So, spurred on by a friend who is working her way through it, I've signed up for DuoLingo and am working my way through the German course.
Have done the first few lessons (Basics 1) and am working my way through the next lot (Basics 2). Eine, Das, Der, Brot, Mann, Zeitung, usw. usw. usw. I tore through them at quite a pace, which is no great boast as I've been starting to learn German and then putting it aside since the start of the Britpop era. I've read the first two or three chapters of every German textbook in the world. I certainly should know the commonest words by now!
Each block in the skill map consists of several lessons and each lesson consists of several questions: translations and type-what-you-heard and cloze tests.
Verdict so far: pretty (looks very Twitterish); quite addictive; main annoyance is that the multiple meanings of common words such as Sie makes for questions that could have several answers, only one of which is accepted. Lose all your 'lives' during a lesson and you have to redo it. I was also taken aback at the end of Basics 1 to be faced with translation exercises for extra credit which were taken from real-life German texts way, way above the level of that elementary block. I made a brave stab at them but felt foolish, and it was extremely daft that I had to try to rate the attempts of others at these tests from my position of ignorance.
I feel inclined to stick with this and see how it goes. I've tried and failed to learn German many times and feel uneducated not knowing it; perhaps this time I'll make it.
'Sie' was a good example of what I was talking about when I said about using it to drum things in. Because it would only award points for giving the (by context) most likely of the possible meanings, which is actually a really useful thing to have knocked into you as a habit.
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstood the way the early translation exercises work. At that level I don't think they're there as vocab tests - It would be too easy to get through on zero actual knowledge - but as another way to fix the rhythm of the language's sentence structures in your head. All of the words are there pre-translated, so at a true beginner level you'd be almost guessing at the sentence then comparing it to most likely translation to see how it should have read.
That said, I did encounter one sentence where me, Tim, and the general consensus managed to all get different but equally accurate answers!
Also, fuck off with doing German and get back to French, you copy cat bastard.
It's interesting that I'm not annoyed at having to do lots of exercises. I think it's mainly down to the fact that doing stuff on the keyboard is now, to me, far less annoying than writing answers down on paper.
DeleteExposing the learner at a very early stage to real German with advanced vocab is fine, but asking them to rate the not necessarily great translations of other people after only an hour or so's education in the language seems bizarre. (Also I'm not a huge fan of all the social stuff about competing with other people and being given spurious points and pictures of trophies as prizes, but that's just because I'm a miseryguts.)
Hey, I can't help it if you're a language-learning trendsetter whom everyone apes.