Language Level?

[Jakaloup]

If you were able to complete all levels to legendary on Duolingo, Finish all stories, and listen to all podcasts, about how much of the language would you be able to understand?

[AdrianC602]

If you were able to complete all levels to legendary on Duolingo, Finish all stories, and listen to all podcasts, about how much of the language would you be able to understand?

It depends on the course...
The big courses - French, Spanish, German, Portuguese (from English) - are CEFR aligned to around level B1 (although DL don't cover speaking very well at all).
The smaller courses... aren't. They vary widely from trivial to reasonably sound.

What's CEFR? viewtopic.php?t=137

[frzzl]

The French course aims for a B2 standard, but in reality is closer to a mid range B1.

[SweNedGuy]

There are self-tests for language proficiency in many of the more common languages.
For English there are even two tests, one of them is for native Spanish speakers.

https://www.transparent.com/language-re ... tests.html

The test questions involve both grammar and understanding text fragments. There are no speaking exercises. Though the test result is lacks fine-tuning, you get a sense of what a DL course is really worth.

[pawndemic]

With only the use of Duolingo I doubt heavily that are you going any further as A2. However most people are using Duolingo as a supplement. And here it depends on what are you doing beside of Duolingo. For example I finished the German-Spanish course. There are so many things which you need for B1 who aren't in the course; the whole subjunctive stuff is poorly covered in Duolingo. Don't mention the lack of speaking, writing and listening. None of these you need to to in the Duolingo by yourself.

[MatOzone]

I recover a post I wrote three years ago, 2019:

When, one year ago, I started on Duolingo, I took it like a game and not as a platform to learn... As I am a polyglot, it was very easy to get "lots" of owls using shortcuts, in a few days. Not really "learning", but "remembering/using" languages.

But definitively, using Duolingo, I am not able to "really learn" some languages that I did not know before. I mean: I can memorize the sentences in "weird" (for me) languages as navajo, hawaiian, klingon, high valyrian and others. Also some times I can remember some basic rules. But it is impossible to "metatalk" in those unknown languages: If I don't know the word "wafer" (it's an example) I can say in the languages I already know: "It's a kind of cookie, very thin... when it's a litle disk made with a kind of bread, it's used in Catholic church..." (etc). I have 50 L5 golden owls, but definitively I am unable to really speak fluently some languages. In my experience, the only way to be fluent is living in the language enviroment for some time (depending on your skills) ...

I fluently speak many languages, and I understand almost everything in some other ones. But is seems impossible to me to understand or speak fluently and with freedom the other ones. Even if I have "lots of crowns and golden owls".

What do you opine?

[angus]

If I don't know the word "wafer" (it's an example) I can say in the languages I already know: "It's a kind of cookie, very thin... when it's a litle disk made with a kind of bread, it's used in Catholic church..." (etc).

In English, at least in the US, this is called "the host". The priest raises the host during consecration, then he gives it to the parishioners during the communion.

Regarding the original question, I find that duolingo is good at teaching translation from source to target and vice-versa, and it works well enough for introducing the user to reading, especially newspapers. I have been able to read A Folha de São Paulo and Catalunya Diari, even though I had no prior exposure to Portuguese or Catalan before discovering duolingo. Of course I had to look up words in each paragraph at first, but after a few months I was making it through entire articles without resorting to a dictionary.

It is not good at teaching oral comprehension or speaking. I cannot follow a conversation in either of those languages.

[AdrianC602]

Regarding the original question, I find that duolingo is good at teaching translation from source to target and vice-versa, and it works well enough for introducing the user to reading
...
It is not good at teaching oral comprehension or speaking. I cannot follow a conversation in either of those languages.

The difference is primarily one of speed, with an element of "getting your ear in". Only practice will give you that.

When you read, you give yourself the time to parse each word before moving on to the next. You can see the subtleties, the minor differences that may indicate a tense or conditionality.

If you can read, you have the tools to listen. You just need to get quicker at using them.

Producing the language - writing and speaking - is harder than consuming - reading and listening - simply because you are finding the right word in the target language, not in the one you're more familiar with. Again, if you can write, you can speak - it's just down to speed, which comes with practice.

[angus]

The difference is primarily one of speed...

I agree with everything you wrote. I was taking the OP at face value. If you complete all the skills on a duolingo course of intermediate length (e.g., Portuguese or Catalan), and use no other teaching resources, then you can read newspapers and translate text (although the ability to produce original writing may be weak), but oral comprehension will be very limited, and independent speaking even more limited.

I can't really comment on the long courses (e.g., Spanish or French from English.) I have completed the French to five crowns in all skills (multiple times due to updates) and to at least two crowns in Spanish (also multiple times). I can understand and speak Spanish and French well enough, but I had familiarity with those languages long before I discovered duolingo so I cannot really say how much was simply review rather than new information. For example I have visited Mexico about 30 times, staying for as long as two months at a stretch. I get rusty but every time I go back there, by the second day I am comfortable speaking and listening. Similarly I have stayed in France for as long as two weeks and by about the second day I am ready for conversations. Your comment about getting the ear adjusted is probably a good way to describe that.

Regarding the very short courses, I'd say that duolingo alone is not even enough to allow for reading newspapers. For example, I have completed the Arabic from English to five crowns in all skills, but it takes me about five minutes to read a short paragraph in Al Jazeera and I need a translating dictionary to do that.

I tried to put a link in there. I think that is my first attempt on this forum. haha. Maybe I did it right.

[Paul-LeBon]

I cannot answer the original question because I haven't completed the French tree. I'm not quite to Unit 4 at the Gold level and not quite to Unit 3 at the Legendary Purple level. That said, I do have a comment that relates to the topic at hand.

Several posts have alluded to DL's relative lack of speaking and listening exercises. Well, the way that I use DL, it is almost all listening and speaking. I exclusively use the Android app on my phone. I don't read the written French prompts and then type the responses. If the French is spoken, I only listen to it. Then I respond in spoken French using the Google keyboard's voice-to-text function in French.

That works better for me for a few reasons. One, it forces me to decipher spoken French. I find it far easier to read written French. Two, responding in spoken French requires me to come up with the response in something approaching real time. If I was writing the answers, I could take all day to formulate the responses. Finally, the voice-to-text functions on my phone (I have a few keyboards) all require my spoken French to be much more precise than DL's very loose speaking exercises... where you only have to come close.