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Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to t

Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?

shkkmo 11y ago
I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.
- addandsubtract 11y ago
  The best site I've found for translations and conjugations (through the duolingo comments) is spanishdict.com [1]. They have verb conjugations for every tense and offer a wide variety of example usages. [1] http://www.spanishdict.com/ http://www.spanishdict.com/
addandsubtract 11y ago
No, you're not the only one. Duolingo does throw you into the cold water and expects you to pick up new concepts within a new lesson. The only support Duolingo offers for new concepts is through the comment section where other learners and native speakers explain or link to explanations of those concepts. It's not ideal, but it was good enough for me to complete the spanish course.
maw 11y ago
I think the pendulum's swung too far in the other direction: a proper mix of theory and practice is self-evidently the way to go--especially when immersion is not feasible--and the only part worth debating is exactly what mix to use. I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain, but here's another reason I'd avoid it, and ultimately a more important one. (Also, in case you haven't yet worked it out or looked it up somewhere else: you need to use "dem" with masculine and neuter indirect objects, often translatable into English using "to" or "for", and with certain prepositions. It is the dative masculine/neuter definite article.)
- omniaura 11y ago
  > I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain Duolingo has a full-featured web version: https://www.duolingo.com https://www.duolingo.com I find it vastly easier to use than the mobile version for that reason.
scobar 11y ago
Some lessons include a "Tips and notes" section below the lesson segments. It's often positioned below the fold, and there aren't many indicators that there is more content if the user scrolls down. I probably have a different perspective than most, but here's why I enjoy Duolingo's style: The first foreign language I began learning was Spanish. I took it throughout high school and college. I was taught theory first, so I could understand most of what I'd read or hear following the new lesson. Running the input through the theory I'd established in my brain worked, but it was very slow and took a lot of practice to speed up my speaking and understanding. When I was visiting my wife in Brazil while we were dating, I learned Portuguese very differently. Although they were aware that I didn't speak Portuguese, many of her friends and relatives did not let that reason hold them back from speaking it to me anyway. So I was bombarded with the language, and slowly began to understand more and more. First, I'd only understand one word in a phrase, then 25% of it, then 50% and so on until I reached a critical point where I understood enough of what was being said that I could use the context of what I did understand to infer the rest and learn that too. Learning Portuguese was so much quicker for me. I still know more Spanish theory, but I still speak and understand it too slowly to consider myself fluent. On the other hand, Brazilians tell me all the time that they're impressed with how well I speak Portuguese. I think the jumping right into the deep end style of learning Duolingo offers is fun, but may not be the best for everyone.
lucretian 11y ago
completely agree. i went from loving the app to absolutely hating it just around the moment when the difficulty ratcheted up to the point that grammar/theory became necessary, but of course was absent.
mcintyre1994 11y ago
Yea I tried German for a while, never got into it and I think that's why. At the time the tablet app (android) didn't have a very good UI around accessing tips + hints and comments (I think comments were excluded completely but can't quite remember).
Trufa 11y ago
While I agree, I find that the comment section was quite helpful for understanding those concepts.
bayesianhorse 11y ago
I'm like you that I prefer to learn the theory before brute force memorizing. Just get a good grammar book and use it besides Duolingo, and you're golden.
Yelwis 11y ago
Try Duolingo.com, which has "Tips and Notes" for some lessons. For the first German lesson, these are on capitalising nouns, grammatical gender, umlauts and verb conjugation. I wish they'd add it to the app!
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  The differences between the iOS app and the web page were startling about a year ago when I first started using it. In particular how different the iOS's coach was and the "on-track" concept on the web. I was excited that they wanted to make it more similar, but then they just cut the coach which I had vastly preferred.
beejiu 11y ago
It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.
- NhanH 11y ago
  > It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language It took me ten years to be as proficient as a ten years old kid in my first language. So I don't think the way we learn our first language is necessary the best way to learn language in general.
  - ajkjk 11y ago
    You were also pretty dumb at the time, and not trying to learn it very actively. And, I would say I was passably proficient by about 7. At least enough to read relatively simple non-picture books.
    - cthalupa 11y ago
      You've got multiple advantages to learning a language as an adult as well, and there's really no reason to go through the extremely inefficient method of learning a new language the same way you did as a kid 1) You have the ability to translate. You already know the concepts and ideas - you don't have to abstract meaning from noises - you already know the meaning, you just have to correlate it 2) You understand grammar concepts. It may be quite different in your target language - I have been learning 日本語 for some time, and grammar is wildly different from English - but there's still a lot of things you only need to learn a few differences of, vs. having to learn the concepts from scratch With our first language, we have to sit there and learn by what sounds right vs. what sounds wrong. This is so hilariously trial and error and completely inefficient that it makes the entire process far slower than it would be if we had any other way to do it. How long does it take you to figure out verb conjugation the way you learn a first language? Quite some time. You probably don't get it fully right in all cases until you later enter classes that go over the grammar rules. In Japanese, I was conjugating verbs, including irregular and negative forms, at multiple politeness levels, in about two hours of learning conjugation. And I rarely made mistakes after that. Why? Because I already understand verb conjugation. It's a concept I have a solid grasp on in my native tongue, and only needed to learn a few new rules to graft onto the existing framework.
learnstats2 11y ago
If anything, my criticism would be in the other direction. The sections are too narrowly grouped in terms of theory. I have a non-fluent understanding of what "subjunctive perfect" means in my home language, but I guess I deal with it OK. As such, I don't find it valuable when I see that section on Duolingo and think "OK, it's subjunctive perfect time!"
agentdrtran 11y ago
Trying to lean dative case with Duolingo make me quit.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
darkmighty 11y ago
I'd say just pick up a theory book. Those two are doing wonderfully for me: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-German-Learning/dp/0934034389 http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-German-Learni... http://www.amazon.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-Usage-Edition/dp/1444120166 http://www.amazon.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-Usage-Edition/d... But they definitively go well together. You see a few examples of case usage, then you read the theory, then after you use it again, it magically "clicks" (for me at least), and things make a lot more sense. The 'explicit' reinforcement /'implicit' learning couple is a great way to learn I think -- you grasp it intuitively and yet if you are faced with a new or tricky example where your experience will fail you'll be able to make a principled choice by explicit reasoning ("Oh the case here is * such and such * because of * this * therefore the pronoun here must be * that one *").
fidz 11y ago
If you ever use Rosetta Stone, they call it "Immersion Method". They says we can learn anything as we can learn them when we were a child. We don't study grammar etc when we learned our first/mother language.
- toupeetape 11y ago
  Learning another language as I learned my first would mean hiring two native speakers to act as my parents, some more native/fluent speakers to act as my primary school teachers and a bunch of non-natives learning the language at the same time as me to act as my friends. Together, they would need to surround me for the majority of my waking hours and after 10 years, I would still be incapable of reading anything more complex than Harry Potter. Of course, we do study grammar in our own language. We do it at school.
hobarrera 11y ago
I had done about 12 months of German with an actual German teacher before duolingo. The theory was enough the get me started, and I then continued learning a lot with duolingo. But as for getting started from zero, you milage will vary according to how many languages you know. As for what you're asking, I guess it's really hard for english-speakers. I'm bilingual, and coming from spanish and being fluid in english, it's a lot easier. The main thing is: nouns have a gender, and the article ("the") do as well. Do "die" is feminine, "das" neutral, and "der" masculine. Verbs also conjugate differently according to gender.
mercer 11y ago
However, it's important to realize that Duolingo's approach is intentional, and one also used by Rosetta Stone and many (most?) language schools and teachers. It's proven to be very effective. That said, especially for German I would've liked more theory too. And some people just seem to have a preference for learning in a more formal/theoretical way.

shkkmo 11y ago

I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.

addandsubtract 11y ago
The best site I've found for translations and conjugations (through the duolingo comments) is spanishdict.com [1]. They have verb conjugations for every tense and offer a wide variety of example usages. [1] http://www.spanishdict.com/ http://www.spanishdict.com/

addandsubtract 11y ago

No, you're not the only one. Duolingo does throw you into the cold water and expects you to pick up new concepts within a new lesson. The only support Duolingo offers for new concepts is through the comment section where other learners and native speakers explain or link to explanations of those concepts. It's not ideal, but it was good enough for me to complete the spanish course.

maw 11y ago

I think the pendulum's swung too far in the other direction: a proper mix of theory and practice is self-evidently the way to go--especially when immersion is not feasible--and the only part worth debating is exactly what mix to use. I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain, but here's another reason I'd avoid it, and ultimately a more important one. (Also, in case you haven't yet worked it out or looked it up somewhere else: you need to use "dem" with masculine and neuter indirect objects, often translatable into English using "to" or "for", and with certain prepositions. It is the dative masculine/neuter definite article.)

omniaura 11y ago
> I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain Duolingo has a full-featured web version: https://www.duolingo.com https://www.duolingo.com I find it vastly easier to use than the mobile version for that reason.

scobar 11y ago

Some lessons include a "Tips and notes" section below the lesson segments. It's often positioned below the fold, and there aren't many indicators that there is more content if the user scrolls down. I probably have a different perspective than most, but here's why I enjoy Duolingo's style: The first foreign language I began learning was Spanish. I took it throughout high school and college. I was taught theory first, so I could understand most of what I'd read or hear following the new lesson. Running the input through the theory I'd established in my brain worked, but it was very slow and took a lot of practice to speed up my speaking and understanding. When I was visiting my wife in Brazil while we were dating, I learned Portuguese very differently. Although they were aware that I didn't speak Portuguese, many of her friends and relatives did not let that reason hold them back from speaking it to me anyway. So I was bombarded with the language, and slowly began to understand more and more. First, I'd only understand one word in a phrase, then 25% of it, then 50% and so on until I reached a critical point where I understood enough of what was being said that I could use the context of what I did understand to infer the rest and learn that too. Learning Portuguese was so much quicker for me. I still know more Spanish theory, but I still speak and understand it too slowly to consider myself fluent. On the other hand, Brazilians tell me all the time that they're impressed with how well I speak Portuguese. I think the jumping right into the deep end style of learning Duolingo offers is fun, but may not be the best for everyone.

lucretian 11y ago

completely agree. i went from loving the app to absolutely hating it just around the moment when the difficulty ratcheted up to the point that grammar/theory became necessary, but of course was absent.

mcintyre1994 11y ago

Yea I tried German for a while, never got into it and I think that's why. At the time the tablet app (android) didn't have a very good UI around accessing tips + hints and comments (I think comments were excluded completely but can't quite remember).

Trufa 11y ago

While I agree, I find that the comment section was quite helpful for understanding those concepts.

bayesianhorse 11y ago

I'm like you that I prefer to learn the theory before brute force memorizing. Just get a good grammar book and use it besides Duolingo, and you're golden.

Yelwis 11y ago

Try Duolingo.com, which has "Tips and Notes" for some lessons. For the first German lesson, these are on capitalising nouns, grammatical gender, umlauts and verb conjugation. I wish they'd add it to the app!

ajmurmann 11y ago
The differences between the iOS app and the web page were startling about a year ago when I first started using it. In particular how different the iOS's coach was and the "on-track" concept on the web. I was excited that they wanted to make it more similar, but then they just cut the coach which I had vastly preferred.

beejiu 11y ago

It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.

NhanH 11y ago
> It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language It took me ten years to be as proficient as a ten years old kid in my first language. So I don't think the way we learn our first language is necessary the best way to learn language in general.
- ajkjk 11y ago
  You were also pretty dumb at the time, and not trying to learn it very actively. And, I would say I was passably proficient by about 7. At least enough to read relatively simple non-picture books.
  - cthalupa 11y ago
    You've got multiple advantages to learning a language as an adult as well, and there's really no reason to go through the extremely inefficient method of learning a new language the same way you did as a kid 1) You have the ability to translate. You already know the concepts and ideas - you don't have to abstract meaning from noises - you already know the meaning, you just have to correlate it 2) You understand grammar concepts. It may be quite different in your target language - I have been learning 日本語 for some time, and grammar is wildly different from English - but there's still a lot of things you only need to learn a few differences of, vs. having to learn the concepts from scratch With our first language, we have to sit there and learn by what sounds right vs. what sounds wrong. This is so hilariously trial and error and completely inefficient that it makes the entire process far slower than it would be if we had any other way to do it. How long does it take you to figure out verb conjugation the way you learn a first language? Quite some time. You probably don't get it fully right in all cases until you later enter classes that go over the grammar rules. In Japanese, I was conjugating verbs, including irregular and negative forms, at multiple politeness levels, in about two hours of learning conjugation. And I rarely made mistakes after that. Why? Because I already understand verb conjugation. It's a concept I have a solid grasp on in my native tongue, and only needed to learn a few new rules to graft onto the existing framework.

learnstats2 11y ago

If anything, my criticism would be in the other direction. The sections are too narrowly grouped in terms of theory. I have a non-fluent understanding of what "subjunctive perfect" means in my home language, but I guess I deal with it OK. As such, I don't find it valuable when I see that section on Duolingo and think "OK, it's subjunctive perfect time!"

agentdrtran 11y ago

Trying to lean dative case with Duolingo make me quit.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

darkmighty 11y ago

I'd say just pick up a theory book. Those two are doing wonderfully for me: http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-German-Learning/dp/0934034389 http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-German-Learni... http://www.amazon.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-Usage-Edition/dp/1444120166 http://www.amazon.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-Usage-Edition/d... But they definitively go well together. You see a few examples of case usage, then you read the theory, then after you use it again, it magically "clicks" (for me at least), and things make a lot more sense. The 'explicit' reinforcement /'implicit' learning couple is a great way to learn I think -- you grasp it intuitively and yet if you are faced with a new or tricky example where your experience will fail you'll be able to make a principled choice by explicit reasoning ("Oh the case here is * such and such * because of * this * therefore the pronoun here must be * that one *").

fidz 11y ago

If you ever use Rosetta Stone, they call it "Immersion Method". They says we can learn anything as we can learn them when we were a child. We don't study grammar etc when we learned our first/mother language.

toupeetape 11y ago
Learning another language as I learned my first would mean hiring two native speakers to act as my parents, some more native/fluent speakers to act as my primary school teachers and a bunch of non-natives learning the language at the same time as me to act as my friends. Together, they would need to surround me for the majority of my waking hours and after 10 years, I would still be incapable of reading anything more complex than Harry Potter. Of course, we do study grammar in our own language. We do it at school.

hobarrera 11y ago

I had done about 12 months of German with an actual German teacher before duolingo. The theory was enough the get me started, and I then continued learning a lot with duolingo. But as for getting started from zero, you milage will vary according to how many languages you know. As for what you're asking, I guess it's really hard for english-speakers. I'm bilingual, and coming from spanish and being fluid in english, it's a lot easier. The main thing is: nouns have a gender, and the article ("the") do as well. Do "die" is feminine, "das" neutral, and "der" masculine. Verbs also conjugate differently according to gender.

mercer 11y ago

However, it's important to realize that Duolingo's approach is intentional, and one also used by Rosetta Stone and many (most?) language schools and teachers. It's proven to be very effective. That said, especially for German I would've liked more theory too. And some people just seem to have a preference for learning in a more formal/theoretical way.