Any foreign language learners?
- Thread starter yez
- Start date
CycloneErik
Well-Known Member
Well, on the way to fluent. She starts her 6th in the fall (Portuguese).
I'm not sure when Japanese and Korean happen, but we have some stuff set aside for at least one of them. I'm trying to poke a little for Arabic. I think that would be fun, and being strong (eventually) in Chinese and Arabic could turn out really handy.
I see my last post in this thread was when I only had 3 weeks of duolingo learning Spanish. I'm at 5 months now, and I've averaged an hour a day at minimum.
I'm able to communicate a lot of thoughts, wants, needs, and even ramble on a bit with topics of interest to me. Duolingo certainly works, but if you're only doing 5-10 minutes a day you probably won't get much out of it after 5-6 months. I use my 3 breaks at work and do a lot of lessons there. Typically find 30 minutes at night as well.
I've supplemented duolingo with a lot of YouTube channels, work books, flashcards, short stories. My listening comprehension is still pretty bad, but I can roughly read a decent amount of spanish now. Duolingo has some weak areas. I feel that it hasn't done a great job exposing me to enough verbs. Duolingo also doesn't do a great job explaining certain things. You'll get the general idea of a new concept but you have to learn the hard way to master certain things. Reflexive verbs are still sketchy for me for example.
If anyone wants some direction on good resources for Spanish besides Duolingo, I can share what other means are useful. If I could do these 5 months over again, I would have spent more time with the workbooks, and taken the opportunities to "jump ahead" in Duolingo at times.
Also please share anything you've found most useful for spanish. Wife and I go to Mexico sometimes twice a year. She had 4 years high school and 4 in college so she's a strong intermediate speaker. We're headed to Merida Mexico next month, and won't encounter much English there. At this point I feel like we'll have the same if not better experience as we did on our trips to the Rivera Mya area where English in the service industry is typically found.
I'm able to communicate a lot of thoughts, wants, needs, and even ramble on a bit with topics of interest to me. Duolingo certainly works, but if you're only doing 5-10 minutes a day you probably won't get much out of it after 5-6 months. I use my 3 breaks at work and do a lot of lessons there. Typically find 30 minutes at night as well.
I've supplemented duolingo with a lot of YouTube channels, work books, flashcards, short stories. My listening comprehension is still pretty bad, but I can roughly read a decent amount of spanish now. Duolingo has some weak areas. I feel that it hasn't done a great job exposing me to enough verbs. Duolingo also doesn't do a great job explaining certain things. You'll get the general idea of a new concept but you have to learn the hard way to master certain things. Reflexive verbs are still sketchy for me for example.
If anyone wants some direction on good resources for Spanish besides Duolingo, I can share what other means are useful. If I could do these 5 months over again, I would have spent more time with the workbooks, and taken the opportunities to "jump ahead" in Duolingo at times.
Also please share anything you've found most useful for spanish. Wife and I go to Mexico sometimes twice a year. She had 4 years high school and 4 in college so she's a strong intermediate speaker. We're headed to Merida Mexico next month, and won't encounter much English there. At this point I feel like we'll have the same if not better experience as we did on our trips to the Rivera Mya area where English in the service industry is typically found.