5 ms·
You don’t need to. Read up on the grammar if you encounter an odd construct or as a refresher, but remembering grammar rules is useless (And I say this as someo
by emsy 5y ago
You don’t need to. Read up on the grammar if you encounter an odd construct or as a refresher, but remembering grammar rules is useless (And I say this as someone who can cite most of the grammar rules for English and German). It’s better to expose yourself to a lot of language and etch the patterns in your brain. In fact, I think not explaining grammar sparks curiosity, which is much better for remembering the rules you really need to know.
- ehnto 5y agoThat is the approach Duolingo takes intentionally, I think some people assume it's just lack of content but their philosophy is "show don't tell"
- reitzensteinm 5y agoDuolingo just doesn't have enough content for this, at least when I used it (2017). I did the whole tree, and could remember the correct answers to sentences I couldn't understand. German only clicked for me when I got a tutor who sat me down and started explaining the grammar.
- emsy 5y agoI think the issue is that Duolingo just isn’t good for learning a language at all, just for learning vocabulary. For example, we learned the English conditionals in school. Never once in my life have I actively thought about how and which conditional to use (except for the exam of course, but that just shows how dumb testing languages is).
- inside_out_life 5y agoThey remade the more popular trees recently to make them CEFR compliant and added grammar lessons to some, I'm doing Spanish and it's very good, tons of immersion stuff, audio lessons, stories, podcasts.
- 41209 5y agoThis might work for German or another European language, but Asian languages work radically different. Korean and Japanese for example completely change the word order around.
- emsy 5y agoI'm learning Japanese. Of course you have to learn the grammar at some point, but you're not going to analyze a sentence were "hodo" and the negative form are used for a comparison. The best way for this pattern to stick is to know the meaning of the sentence you listen to in advance and then getting used to hearing it. No amount of grammar learning will help you understand the construct in a fluent conversation.