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I agree with that. I banged my head on Duolingo and Memrise for ages before I got a tutor, and things fell in to place within weeks. Out of disgust for the sol

I agree with that. I banged my head on Duolingo and Memrise for ages before I got a tutor, and things fell in to place within weeks. Out of disgust for the solutions that existed, I went so far as to start working on my own Memrise style app which understands enough German grammar to generate English/German sentence pairs, so you can practice sentences with nouns/verbs/adjectives swapped around. So it shows you the first sentence and you translate: I lay the pen on a table. Ich lege den Stift auf einen Tisch The pens lay on the table. Die Stifte lagen auf dem Tisch. Or it shows you a present tense and you make it past: Ich lese ein Buch. Ich habe ein Buch gelesen. It was really effective at hammering in the edge cases of grammar (you'd practice maybe 500 sentences an hour). Though I got kicked out of Germany due to visa trouble and life took a different direction, and haven't touched it since!

gammateam 8y ago
For me I was content that I could parse what other people were saying. I wanted to know the concepts and how people think, my own ability to synthesize sentences would have been a side effect.
- reitzensteinm 8y ago
  Sounds like you were further along than I was!
bayesian_horse 8y ago
It's not that easy to get kicked out of Germany... Duolingo is but a tool among many. For one thing it tends to not force you to repeat enough, and for another the grammatical explanations are not that elaborate and easily ignored. But for basic drilling it's great and I would prefer it over most other tools. After a point, of course, other things like reading, listening and writing become more important and efficient.
- reitzensteinm 8y ago
  The visa office made a typo in my email address when setting the appointment, and when I didn't show up, they sent me another email asking if I wanted to reschedule, and when I didn't reply to that, they closed my case. As I was under a bridging visa that meant I was now there illegally. When I contacted them to find out what the hold up was, they told me what happened and that I was now there illegally and needed to leave immediately, so I did. After the mistake was found out the visa office were apologetic and offered to give me a visa again, and the criminal case against me for overstaying was dropped. But it was such a disruption to my life I no longer have interest.
  - madez 8y ago
    Interesting story. To avoid that to happen, I'd recommend to get a lawyer and to contest the authorities decision. You could have worked that out if you had looked into it. Sure, just letting it go is suboptimal, but in cases like this one things should still be able to be fixed if the mistake was on the authorities side.
    - reitzensteinm 8y ago
      For me it was a wake up call for how stupid I was being entrusting my welfare to a badly designed bureaucracy. All I'd be doing by fighting for the right to stay would be setting myself up for another messy situation that impacted my livelihood down the road. Until I dealt with the German government and professionals that deal with the German government (taxes, visa etc), I had no idea how lucky I have it as an Australian.
      - madez 8y ago
        I know other people from other countries in Germany. They use a similiar language as you do. Are the rules really that bad, or is it that they are unintuitive?
        reitzensteinm 8y ago
        I would estimate as a freelancer that the paperwork and accounting involved was five times more difficult than in New Zealand where I was also a foreigner, growing from an annoyance to a substantial (and expensive) burden. That alone is enough that I would caution foreigners against moving to Germany to start a business or be self employed. A lot of the stories I formed my opinion on were second hand, issues my friends were dealing with; such as the Kafkaesque situation of registering for residency in a city, but not being able to rent without residency paperwork, and not being able to get the paperwork without a fixed address. In Australia, it's just not a thing at all. If the Government tried to make us register with the city we're living in, we'd tell them to fuck off. Albeit in less polite language than that. In the eight years I lived in New Zealand (as an Australian) I interacted with the government once a year to file my taxes, filled out two census forms and had a ten minute appointment to convert my Australian drivers license to one from New Zealand. It's not just that the interactions were easier, there just weren't any.

gammateam 8y ago

For me I was content that I could parse what other people were saying. I wanted to know the concepts and how people think, my own ability to synthesize sentences would have been a side effect.

reitzensteinm 8y ago
Sounds like you were further along than I was!

bayesian_horse 8y ago

It's not that easy to get kicked out of Germany... Duolingo is but a tool among many. For one thing it tends to not force you to repeat enough, and for another the grammatical explanations are not that elaborate and easily ignored. But for basic drilling it's great and I would prefer it over most other tools. After a point, of course, other things like reading, listening and writing become more important and efficient.

reitzensteinm 8y ago
The visa office made a typo in my email address when setting the appointment, and when I didn't show up, they sent me another email asking if I wanted to reschedule, and when I didn't reply to that, they closed my case. As I was under a bridging visa that meant I was now there illegally. When I contacted them to find out what the hold up was, they told me what happened and that I was now there illegally and needed to leave immediately, so I did. After the mistake was found out the visa office were apologetic and offered to give me a visa again, and the criminal case against me for overstaying was dropped. But it was such a disruption to my life I no longer have interest.
- madez 8y ago
  Interesting story. To avoid that to happen, I'd recommend to get a lawyer and to contest the authorities decision. You could have worked that out if you had looked into it. Sure, just letting it go is suboptimal, but in cases like this one things should still be able to be fixed if the mistake was on the authorities side.
  - reitzensteinm 8y ago
    For me it was a wake up call for how stupid I was being entrusting my welfare to a badly designed bureaucracy. All I'd be doing by fighting for the right to stay would be setting myself up for another messy situation that impacted my livelihood down the road. Until I dealt with the German government and professionals that deal with the German government (taxes, visa etc), I had no idea how lucky I have it as an Australian.
    - madez 8y ago
      I know other people from other countries in Germany. They use a similiar language as you do. Are the rules really that bad, or is it that they are unintuitive?
      - reitzensteinm 8y ago
        I would estimate as a freelancer that the paperwork and accounting involved was five times more difficult than in New Zealand where I was also a foreigner, growing from an annoyance to a substantial (and expensive) burden. That alone is enough that I would caution foreigners against moving to Germany to start a business or be self employed. A lot of the stories I formed my opinion on were second hand, issues my friends were dealing with; such as the Kafkaesque situation of registering for residency in a city, but not being able to rent without residency paperwork, and not being able to get the paperwork without a fixed address. In Australia, it's just not a thing at all. If the Government tried to make us register with the city we're living in, we'd tell them to fuck off. Albeit in less polite language than that. In the eight years I lived in New Zealand (as an Australian) I interacted with the government once a year to file my taxes, filled out two census forms and had a ten minute appointment to convert my Australian drivers license to one from New Zealand. It's not just that the interactions were easier, there just weren't any.