in a while learn some grammar or vocabulary, in my experience this is way easier to pick up once you have a basic feel for the language using emersion.
I don’t think these kinds of apps are very useful. at best, they’re a supplemental learning method. like, you learn from a textbook primarily and then use duolingo when you’re taking public transit or something, because it’s better than nothing.
As long as you can ask the people around you how to say x thing in Spanish you’ll be fine.
Duolingo is a service as a software substitute owned by Google. It’s designed in the same way Tinder is: to drip feed you content so that you buy their subscription model and log in each and every day.
Even if Duolingo somehow cracked the linguistic code and was the best language teaching software ever created, the fact that it uses a predatory business model of non-ownership and shallow gamification disqualifies it.
In other words, you should be able to take control of your language learning. Use textbooks, native speakers, movies, songs, personal writing etc. If duolingo went belly up and google shut it down, what would one be able to do? Invest in a personal anki deck or journal and find some textbooks online.
Since you have prior experience, I’d recommend “Gramática básica del estudiante de español” (2005) published by difusion. Its entirely in spanish but it has the best visual and textual explanations of introductory spanish grammar (though it is the spanish spoken in spain dialect called castellano) in my opinion.
Since you have prior experience, I’d recommend “Gramática básica del estudiante de español” (2005) published by difusion. Its entirely in spanish but it has the best visual and textual explanations of introductory spanish grammar (though it is the spanish spoken in spain dialect called castellano) in my opinion.
I’ll check this out when I’m a bit more fluent. I can string together some really basic sentences at the moment, and that’s about it.
Much more useful, and with the same basic “gamification” strategies are just Anki flashcards. Even the Anki flashcards for the Duolingo will be more effective than the duolingo, because Duolingo is materially incentivized to throw all sorts of difficulties to progression in front of you.
My method, generally, for language learning is having a grammar book and flashcards (with sound if you can, otherwise listening will go to shit) for vocab and doing both. The flashcards take me 40 minutes a day for intense study (writing my answers first to practice spelling/writing other scripts) and 20 minutes if I just speak out loud. Same amount of time as Duolingo and about 10x as effective
