I wondering what people's opinions on language learning methods were generally (my mother is a linguist)? And also if people hard heard of Duolingo. It got thrown at me during my A2 year and I recently looked back at it.
It seems like a pretty good idea to me and it's got the repetition required for language learning. I'm currently using it to try to fix up my german skills but I'm not sure how good it would be with respect to learning a new language from scratch. It's limited to only a few languages at the moment and the format can be slightly irritating at times but I can definitely see it improving.
Thoughts and opinions? Cries of hatred? Hurls of assorted rotting food items?
Also, what languages do people speak?
[Not sure if this is the correct place to put this thread, move away if incorrect]
Is one of the languages its limited to Norwegian? If so I could find out how good it is for learning a language from scratch.
I can do you French, German, Spanish, English, Italian or Portuguese? :P
Yeah english could be useful to know.
Edit:
Been trying the german one. So far I've learned that milk is feminine. I shall feel like a girlyman every time I drink it now :'(
There are some problems with learning from scratch with this, it doesn't always explain when to use which word. It wasn't until I read the comments on one of the questions that I discovered Du is singular and Ihr is the plural.
Yes, this is a flaw I had noticed. It'd be good if they actually introduced grammatical structures to you. The other thing it does is not tell you the gender of nouns before you have to use it so you're almost guaranteed to get it wrong.
I speak a bit of Spanish and French. And the little German required for listening to Rammstein.
Foreign word of the day: Zwitter. Means hermaphrodite.
Hehe, zwitterions.
Used duolingo on and off for about a year or so (mostly off), it is really good. I don't have the discipline to keep going for a long time. I've also just started listening to this Paul Noble series of audiobooks. I seem to find them better but maybe that is personal choice. Both are definitely better than whatever French classes I had at school!
If you sign up to www.Audible.co.uk I think they give you free credit each month for a free audiobook. I'm not sure all I know is that they seem to be sending me free credits anyway, I can't remember signing up. But there are lots of things there, including audiobooks to help learn languages. Apparently Paul Noble has done other languages so I'd recommend giving that a try if you are learning a new language.
That does sound interesting, I shall have to look at this after my exams are over. Where did you discover it?