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Better use of stories

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Saperlipopette!

Better use of stories

Post by Saperlipopette! »

Better use of stories

I like what they're doing with stories. You have to do new lessons to open up one new story. That new story is worth 28xp. Plus there is an additional feature that gets you ten extra XP. I think it's a lot of fun to summarize the stories:

Image

I opened up this bonus feature using Desktop mode on the web accessed through Chrome on an android. I don't recall getting it through the App or using the web version in regular mode.

Already completed stories can be re-read for 5xp. I wish you could do them in oral mode like you used to be able to do on the web. I wished they kept the summaries and did something with them.

You can use stories for nerfing. If you have a Friend's Quest challenge of get sixty lessons at 90% or better in a week, stories count. They're only worth 5XP but they count just like any other practice lesson, and they're easy to score 90% or better.

Duolingo used to brag about how popular their stories were in their blogs, like in Duolingo Stories: Journey to android. I wonder what the stats say now that the XPs awarded are fair.

I'm also looking forward to the new-fangled stories that Duo talked about in the blog.

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SansEspoir
Norway

Re: Better use of stories

Post by SansEspoir »

Interesting....

I never really liked stories, and dislike them even more now that they are a part of the path. I feel like they are too advanced for what I've been taught so far in the courses. When I tried the german course, it was okay, it's similar enough to my native norwegian that I got the gist of the story without having learned every word. But now that I'm doing italian, and the words and sentence structure is all rooted in latin rather than germanic, I'm completely lost.

At least with the old tree, I could just ignore them and go back to do them when I thought I had learned enough vocabulary, but now I'm forced to do it when it suits DuoLingo and it's demotivating AF to use so much brain power to follow a story.
Not only do I have to understand what's happening, I also have to learn a bunch of new words as the story goes on.

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Deleted User 4833

Re: Better use of stories

Post by Deleted User 4833 »

I've had the opposite reaction to stories. I enjoy them. And I'm able to get the gist of the story even if it includes vocabulary I'm not familiar with. But the fact that I've previously studied (pre-DL) the languages in which I'm doing stories may factor into why I don't have a lot of difficulty with them.

Saperlipopette!

Re: Better use of stories

Post by Saperlipopette! »

Duolingo runs a Cerf Checker on its stories, so you're supposed to generally understand them at the point in the tree when you get them.

For me that's generally true. I had no prior classes with the language I'm studying & I generally understand the stories. There's some new words, but they're generally surrounded by other words that I know that allow me to guess it's meaning.

The one really annoying thing they don't do is that, if you learn a vocabulary word in the stories, they might still not take it in the lessons.

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SansEspoir
Norway

Re: Better use of stories

Post by SansEspoir »

Saperlipopette! wrote: Mon Apr 03, 2023 1:07 am

Duolingo runs a [Cerf Checker] on its stories, so you're supposed to generally understand them at the point in the tree when you get them.

For me that's generally true. I had no prior classes with the language I'm studying & I generally understand the stories. There's some new words, but they're generally surrounded by other words that I know that allow me to guess it's meaning.

Definitely not happened for me. I've been way out of my league in every story, and had to mouseover pretty much every word, which is annoying. When it then asks me to memorise some of it at the end, while having followed a story, I feel like I'm thrown in to a pool without knowing how to swim.

So like I said, when I did german it was doable. With italian, it's not. And this is yet another reason to prefer the Tree, because then I could just ignore the stories until the course was done or something if I wanted to.

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Saperlipopette!

Re: Better use of stories

Post by Saperlipopette! »

I did a practice story today, desktop view, and I got the writing assignment. I would say try the web version of duo in your browser if you want to try to get the writing assignment. For 129-3 on the snake, here is the story:

Image
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User avatar
gmads
Mexico

Re: Better use of stories

Post by gmads »

SansEspoir wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 3:01 pm

I feel like they are too advanced for what I've been taught so far in the courses. When I tried the german course, it was okay, it's similar enough to my native norwegian that I got the gist of the story without having learned every word. But now that I'm doing italian, and the words and sentence structure is all rooted in latin rather than germanic, I'm completely lost.

Since they were introduced I have always ignored them. Out of curiosity I may have done two or three stories, but that was it… until now. I just finished taking the whole eng–ita course to legendary level and I finally decided to do all the stories, from start to end.

So there I was, doing one after another when I got to the story from unit 5, called "Luna di miele" ("Honeymoon"). It started like this:

Narrator: Pina è in un taxi (Pina is in a taxi)
— Buongiorno (Good morning).
— Salve, dovrei andare all'aeroporto, per favore (Hello, I should go to the airport, please).

Since I had read your post a few days ago, your comment immediately came to my mind after reading that last line… "dovrei?" Wow! Dovrei is the present conditional tense of the verb dovere (must, have to, need to). Speaking of "too advanced for what I've been taught so far!" :shock:

And let's not dismiss the presence of the infinitive: andare.

  • Unit 01: Use basic phrases, describe basic actions
  • Unit 02: Greet people, talk about food
  • Unit 03: Form the plural
  • Unit 04: Talk about animals, talk about food and drink
  • Unit 05: Describe possessions
  • Unit 19: Use the infinitive, use pronouns
  • Unit 36: Discuss science, use the conditional
  • Unit 37: Use modals, use conditionals

I am a Spanish speaking person and I have finished the whole Italian course, so I don't have trouble understanding that line, but I just imagine being presented the same dialogue in Russian or in Arabic: save the equivalent salve and per favore, the other words would be completely unintelligible to me. Just being in unit 5, how would I know the grammatical value and meaning of the other words?

In this particular example, the problem would not only be that of learning the meaning, but also that of trying to figure out why the conditional tense was used when one would normally use the indicative: I { must, have to, need to } go to the airport, please. Could it be perhaps that in this target language the conditional is used as a form of courtesy? Is it another of the usual mistakes from the green owl?

Yes, "simple dialogs" can become quite a challenge when the target language is radically different from the one we speak natively.

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SansEspoir
Norway

Re: Better use of stories

Post by SansEspoir »

gmads wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 9:27 am

Since they were introduced I have always ignored them. Out of curiosity I may have done two or three stories, but that was it… until now. I just finished taking the whole eng–ita course to legendary level and I finally decided to do all the stories, from start to end.

Yeah, in both german and italian, they feel like they're meant to be done at the end of the course, not after four crowns, which was what you needed to unlock the first one on the old system.

gmads wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 9:27 am

So there I was, doing one after another when I got to the story from unit 5, called "Luna di miele" ("Honeymoon"). It started like this (...)
Since I had read your post a few days ago, your comment immediately came to my mind after reading that last line… "dovrei?" Wow! Dovrei is the present conditional tense of the verb dovere (must, have to, need to). Speaking of "too advanced for what I've been taught so far!" :shock:

Right? If it's just one word here and there, it's of course doable. I don't mind learning a new word in a story, if it's just the one, or a different tense or whatever. But for me it's every word, and every tense, especially in italian.

gmads wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 9:27 am

And let's not dismiss the presence of the infinitive: andare.
(...)
I am a Spanish speaking person and I have finished the whole Italian course, so I don't have trouble understanding that line, but I just imagine being presented the same dialogue in Russian or in Arabic: save the equivalent salve and per favore, the other words would be completely unintelligible to me. Just being in unit 5, how would I know the grammatical value and meaning of the other words?

Thank you for going through all of that and proving me right :P
But yeah, the stories don't match what we have been taught, and that is really annoying. You're supposed to follow the story as a fun little tidbit, to check your comprehension if I understood the intent correctly. Instead it's just causing confusion and mental strain because you have to learn, understand, and summarize all at once.

gmads wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 9:27 am

In this particular example, the problem would not only be that of learning the meaning, but also that of trying to figure out why the conditional tense was used when one would normally use the indicative: I { must, have to, need to } go to the airport, please. Could it be perhaps that in this target language the conditional is used as a form of courtesy? Is it another of the usual mistakes from the green owl?
Yes, "simple dialogs" can become quite a challenge when the target language is radically different from the one we speak natively.

Exactly. And also, since I have to go via english to learn on DuoLingo since it doesn't offer any courses at all from my native norwegian, it recquires a lot more brain power even though I consider my english to be pretty fluent. And while I'm sure they didn't think of this when making the course, the fact is that learning via a second or lower language is what most users on DuoLingo have to accept. And thus it's even more important that they take their time to properly introduce concepts and such before throwing people in to it.

They were bad at it with the tree, especially on the less valued languages. They're even worse now with the path since we can't easily go back and repeat what we think should have a lookover before trying the story a second time.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: Better use of stories

Post by gmads »

This is how the whole Honeymoon story from unit 5 went…

Luna di miele (Honeymoon)

Narratore: Pina è in un taxi (Pina is in a taxi)

— Buongiorno
(Good morning)

— Salve, dovrei andare all'aeroporto, per favore
(Hello, I am supposed to go to the airport please)

— Certo. Vacanza?
(Sure. On vacation?)

— Non proprio... Ho un biglietto per la California. Beh... due biglietti
(Not really... I have a ticket to California. Well... two tickets)

— La California è splendida!
(California is splendid!)

— È il mio viaggio di nozze...
(It's my honeymoon trip...)

— Se mi permette la domanda indiscreta, Suo marito dov'è?
(If you allow me the indiscreet question, where is your husband?)

— Non ho un marito. Ho una moglie molto difficile! Non vuole venire in California con me. Sono un po' triste
(I don't have a husband. I have a very difficult wife! She doesn't want to go to California with me. I'm a little sad.)

— Mi dispiace. Ehm! OK... siamo all'aeroporto
(I am sorry. Um! OK... we're at the airport)

Narratore: Una donna corre verso il taxi (A woman runs towards the taxi)

— Amanda?

— Pina! Mi dispiace tantissimo! Ti amo
(Pina! I'm so sorry! I love you)

— Ti amo anch'io
(I love you too)

— Voglio venire in California con te!
(I want to go to California with you!)

— Buona luna di miele! —dice il tassista
(Have a nice honey moon! —says the taxi driver)

🦎  Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.  🦎
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Cifi

Re: Better use of stories

Post by Cifi »

I suspect it's a matter of design: stories are the same in all courses I've seen (aren't the Italian ones familiar from those you encountered in German from English?), and I think they want the dialogues to be as natural as possible in any language, so the stories might use tenses or vocabulary that has not been introduced yet.

Native: :de: Intermediate: :uk: Lower intermediate: :es: Beginner: :fr: Absolute beginner: 🇬🇷
(If there are errors in what I'm writing in either language, please do correct me - I'll never take it as offense or something like that.)

User avatar
gmads
Mexico

Re: Better use of stories

Post by gmads »

Hi @SansEspoir

After thinking it a bit more I started feeling as if in the middle of a horror movie by just imagining what I would have to face at the Russian and Arabic courses 😨

Well, it seems that I'm saved: they don't seem to have stories 😌

I just checked and saw what the first Russian story would have been like. Although I have to read the new words letter by letter and slowly correlate them with the audio recording (1), I think I would have been able to handle the stories in the end, even if each one took all day. On the other hand, after reviewing the first Arabic story, I can definitely see that I would have had to drop that course: having to go literally word by word is definitely not worth the effort.

*** 1  This is another problem because in the stories the audio is only for the whole sentence; when one hovers over a particular word one gets its translation but not the audio :?

arabic-yes-i-need-to-go-to-work.jpg
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Antinomy - Imagination

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SansEspoir
Norway

Re: Better use of stories

Post by SansEspoir »

Cifi wrote: Tue Apr 11, 2023 8:18 pm

I suspect it's a matter of design: stories are the same in all courses I've seen (aren't the Italian ones familiar from those you encountered in German from English?), and I think they want the dialogues to be as natural as possible in any language, so the stories might use tenses or vocabulary that has not been introduced yet.

They might be, but I don't remember them so much. In the german stories, Junior seemed more involved in making that father-figure frustrated, in Italian it seems more random. But this impression is just based on memory, it's been a while since I did german.

But my complaint is more that the stories are introduced way before I've learned enough to follow them, not that they differ between courses or whatever.

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