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I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole audio bo

I really appreciate the sentiment here but why not just point him to duolingo English for French speakers? As a foreign language nerd, I feel the whole audio book read along thing is more of an advanced level learning tool, or perhaps something you would do when there are no normal course materials in the target language.

dublinben 10y ago
It sounds like they might not have reliable internet access. In this case, resources that can be freely downloaded make more sense.
88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
I have failed beginner Duolingo exercises in a language in which I'm fluent, due to it quibbling over something that truly could be translated in several different ways.
- empath75 10y ago
  Leave comments, they're pretty good about correcting it.
- noxToken 10y ago
  I'm no linguist, but is it truly something ambiguous or are you being a stickler? I've seen some of the comments on some of those exercises, and there are plenty of indignant sticklers mucking about. It's the same on CodeCademy with some of their exercises. "Well shouldn't it really be like this?!" No. The accepted answer works fine. Don't over-engineer a simple solution.
  - 88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
    I can't remember the specific example, but it was a scenario where the source language was ambiguous but the target required more specificity. It was like "give me some bread" in one language and then when I supplied "give me a piece of bread" it told me it should have been "give me a slice of bread". While I could see where it was coming from, this would be incredibly confusing for a beginner, who wouldn't even know to report this as a problem - they might conclude that "piece of bread" was just incorrect.
throwanem 10y ago
> The mother told me she was very eager to learn English so that she could find her first job. So, not a lot of money, and, with two sons to support, plenty of higher priorities for its use than $50 or better a month for broadband Internet access. (Given the nature of the modern web, dialup is more or less equivalent to nothing at all; mobile Internet is faster, much easier to obtain, and probably cheaper than any local dialup provider you can even still find in 2016.)
- severine 10y ago
  When I've had to use my mobile as an access point for my laptop, there's been a huge difference between Linux and Windows, due to Windows using a lot of bandwidth in the background for updates and "stuff".
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
    You can flag the WiFi hotspot as a metered connection and it should suppress all the "stuff"

dublinben 10y ago

It sounds like they might not have reliable internet access. In this case, resources that can be freely downloaded make more sense.

88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago

I have failed beginner Duolingo exercises in a language in which I'm fluent, due to it quibbling over something that truly could be translated in several different ways.

empath75 10y ago
Leave comments, they're pretty good about correcting it.
noxToken 10y ago
I'm no linguist, but is it truly something ambiguous or are you being a stickler? I've seen some of the comments on some of those exercises, and there are plenty of indignant sticklers mucking about. It's the same on CodeCademy with some of their exercises. "Well shouldn't it really be like this?!" No. The accepted answer works fine. Don't over-engineer a simple solution.
- 88e282102ae2e5b 10y ago
  I can't remember the specific example, but it was a scenario where the source language was ambiguous but the target required more specificity. It was like "give me some bread" in one language and then when I supplied "give me a piece of bread" it told me it should have been "give me a slice of bread". While I could see where it was coming from, this would be incredibly confusing for a beginner, who wouldn't even know to report this as a problem - they might conclude that "piece of bread" was just incorrect.

throwanem 10y ago

> The mother told me she was very eager to learn English so that she could find her first job. So, not a lot of money, and, with two sons to support, plenty of higher priorities for its use than $50 or better a month for broadband Internet access. (Given the nature of the modern web, dialup is more or less equivalent to nothing at all; mobile Internet is faster, much easier to obtain, and probably cheaper than any local dialup provider you can even still find in 2016.)

severine 10y ago
When I've had to use my mobile as an access point for my laptop, there's been a huge difference between Linux and Windows, due to Windows using a lot of bandwidth in the background for updates and "stuff".
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  You can flag the WiFi hotspot as a metered connection and it should suppress all the "stuff"