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I'm going through Duolingo to actually learn Spanish for the first time, and I definitely agree that the direct approach for leveling up a lesson to level 5 is.

I'm going through Duolingo to actually learn Spanish for the first time, and I definitely agree that the direct approach for leveling up a lesson to level 5 is... tedious at best. Instead I'm taking a different approach. I'm getting each skill to level 2, which is the point right before lessons start asking you to type answers and take away the word bubbles. That gets me basic familiarity, and I move through the coursework fairly quickly. Then once I'm past a checkpoint, as I have extra time, I slowly level up the stuff I've already completed. Right now most of my coursework is level 2, and the top like 1/5 of it is level 3. So far, this seems to work surprisingly well; it's kindof a crude, guided spaced repetition. The practice feature does actual spaced repetition I think, but I like this guided approach more. The other key takeaway of course is that the "subject" of a given lesson is a head fake. The vocabulary matches that lesson, but the app is also careful to sneakily introduce grammatical constructs over time as well, and if you don't read the tips (I don't if I can help it), then you end up picking up a lot of those rules organically. For example, "a la" (roughly "to the") condenses to "al" in Spanish, and that was never explicitly taught in a lesson, it was just introduced in a sentence one day. It was confusing... and then it "clicked" and I got a feel for it. That part is very neat. Anyway, the app certainly isn't for everyone, but as a total beginner who's tried other language learning approaches, mixing Duolingo (for consistent vocabulary acquisition) with organic language sources (in my case: games and TV in Spanish) seems to be really effective. The app may feel easy, but it's working and I can feel my understanding in the organic sources expanding as I go. If nothing else, it also gives me a baseline; I can knock out my 50xp in 20 minutes or so, and I do that every day. I think eventually I'll be able to read at a basic level and then I'll leave Duolingo in the dust, but until then, as a total novice, it's been a good starting point, and that seems to be what it's trying to be.

wallflower 7y ago
> For example, "a la" (roughly "to the") condenses to "al" in Spanish “a el” condenses to “al”. You might want to get a book on Spanish grammar to cross-check when you encounter new rules.
- zeta0134 7y ago
  Ha, I would mess up the example. :P You're completely right of course. I guess I assumed it applied to both genders, but I'm still picking up the gender of a lot of the words; that's not terribly intuitive.
  - Volrath89 7y ago
    (almost) All the nouns ending with "a" are feminine - la silla, la mesa, la casa, la luna, la montaña. (Notable exception: el agua). Also feminine all that end in "ción" such as: la nación, la configuración, la confirmación. Almost all the other nouns are masculine - el carro, el niño, el oso, el barrio, el avión, el camión, el árbol. Pretty sure with those 2 simple rules you will catch 90% of genders right.
    - andybalholm 7y ago
      Actually, agua is feminine. But it takes el instead of la because it starts with an accented a. The common language-learning advice is "Don't learn the genders of nouns; learn the articles that go with them." But it doesn't quite work in Spanish.
    - dnautics 7y ago
      poeta, nauta are two -a nouns that are masculine; sofa if you count a with accents
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        Nauta and poeta are both members of a small set of profession words which are masculine despite being in the first declension (-a) in Latin. My textbook provided a comprehensive (again, small) list and just suggested they should all be memorized; the only other one I remember now is agricola, farmer. Manus, hand, is one of an even smaller set of feminine fourth declension nouns. I believe this oddity has also been preserved in Spanish as "la mano". This makes me wonder whether the Spanish words for trees tend to be feminine while having masculine-looking forms; that is regular in Latin.

wallflower 7y ago

> For example, "a la" (roughly "to the") condenses to "al" in Spanish “a el” condenses to “al”. You might want to get a book on Spanish grammar to cross-check when you encounter new rules.

zeta0134 7y ago
Ha, I would mess up the example. :P You're completely right of course. I guess I assumed it applied to both genders, but I'm still picking up the gender of a lot of the words; that's not terribly intuitive.
- Volrath89 7y ago
  (almost) All the nouns ending with "a" are feminine - la silla, la mesa, la casa, la luna, la montaña. (Notable exception: el agua). Also feminine all that end in "ción" such as: la nación, la configuración, la confirmación. Almost all the other nouns are masculine - el carro, el niño, el oso, el barrio, el avión, el camión, el árbol. Pretty sure with those 2 simple rules you will catch 90% of genders right.
  - andybalholm 7y ago
    Actually, agua is feminine. But it takes el instead of la because it starts with an accented a. The common language-learning advice is "Don't learn the genders of nouns; learn the articles that go with them." But it doesn't quite work in Spanish.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    poeta, nauta are two -a nouns that are masculine; sofa if you count a with accents
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      Nauta and poeta are both members of a small set of profession words which are masculine despite being in the first declension (-a) in Latin. My textbook provided a comprehensive (again, small) list and just suggested they should all be memorized; the only other one I remember now is agricola, farmer. Manus, hand, is one of an even smaller set of feminine fourth declension nouns. I believe this oddity has also been preserved in Spanish as "la mano". This makes me wonder whether the Spanish words for trees tend to be feminine while having masculine-looking forms; that is regular in Latin.