Thursday 20 April 2017

Progress of sorts

 I started to learn German using an app on my phone, Duolingo.
Now I'm one of those people that have been fighting a losing battle to keep the idea of MOOC's, or education on-line free. Or at least the European model, rather than the US one. But I've found generally there is very little credit given by universities that would allow transfer into an intra mural course even if they are the ones providing it. So in effect the MOOC was nothing more than a taster for the paid course.
 And then you have the issue with who finances the running of these courses.

Anywoos, over the last number of years I've taken courses to test what's out there and I can say that by far this course by Duolingo (run out of Pennsylvania someplace) using the users to test the app's is the best I've seen so far. Even though it has at times been incredibly frustrating. For the people administrating the App seem to have little if any idea about what motivates people, particularly the usage of fuel gauges.

Anyways I have 2430 words of German with about half fully sunk in. Enough that I can get the run of a German TV programme.
I know it doesn't seem a lot but it amounts to 222 consecutive days -8th of Sept ish- devoting an hour a day ishy. I finished the course in early February, and now it's a practice routine to get the words sunk in.
Plus. It seemed a better use of waiting for whatever to learn a language than fiddling with Facebook.
PS. I was at 47% earlier today, but because I didn't get much in the number dropped.

13 comments:

  1. I'm having issues with this at the moment.

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  2. The text on this entry is tiny for me! I guess you're still playing around with templates for your blog?

    I admire your efforts. I'll play Yahtzee or Words With Friends when killing time, but at least I can kid myself that I'm exercising my word or math skills in doing so. ;)

    I think to truly learn another language you have to immerse yourself in it then continue to speak/read it on a regular basis.

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    1. Fixed I think.
      I did Suduku to kill time telling myself it was keeping the synapses snapping like a young fella.

      Yes, but even the immersion only really works if you find a sleeping dictionary :-)

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  3. The courses are definitely hit and miss. I think some are good and some are not, and I do feel like they are often just trying to see what works and doesn't. I have also found that a some of the time I've taken a course that I thought would be about one thing and it didn't meet my expectations. Language is HARD! I have not ever done well - vocabulary is fine as I can memorize that, but I can't conjugate verbs for the life of me. In my next life I want to be a linguist. I took German my first year in college and had a wonderful professor (who was filling in for someone on maternity leave) the first semester. The second semester the other professor came back and we had to conjugate verbs and things fell apart. I often wonder if the first professor had stuck around would I have had better luck. Who knows, because I couldn't conjugate verbs in Spanish either. :) Good luck! My favorite word in German is fünfundfünfzig. ;)

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    1. The Khan Academy works, but tiz something you need someone real to do with you to keep you going. And Google does some truly good courses. The Photography one is a case in point. It's the one delivered at Stanford. But the rest are hit or miss. Usually someone flogging an overpriced book I've found.
      55 ?.

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  4. Not sure what you said because the font was smaller than I could read without additional help. Those above however make it sound like you are learning German. I have wanted to learn another language other than English and Spanish but my brain doesn't seem flexible enough to do so anymore no matter how hard I try.

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    1. Yep German. On the brain thing I think it's hard to make new pathways in the brain. I know I can have done a word an hour ago and I can't remember it.

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  5. It's taken me all night and a good part of today to get this looking OK. I'd not changed anything before, it was only after things went baueways that I changed the theme.

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  6. that's a lot of German words you've learned. Will you travel there and try out your tongue?

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    1. Agh, it's but a good start. But you know as well as I that those first few thousand are the key. After it's a bit like a snowball on a steep hill picking up all sorts. Conceptually there isn't a huge difference between one European language and another. In fact the higher stuff is readily translatable.
      Hopefully that's the goal.

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  7. I came back and I can read it now. I've pondered trying a "paid" course to learn Tagalog, my wife's native tongue but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Part of it is because of my stiff brain cells not wanting to rewire and part because I'm not sure I want to pay all that money only to give up after a bit. I should do what you have been doing and try some that give you a taste first.

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    1. I think as an adult you need something, something like reading a poet in the language they worked in. For in a way a language is like a colour to poem and that bit is something that never ever truly crosses over.
      That's my main focus in history. Where you have a intersection, a border, you'll tend to have intermingling of the colours.
      Maybe the trick might be to teach the girls.

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  8. Really impressive! I took a total of about 5 years of Spanish in high school
    and college and if I always thought if I could have spent a few months in a Spanish-speaking country, I
    could have become fluent. I have not lost it all, but it would take much more study and practice to have
    any hope of carrying on a conversation.

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