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I learned Mandarin and German pre-Duolingo, both to reasonable levels of proficiency. I've messed around with Duolingo a few times, just to get a feel for how
by nmfisher 7y ago
I learned Mandarin and German pre-Duolingo, both to reasonable levels of proficiency.
I've messed around with Duolingo a few times, just to get a feel for how useful it is. I came away feeling that it was about the same level as flashcard vocabulary learning - useful, but only a small part of the pie.
Vocabulary is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to be able to carry on a conversation. Mandarin in particular is more difficult, since you need to grind through hours and hour writing/rote learning characters to improve your vocabulary.
The one thing that noticeably accelerated my proficiency was having an actual conversation with a native speaker (host family/tutor/etc). That's not something that Duolingo really replicates.
Self-plug - coincidentally, earlier today I just released a small tool for Mandarin learners to practise their tone recognition! I've been working on a larger app and this seemed like something that would have helped me when I first started out. App is currently live @ https://fluent.academy https://fluent.academy - I'll be introducing more functionality for Mandarin learners in the near future, so would really love to hear from students of any level.
- noname120 7y agoConversely, there is this to train tone pronunciation. :) https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games
- hawkice 7y agoSome of those recordings are bonkers haha. 得 in particular seemed... Worthy of a double check. And 二 （or 儿？) Had a surprising cadence to it. Swell idea though. Mobile support is a bit rough but not unusable.
- nmfisher 7y agoThanks - the voice is actually synthesized, not recorded, and slowing the pace occasionally produces some artifacts. I'll double check the ones you mentioned! Out of curiosity, what mobile issues are you encountering? This is actually a Flutter web app, which isn't officially production-ready yet, so I'm keen to provide feedback to the Flutter team if something's going wonky.
- ml_giant 7y agoI agree. Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary, but if you really want to learn a language you need to supplement this with listening to the language as well as speaking it. I've been learning French and have been using Duolingo for vocab, but then I listen to a French-teaching podcast as well as trying to work on reading/speaking it.
- dghughes 7y agoI'm not at the stage where I can listen to it since it's such a fast language. I've been reading LeMonde newspaper and trying to decipher it that way. I live in Canada but the French here is quite different in each region; Quebec, Acadian, Métis. Duolingo French course is France French not Canadian French I think it's standard French aka Parisan.
- ml_giant 7y agoThere are podcasts for learning such as "Coffee Break French". Basically they start with very basic french and build up. This can be good for starting to learn to listen to french. Regarding the differences between Canadian and France French, are there that many differences that it would make it difficult to understand someone from another region?
- cocoflunchy 7y agoDefinitely, it can be really hard for me as a native french to understand a canadian-french speaking if he has a strong accent.
- tasogare 7y agoNative French here. One day I was in a place with 4 people from Québec speaking with each other. I could understand perfectly three of them, then it took me 15 minutes to understand the last one was speaking French too and not a foreign language. So, accent could vary quite a bit between region and people but most of the time it’s similar enough that there is no problem.
- 7y ago
- dlevine 7y agoI have been learning Mandarin casually for a few years. A while back I went all the way through Duolingo. I picked up some new vocabulary, but it was probably the least effective study method I used. With that said, it was reasonably fun, and I did stick with it for a while due to the gamification, so maybe there's hope for the feature. Just getting people to study a foreign language regularly is probably a good step. I also think that they have implemented some more advanced learning features with a few languages.
- irrational 7y agoWhat if you only need reading proficiency - no conversation skills needed? Would Duolingo be a good fit for that use case?
- dominotw 7y agofor spanish, yes.
- standardUser 7y ago"...the same level as flashcard vocabulary learning" How exactly were you using it? It speaks to you, which is invaluable for developing an ear for the language. It forces you to translate both ways, which helps with reading and writing immensely. And optionally you can even speak answers in the foreign language to practice pronunciation (such that your phone can correctly transcribe what you're saying). It's not exactly an immersive language course, but it is vastly more useful than flash cards. I know a lot of people like to speed through the tree and only complete the first level, which I suppose is a more vocab-focused way of using the app. But if you go deeper on each level it forces you to grapple with grammar a lot more.
- nmfisher 7y ago> I know a lot of people like to speed through the tree and only complete the first level, which I suppose is a more vocab-focused way of using the app. But if you go deeper on each level it forces you to grapple with grammar a lot more. Probably a fair point - as mentioned I wasn't really using it to learn the language, rather to get a feel for "how useful would this have been when I was learning". So I admit I didn't dive into the later levels.
- dominotw 7y ago1 . duolingo for vocab/grammer 2. italki for conversation with native speakers. You can find super cheap if you are just looking to talk. 3. hellotalk is free but takes more effort and mostly just spanish/english.
- godelski 7y ago> Self-plug - ... Asked me to sign in with Google. Couldn't click behind. Closed window. Come on, don't make me sign in everywhere. This is just email harvesting. I get if you want to sell a service, but then I need to know what you are providing. If it is good I'll pay for it (as someone trying to learn Mandarin. There just aren't good tools out there). But please don't just blindly collect user data.
- mooie_dood 7y agoI don't know if this is intentional or not, but if you click the back button when the google login modal appears it goes away and you can continue to the rest of the buttons. I ran through a few of the questions and didn't get another sign up prompt.
- nmfisher 7y agoTotally understand - at the moment I was just asking for registration so I can stay in touch with people who might be interested as more features get added or when the larger app is released. In the meantime, I've enabled e-mail registration without verification, so feel free to signup with a throwaway :)
- godelski 7y agoOkay, I did. Now I have to say that I do not find this helpful. The audio is very synthetic and has audio distortions. 三 had a weird glitch in it. Have you tried using one of Bidu's models? Also, in counter part to Duolinguo, I suggest at checking out Hello Chinese, and using that as the metric to beat (it is popular among Mandarin learners).
- nmfisher 7y agoThanks for taking the time out to provide your feedback, it's always very helpful. You're right, there are a few artifacts in the audio. Most of these are due to generating speech at a slower cadence than "natural". Native/enunciated recorded speech would probably be better for this specific purpose, but not necessarily practical for the larger app.
- Pete_D 7y ago> App is currently live @ https://fluent.academy https://fluent.academy I'd love to try this but I don't have a Google account. Do you have any plans to add registration using an email address?
- nmfisher 7y agoI've enabled e-mail signups this morning - feel free to check it out again (you may need to refresh your browser cache).
- Pete_D 7y agoThanks! Recognizing and remembering tones is one of the things I struggle with most, so I'd use this a lot. A couple of comments: for 水果, it only accepts shŭi gŭo, not shúi gŭo. I know that is technically correct, but the voice synthesis sounds it out with the sandhi. More a question of philosophy I guess, but thought it was worth mentioning. Also, it might be nice to have an option that hides the characters, so you're forced to rely on hearing rather than just knowing that e.g. 多 is dūo. Looking forward to seeing what else you do with it!