The DuoMe forum probably has the best reputation among those. Even though the Duolingo channels on the Discord server total more members, the interaction is rather bleak. Many of the MODS of the Duolingo forum promoted Discord and moved there. Frequent posters on the old forum had second thoughts about modertion and... opted out.
The Proboard discussion groups are quite narrow (with fewer members) but rather interactive: a higher percentage of members posts messages. Unlike the DuoMe forum, you need to subscribe to Proboard discussion groups for reading.
DuoPlanet
Matt, running the website DuoPlanet is devoting much effort and time to drafting articles about Duolingo features, new developments and any deterioration of the service.
Yes indeed, there also are the Duolingo blogs, but those are written by Duolingo staff. A lot of useful information, but you will rarely hear a critical voice.
Duo Podcasts
A less known feature Duolingo still keeps developing are the Duolingo podcasts. Those are available for a limited number of languages.
- Learners of French (now 109 episodes) and Spanish (now 151 episodes) from English can find a long series of Podcasts with a variation of topics.
- Learners of English from Spanish or from Portuguese equally find a dedicated series of Podcasts
An episode consists of a narrator introducing the subject in the teaching language, alternating with a native speaker talking (at reduced speed and with an accessible vocabulary) about his/her experience.
Intermediate to advanced level learners of Spanish or Portuguese may also listen to the inverse series of podcasts. The Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese narrators speak clearly at a near-native speed.
A transcript is available for all podcasts, where you read both the narrator phrases (teaching language) and the native speaker telling about his experience or the event of the subject. Duolingo podcasts are the first steps towards an immersive approach.
A keen observer will notice that the podcast subjects for learners of English in both the Spanish and Portuguese series are the same. What changes is the language of the narrator. The series of podcasts from Spanish (now 90 episodes) is still far ahead of that from Portuguese (now 46 episodes). But the continuation of the Portuguese series is predictable.
Comprehensible input
Speaking fluency in any language can be more easily acquired with a gradual immersive approach, Thereby the teaching is progressively substituted by the target language. The key phrase is comprehensible input. The main way an interested listener keeps focused on the speaker is using a vocabulary which is just a little challenging but not insurmountable.
There are several possible extra's which can tune the degree of difficulty. Watching a Youtube video with subtitles in your mother tongue is an easy first step. You listen in a foreign language and you can read along as to fully understand. Next step should be watching the same video with subtitles switched to the target language (usually these are available for native speakers with a hearing impairment). In this way the writing of the target language gets mentally connected to a correct pronunciation. The last step will be listening to any podcast off screen.
After enough comprehensible input, your active vocabulary and your subconscious knowledge of common grammatical structures advances well enough to start speaking. By speaking I mean formulating your own sentences, beyond the pre-chewed example set offered by an app like Duolingo.
This is the main reason why you find so many YouTube channels across the articles of this blog. After Duolingo leaves you somewhere between a solid A2 and a flattered B1 level at the end of most courses, there is way to go to reach conversational fluency. The translation based approach of Duolingo provides a good start, but it gets counter productive once a speaker attains an intermediate level.
In the below videos Raffaello of the channel Metatron Academy, Steve Kaufmann and LanguageJones, formulate their opinion on Duolingo. The former are well reputed polyglots, while the latter is a linguist.
Duolingo: is it a useful app or a waste of time? (A lot depends on you)
How good is Duolingo and would I use it to learn a new language?
A linguist explains how to make Duolingo to actually work.
Lots of people ask my professional opinion on duolingo’s effectiveness. Like anything, it CAN work if you use it effectively. Rather than arguing about whats most effective, here’s 10 ways to make what you are probably already doing more effective.
No comments:
Post a Comment