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Fluent?

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Matt_comanda
United States of America

Fluent?

Post by Matt_comanda »

If I get through all the units and lessons, will I be considered Fluent?

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Explorer
Portugal

Re: Fluent?

Post by Explorer »

No, unfortunately you cannot reach fluency with Duolingo. That doesn't mean Duolingo is a bad option for learning a language. It just means that you'll need to use other resources to supplement your learning (conversation exchanges, watching movies and series, reading books, magazines, and so forth).

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wayfarer

Re: Fluent?

Post by wayfarer »

Yes, I agree. You can't reach anything like fluency using just Duolingo.

In my experience Duolingo is good for starting out on a language, esp one which uses an unfamiliar writing system.

But in my opinion after the initial gain any benefits quickly begin to plateau. One short youtube video by a good language teacher will probably teach you more than weeks or months of Duolingo useage.

That's been my experience, anyway.

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EranBarLev
Israel

Re: Fluent?

Post by EranBarLev »

I find the Duolingo classes/events very helpful for fluency, definitely more than the units and lessons.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: Fluent?

Post by gmads »

No, not even remotely. However, depending on the course, it could certainly act as a good studying guide.

I did the Italian course, which I think is a quite complete course as it gave me a very good overall understanding of the language. Apart from that, it also acted as a roadmap, so everytime I opened and did a grammatical skill, I would then go and expand on it by reading articles and watching videos.

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pawndemic
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by pawndemic »

Matt_comanda wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:59 pm

If I get through all the units and lessons, will I be considered Fluent?

No, not even close. Keep in mind you barely practice your output skillz with Duolingo. There is no talking and no (free) writing.
Besides this the courses don't take you to a level which is considered as some sort of fluency, lets say B2. At best you maybe A2. E.g. Duolingo does not teach really you the subjuntivo. You have to learn that by your own.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: Fluent?

Post by gmads »

pawndemic wrote: Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:06 pm

Duolingo does not teach really you the subjuntivo. You have to learn that by your own.

The Italian course does include it: congiuntivo presente, passato e imperfetto. I haven't got to that point in the Portuguese course, but I'd think that it also includes it.

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paulkolatt
United States of America

Re: Fluent?

Post by paulkolatt »

Based on what I have read, probably not. That being said, I think Duolingo gives a decent base for Spanish learners.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

gmads wrote: Wed Sep 07, 2022 2:18 am
pawndemic wrote: Tue Aug 02, 2022 10:06 pm

Duolingo does not really teach you the Subjunctivo. You have to learn that by your own.

I haven't got to that point in the Portuguese course, but I'd think that it also includes it.

Our Portuguese (from English) course has four dedicated Subj. skills and more detailed written Tips&Notes:

www.duome.eu/tips/en/pt

Stumbled across another Subj. tense (Pretérito Perfeito) in the De<-Pt reverse tree but without any explanations so I had to consult the PT Wiki.

However, I don't practice them so much. Practice button hardly selects them and now the Web portal is dead and we can't make use of the "Duolingo skill strength viewer" userscript for Tampermonkey.

Also can't truly say that these learned skills with a few more extravagant verb tense skills have gone into my blood (trigger keywords)...
Ich denke ich kratze teilweise bisher nur an der Oberfläche.
I think I've only scratched the surface so far.

At least I now know about these basics and just need to find other ways to additionally practice those things or to go deeper.

The Portuguese IMHO was a good first step into Romance grammar, at least for me and in parallel to other resources.
And it is much faster to do than with the ultra-long Spanish or French CEFR courses from staff which take endlessly to wade through.

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Gunslinger
United States of America

Re: Fluent?

Post by Gunslinger »

As others have said, you're not going to get fluent using an app. I'm nearly 3/4 of the way through all the lessons. I'm pretty good at reading. As far as conversing, I feel like a lot of the people I met on a recent trip to France. For instance, the waiters know enough basic English. However, once you start asking detailed questions about a dish, they get lost. That's kind of the space I'm in with Spanish.

I think Duolingo is a great app. Probably better than most the others out there (mucbetter than roseta stone). The weaknesses I find are talking and listening, in that order.

I'm just not sure the technology, in general, is good enough for talking. Even google messes up my English. I'm sure a lot of its listening "skills" are through algorithms rather than concisely hearing what you said.

I do wish they would work on their voices in their listening exercises. It's OK. But, a lot of the lessons it's so fast that no matter how hard I try, even knowing what it's saying, I can't hear decipher or hear a word. Then their slow options are hideously slow. On top of that, the longer conversation exercises that show up around midway through the entire course can be difficult because it's a monotone with a fixed Rythm that goes pretty fast. I'd struggle with English! The Stories are actually good as they have more natural expression and inflection in them.

I WISH DUOLINGO WOULD MAKE ALL LESSONS SOUND LIKE THE STORIES (in case someone who works at Duolingo reads this!)

Overall, I'd still say it's the best app I've ever used.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Fluent?

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Gunslinger[/mention] I also have this problem with Hebrew. Part of the problem is that the stressed syllable is different to English. So where I expect words to end and be precisely differentiated is no the same in Hebrew. This means that it sounds like they stop in the middle of words and string words together. Does Spanish also have a different syllable stress pattern?

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Gunslinger
United States of America

Re: Fluent?

Post by Gunslinger »

Corinnebelle wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:49 pm

@Gunslinger I also have this problem with Hebrew. Part of the problem is that the stressed syllable is different to English. So where I expect words to end and be precisely differentiated is no the same in Hebrew. This means that it sounds like they stop in the middle of words and string words together. Does Spanish also have a different syllable stress pattern?

Definitely, Spanish has a symbol (sorry, not good on symbol names) over vowels that need to have an extra punch to them. on top of that in English we say AN Apple or A Car. AN is used when the next word starts with a vowel or A is used when the next word starts with a consonant. Spanish doesn't have this degree of word delineation. It's common to have have phrases lie: se va a aprender. You can see how easy it is to slide all that together, and it is!

I've read that on average Spanish is spoken almost 25% faster than English by counting syllables. It's the second fastest spoken language behind Japanese. English is #8 on the list. Which adds difficulty to understand native Spanish speakers.

I had 3 years of Hebrew. I don't remember much unfortunately. Modern Hebrew has a very strong Russian influence. Hebrew, like Latin was/is basically only a prayer language. Hebrew got resurrected over Yiddish (politics) when Israel became a country. Yiddish was widely spoken, no one spoke Hebrew at the time. As a prayer language, there was a lot of missing vocabulary from centuries of innovation. Russians were the largest immigrant population to Israel so many Russian words were adopted. Yiddish is now an endangered language. Which is sad. When I was a kid growing up in NY in 60s, it was common to hear it.

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Corinnebelle

Re: Fluent?

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]Gunslinger[/mention] I wrote something about language speed back on Duolingo.

I don't know much Russian to understand its influence on Hebrew. I know there is some. Is it mainly words on sentence structure?

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Jimbo

Re: Fluent?

Post by Jimbo »

Gunslinger wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:21 pm
Corinnebelle wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:49 pm

@Gunslinger I also have this problem with Hebrew. Part of the problem is that the stressed syllable is different to English. So where I expect words to end and be precisely differentiated is no the same in Hebrew. This means that it sounds like they stop in the middle of words and string words together. Does Spanish also have a different syllable stress pattern?

Definitely, Spanish has a symbol (sorry, not good on symbol names) over vowels that need to have an extra punch to them. on top of that in English we say AN Apple or A Car. AN is used when the next word starts with a vowel or A is used when the next word starts with a consonant.

In the context of how to say words, it should also be clarified that the a/an rule in English doesn't care how a word is spelt but rather how it's pronounced, so you have 'an hour' because the 'h' is silent, and 'a unicorn' because the 'u' is pronounced 'you'.

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Gunslinger
United States of America

Re: Fluent?

Post by Gunslinger »

Jimbo wrote: Wed Mar 15, 2023 4:39 am
Gunslinger wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:21 pm
Corinnebelle wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:49 pm

@Gunslinger I also have this problem with Hebrew. Part of the problem is that the stressed syllable is different to English. So where I expect words to end and be precisely differentiated is no the same in Hebrew. This means that it sounds like they stop in the middle of words and string words together. Does Spanish also have a different syllable stress pattern?

Definitely, Spanish has a symbol (sorry, not good on symbol names) over vowels that need to have an extra punch to them. on top of that in English we say AN Apple or A Car. AN is used when the next word starts with a vowel or A is used when the next word starts with a consonant.

In the context of how to say words, it should also be clarified that the a/an rule in English doesn't care how a word is spelt but rather how it's pronounced, so you have 'an hour' because the 'h' is silent, and 'a unicorn' because the 'u' is pronounced 'you'.

Thanks,

In English H in hour can be analyzed as a voiceless vowel. Likewise U in unicorn acts as a consonant.

The pronunciation of all these letters E, G, H, I, L, R, U, W, Y are often used as/in spellings representing both vowels and consonants.

I googled it😁 and found a more precise definition of the A and An rule :

"You use the article "a" before words that start with a consonant sound and "an" before words that start with a vowel sound."

I'm glad I'm not a linguist! My Spanish/English bilingual friends tell me not to analyze it. Just do it. Meaning, they have problems articulating answers to my questions. It's not about memorizing or naming rules, It's about naturally using them without a second thought.

Helloffffff
India

Re: Fluent?

Post by Helloffffff »

Explorer wrote: Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:56 am

No, unfortunately you cannot reach fluency with Duolingo. That doesn't mean Duolingo is a bad option for learning a language. It just means that you'll need to use other resources to supplement your learning (conversation exchanges, watching movies and series, reading books, magazines, and so forth).

Yeah, it's like learning a language from a grammar book. You have to use it in other practices to really get fluent in a language.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Matt_comanda wrote: Sun Jul 31, 2022 5:59 pm

If I get through all the units and lessons.......will I be considered fluent?

The IF is well placed here :-)

One needs to have the courage to invest several years into such a long CEFR tree.
One of my maths from 1-2 years ago easily hit 3.8 years; and I only did the math for L1 crowns +practice button, not L6 Legendary, not L4-L5 crowns, not even a full L1-L3 path (well, my much shorter volunteer Portuguese course is not completed on L3 crowns level after 6.5 years).

Having said that, the golden owl statistics for ultra-long Spanish or French CEFR courses are not very promising:

www.duome.eu/en/fr

  • 16928 Golden Owls ······ 8.60%
  • 196815 Students

www.duome.eu/en/es

  • 17579 Golden Owls ······ 7.34%
  • 239391 Students

Definition of a student: Registered Duome user with a 100+ days streak or Alumni.

Note: A ranked Duome user usually is NOT a "normal" user but many are die-hard learners. Many of those users have multiple trees or owls registered or make use of multiple accounts.

Most Duolingo users will drop out before XP level 10 (have seen it happening with several users who joined Duolingo Clubs in 2017/18).

It's true, not all millions of FR/ES enlisted ("ACTIVE") learners are registered and tracked here on Duome so OLD users (even with longer streaks) might get occasionally added on Duome as new once their profile and progress page gets accessed by anyone.

Still doubt it that there is any higher 40-60% completion success rate above that shown <10% golden owl rate.

Judging my French listening and speaking skills after 1.0-1.5 years after completing the first A1 course on Busuu and now being stuck on A2 lesson 39 since last November:
No, I'm not fluent :-)

Without native audio recordings and speaking correction from a personal tutor or full immersion your chances are lower to be successful from the beginning.

Maybe Spanish would have been easier for me on Busuu or LanguageTransfer.org with my Portuguese learning background, but I currently don't want to overwrite my Portuguese brain with the wrong quite hard Spanish machine gun pronunciations until I have finished a higher B1-B2 Portuguese level.
So far I successfully managed not to confuse French with Portuguese.

Nope, Duolingo alone and the nerve wracking cartoon TTS voices does NOT count as full immersion :-)

Interestingly, there were two threads placed on the former Duolingo community forum where someone did some fancy math for French and Spanish CEFR courses (before the path).
Was more in the 17+ years range for one of them.
Maybe I find them again on archive.ph site or https://duolingo.hobune.stream/

I only know this:
I almost had given up with Portuguese as a true Romance beginner after 3-4 months on Duolingo.

Memrise and Mondly somehow came to my rescue not having to wade through exclusive robotic sentences only with food and animal vocabulary
(before the crowns update arrived in 2018 which reactivated many previously suspended PT sentences so now there is again a greater variety).
Guess this has changed a lot with the introduced phrases on the newer CEFR courses, hopefully more connected to the real world, hobbies, vacation or working environments.

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Thu Jun 22, 2023 10:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

@duome

Hi Maxime,

have I understood the language ranking tables correct?

The golden owl and student numbers include Alumni?

That is any Duome registered users who once had a 100+ day streak some time ago but who may have fallen out of the SHOF main streak list...but still getting listed with the right course numbers in the language table (right side with Legend explanations) page.

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duome

Re: Fluent?

Post by duome »

Yes. It's everyone.

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PtolemysXX
Uganda

Re: Fluent?

Post by PtolemysXX »

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Sun Jun 18, 2023 6:01 pm

Interestingly, there were two threads placed on the former Duolingo community forum where someone did some fancy math for French and Spanish CEFR courses (before the path).
Was more in the 17+ years range for one of them.

That's the bare truth behind all commercials of the sort "learn a language in 15 minutes a day". Sure, you'll get there in 17 years :lol:

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Hopefully I find the mentioned two threads again. Was a good read.

@PtolemysXX

I had a 11 years goal in mind for Brazilian Portuguese (not for the Duolingo courses alone, but I don't have a full L5 golden + L6 Legendary tree here either and the Cefr EN<-PT reverse tree is huge if it would be still usable like it was in 2019-2021 with activated base PT audio) when I saw someone with a physics Phd degree telling his YT viewers that he learned Spanish/Romance basics for good 11 years in school (high school, university,..) BEFORE he started intensively with studying Portuguese and practicing speaking it on his YouTube recordings,..
Well, 6.5 years have already passed by for me... time was quickly flying by ;)

ACTIVE speaking could take me longer to get the hang on.
Podcasts, Tv films, reading books, mastering Memrise vocabulary,...

I am back to the French basics in my new DE->FR Duolingo course in section #2 (old tree design) and I need to be careful to slowly pick new content up and to practice the more difficult stuff (unknown verbs and conjugations, prepositions, conjugations,..).
My mind says just unlock checkpoint #2 to keep going forward but that means my CP test score won't be great as I have not mastered all shown difficult material, not yet.
So I'll focus on the other crowns a bit more to re-strengthen previously learned stuff and to do skill level ups.

To be honest: Didn't think that spending 1.0-1.5 years learning French on Busuu A1 and first 38 A2 lessons would give me such a difficult Duolingo time with this quite basic French stuff....but no big surprise...Busuu is quick-paced; a lot of stuff comes later which only gets mentioned in some sentence examples or phrases in dialogues very quick in the A1 section or where EN translations were initially left out so remembering and fully understanding everything was and is the main issue there for me...if I don't write everything down (which I don't do).
With Portuguese I had a better learning 2016-2018+ while using the Memrise Web portal (full userscript and typing support).

Not sure how much slower I would be on my new Duolingo French course (not the Cefr one from English) without my previous Romance-/Portuguese knowledge and already studied Busuu formal grammar tips and doing the quizzes.

But for French it will take me longer than Portuguese to learn ALL the complicated basics (@// those question forms are a nightmare).
My personal factor (PF) comparing classroom lessons to self study won't only be 2.5-3.0x, not with French.
Will take some time to develop a feeling with all the ' vocal abbreviations and how to correctly construct French sentences.
Duolingo will be some good drill...even the old Android mobile app versions.

So yeah, I'm
miles away from being fully "conversational".
My impression after 1.5 years: I focused (especially on Busuu, now also on Duolingo with the Android app) on the reading out aloud aspect or speech to text dictation way more than I did with Brazilian Portuguese when I got started.

I guess setting too high goals too soon will make you quit much earlier. I'm glad I'm still around.
Saw this happening to many of Duolingo learners who barely passed XP levels 10-14 when they got started.

Busuu Spanish is huge too.
There's even some C1 content like with English C1 Advanced.

Seems to be difficult for learning providers to balance the difficulty and quick pacing vs too slow learning out (with stuff you're not interested in, you have to learn stuff which doesn't directly help for the first speaking goal) evenly.

Glad that the DE->FR challenging volunteer course is still around.
EN->FR tree3 was already gone after 1.0-1.5 years when I caught it in 2018 (A/b test).

I think the Spanish tree benefitted from the introduced written mobile tips (written by staff) but is quite long because of CEFR and I expect more difficult grammar stuff and multiple verb tenses plus Subjunctive get only introduced much later, not to overwhelm a true beginner?!??

Hard for me to find good Portuguese learning material (there is a free podcast site which I haven't deeply looked into).
Well, I exactly knew this was going to happen in 2017, compared to Spanish.

Duolingo lacks a bit the full immersion experience but Busuu wants you to best have a headstart of 1.5-3.0+ years from somewhere else so you don't have to start there from scratch and get lost thaz quickly :-)

Unbelievable how many lessons I have literally flown over in the last couple of weeks in my new French course on Duolingo topping all my crown earnings and XP scores from the past.

Spanish has to wait a bit more.
Need to restart from scratch with it and I hadn't continued with my 1000 Spanish words from the Lingvist challenge (end of 2017).

Anything you learn with those resources is not so easy to bring into your personal life and make immediate use of it for speaking, without being in the country or meeting people yourself locally.
But honestly, I'm glad I can learn those languages (the basics) in my own pacing with no outside force which I would surely feel when living in those countries as a starter and having a hard time to keep up (same for expensive classroom courses).

So hopefully I can stick to some more realistic learning numbers and not these mentioned 17+ years when I will "finish" PT or FR to hopefully start with ES one day :-)
The path is even worse with its forced L3 crowns waterfall approach.

Well, after 28+ years of English learning and some practice here and there (not counting in early school days) incl. writing about complicated technical stuff in the IT business or Rc heli hobby sector I just know I'm not finished with it yet; speaking comes too short, as always.
Busuu, EF Hello, BritishCouncil, Xeropan, Berlitz & Co. would definitely help me when I could make room for 2-3 more thorough serious daily lessons or to take out my Cambridge vocabulary and learning learning books.

Glad that I didn't have a goal in mind to be fluent as soon as possible.
Wouldn't have helped me to push through...

Hope Busuu will extend the B1 and B2 Portuguese content a bit more in the future, when I take a quick look at the Spanish course and available lessons.
Business Portuguese wouldn't hurt either once I pushed through the earlier limited B1/B2 content.
Won't start Business French anytime soon....

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Fri Jul 21, 2023 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

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MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

I once found that I felt quite confident in a foreign language after learning it for more than 6 years. After that time, I didn't consider myself fluent, but I could start reading books in the new language and answer quite spontaneously.
Now I know: this was only the case with languages of the European language family like English and French, but not with Chinese. After more than 6 years, I am still far from being able to read a book. I've struggled with comics and can't speak whole sentences spontaneously.

Somewhere I once heard that you "are fluent when you start dreaming in the new language". This doesn't mean that you dream of speaking the new language, but that the new language is the basic language of your dreaming, just as your native tongue is now.

So far, this has only happened to me with English: I dreamt English when we spent two weeks together with American friends in a European country about five years ago. Then one night a whole dream was in English.

Strangely enough, this happened to me again yesterday when I was put under anaesthesia.
Just before I woke up again, I know that my dream was in English. I'm pretty sure that when the nurse approached me to wake me up, I replied in English

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Wow, sounds you did way more than me.

MoniqueMaRie wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:10 am

but not with Chinese.
After more than 6 years, I am still far from being able to read a book. I've struggled with comics and can't speak whole sentences spontaneously.

FSI put Chinese into the super hard catgeory IV table with 2,200 hours classroom + more (2-3 hours per day or double??) homework hours.
That's 5 hours x 5 days x 88 weeks teacher drills with appropriate material and group exercises.
Or seven hours per day fully enrolled into a DLI course.

That's a 3.67 difficulty factor compared to Portuguese or Spanish with 600 hours (French got rated for 750 hours).

I don't truly feel ready for spontaneously answering in a conversational way.

My "personal factor" (PF) for studying Chinese Mandarin would surely have to go way up from 2.5-3.0x to 4.5-6.9x or more.

My current (limited) PT progress of 6.5 years x 3.67 = 23.855 years recalculated for ZH.

And this doesn't include the above higher PF for strict self studying a category IV language
(for English natives; a German will even struggle a bit with C1-C2 English definitions or some B2 hardly used vocabulary) with different Non Fsi material.

Only self studying clearly has its limits.

I'm astonished I haven't got completely lost on my way with Portuguese, my first Romance language (thanks to the contributor Web Tips&Notes and former course moderator feedback in the sentence discussions).

But I guess you're already using multiple resources for Chinese incl. classroom, study books, audio based listening exercises or teacher led courses (a good tutor who has didactical abilities)?

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 6:47 am

FSI put Chinese into the super hard catgeory IV table with 2,200 hours classroom + more (double) homework hours.
That's 5 hours x 5 days x 4 weeks teacher drills with appropriate material and group exercises.
Or seven hours per day fully enrolled into a DLI course.

That's a 3.67 difficulty factor compared to Portuguese or Spanish with 600 hours (French got rated for 750 hours).

.....

But I guess you're already using multiple resources for Chinese incl. classroom, study books or teacher led courses (a good tutor who has didactical abilities).

So: I will need about 18 years for Chinese (2200/750*6=17,6)
No chance: I'm doing next to nothing for Chinese at the moment. I think I urgently need to contact a Chinese acquaintance...

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

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Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

But there's some hope.

Unlike Fsi or Dli we don't necessarily need to try reach ILR level S3/R3 working proficiency levels :-)

This will significantly cut down the required hours we have to put into learning our languages to motivate us reaching lower levels first, using it for vacation or hobbies and not for immediate business and working usage...

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

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PtolemysXX
Uganda

Re: Fluent?

Post by PtolemysXX »

MoniqueMaRie wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:10 am

(...) I once heard that you "are fluent when you start dreaming in the new language". (...)

It is my dream to dream in a foreign language. Unfortunately I rarely recall any conversations from my dreams. It did happen a few times that I thought I spoke in a foreign language in my sleep. There are these cases when I am close to waking up anyway and I know it is a dream so I keep repeating to myself (in the dream): "remember, remember what you are saying". Then I woke up and indeed remembered - but the words I remembered were complete junk without meaning - yet just a moment before when I was still asleep I thought it was a cool talk. How strange.

Last edited by PtolemysXX on Sat Jul 22, 2023 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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PtolemysXX
Uganda

Re: Fluent?

Post by PtolemysXX »

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:27 am

I had a 11 years goal in mind for Brazilian Portuguese (not for the Duolingo courses alone, but I don't have a full L5 golden + L6 Legendary tree here either and the Cefr EN<-PT reverse tree is huge if it would be still usable like it was in 2019-2021 with activated base PT audio) when I saw someone with a physics Phd degree telling his YT viewers that he learned Spanish/Romance basics for good 11 years in school (high school, university,..) BEFORE he started intensively with studying Portuguese and practicing speaking it on his YouTube recordings,..
Well, 6.5 years have already passed by for me... time was quickly flying by ;)

ACTIVE speaking could take me longer to get the hang on.
Podcasts, Tv films, reading books, mastering Memrise vocabulary,...

I have a feeling that you underestimate your skills and if you had a chance to start talking you would be surprised how much you can. There is obviosly that initial moment – a shock when you ask your first real question in a language you never spoke before at large. For some reason this is a huge difference: even if you know that first sentence by heart and have repeated it many times in the class - in real life you may somehow still get it wrong. Yet once you overcome that first fear it may show up that your knowledge is actually much better than you thought.

All these numbers, difficulty levels, achievements and scores are good indicatorts yet they are not everything. I am sure you know it from your own experience: you meet people in real life speaking your mother tongue so bad that they would never pass any test, yet they do speak and do get their message through. In my opinion it is the right way to do - even if you spend years learning in a controlled enviroment you will still (most likely) have to go through that phase where everything feels “shaky” and you do not find words you are looking for. It helps trying to be perfect – because then you learn the basics well and get solid foundations – but only to a certain point when perfectionism becomes more of a hindrance. Fortunately you do not need to be perfect. If a computer program has a syntax error it will not compile and won’t run – it is useless. If you make a syntax error while speaking a human language you are going to be understood. Fortunately humans are still better than computers in this aspect. I know it hurts making mistakes. It happened to me a number of times: I prepare a sentence I want to say in advance, repeat it many times, then I finally say it and mess it all up. Every word is wrong. I feel like I’d rather dissolve in air on the spot.

Portuguese and French are (in my opinion) the most difficult Romance languages (pronunciation, contracted forms) - that indicates that you are an ambitious learner and you aren’t easily scared 😉.

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 12:27 am

Busuu Spanish is huge too.
There's even some C1 content like with English C1 Advanced.

Seems to be difficult for learning providers to balance the difficulty and quick pacing vs too slow learning out (with stuff you're not interested in, you have to learn stuff which doesn't directly help for the first speaking goal) evenly.

(...)

I think the Spanish tree benefitted from the introduced written mobile tips (written by staff) but is quite long because of CEFR and I expect more difficult grammar stuff and multiple verb tenses plus Subjunctive get only introduced much later, not to overwhelm a true beginner?!??

I started Spanish from English on Duolingo some time ago. I am now in terms of L1 skills close to 25% of the course (65 skills) and so far have only had the first past tense introduced. I find the pace terribly slow. Of course this is only my opinion - some people may find the pace just right. Every skill consists now of exactly five lessons (some grammar-only skills have 4). I like the fact that there are no more than 5 skills – in other courses I did (on the tree) there were skills with 8-10 lessons, they were a real chore. On the other hand I find that in some skills even 5 lessons are too much, you just repeat the same (simple) thing over and over again. Fortunately on the tree I can put up with reaching level 1 and go to the next skill. Otherwise the sheer length of the course is intimidating.

I do like the new tips. They are really short, to the point and easy to learn– a great introduction into each skill. If one needs more thorough information there are plenty of other resources available.

Last edited by PtolemysXX on Sat Jul 22, 2023 7:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Fluent?

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

@PtolemysXX

Within one year of Busuu French I got through the A1 course with several block-wise repeats and the Passé Composé has already been covered.
Imperfect is reserved for the A2 course.

But now the DE->FR Duolingo tree is hitting me with the en and y constructs I have not learned yet....only in the second section.
And on top to this contractions, prepositions and of course also the direct and indirect object pronouns.

But I'm really glad that I didn't have to wait 2.5-3.8 years only to come across the Compound past in French :-)
To cement all grammar details into my head and repeat it a few times it takes a bit more time.
Hardly can remember all the Dr. Mrs. P Vandertramps French verbs and EN translations and when to switch from aller to être.

My Portuguese Duolingo tree only took me one year to wade through ALL the Romance grammar basics, past- and future verb tenses, conditionals, Perfect, four Subjunctive forms, etc.

I think the Duolingo CEFR linguistic team (applies to FR/ES from EN) is really hesistent and not wanting to scare true beginners away too quickly. So the pacing is more slowly. Might explain it that they focus on the Present tense and basic verb conjugations a longer time.

But my learning only from Busuu French A1 is not deep enough to master Duolingo sentence writing drills or to know well how to put a French sentence together so you can use it for interactive chatting or ACTIVE speaking in real life.
Somehow I'm glad that direct and indirect object pronouns (incl. en + y constructs) come much earlier in the DE->FR volunteer course and not only in 1.5-2.x years. Busuu has moved a lot of important content back into the A2 French course but makes fun of me putting it into example sentences and phrases much earlier without teaching it formally (like Il fait).

A bit sad that I do not see me flying / speeding through a new language course like Spanish more quickly, picking up all the stuff much easier.
Directly benefitting from 6.5 years of my Portuguese/Romance knowlege with a 0.89 closer lexical similarity factor but Lingvist Spanish was tough for me end of 2017 (too many different ES words and verbs).
But I need to be extra careful not putting Portuguese away and forgetting to do new lessons.
I already did this with Portuguese Memrise (my old Laptops are all damaged) and with the EN<-PT Duolingo reverse tree.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Apsa25
Poland

Re: Fluent?

Post by Apsa25 »

My experience with Portuguese is that after going througt the majority od the Pt <- En course and listening to a dozen of the easiest podcast from practiceportuguese.com I could hold a very basic conversation in Portuguese when I was in Portugal last year. Only not in Porto where people speak much too fast for me to distinguish words and understand anything. But in Coimbra and Lisboa it was possible :)
I can’t tell how much time it took me to get to this not-at-all-fluent level, as I probably first started the Portuguese course in 2016 or ’17 but I wasn’t learning it regularly all that time. And I knew French before (about B1 level), which helped a bit.
Now my Portuguese tree is almost all legendary but I don't feel much more fluent than a year ago. But I was really happy to find out that I could communicate in a language I learned in an app!
I think that if I wanted to actually speak the language well, I would buy a Pimsleur course, which focuses on speaking. I took the free sample lessons of several languages and liked it.

Bakata
Hungary

Re: Fluent?

Post by Bakata »

PtolemysXX wrote: Sat Jul 22, 2023 2:58 pm
MoniqueMaRie wrote: Fri Jul 21, 2023 3:10 am

(...) I once heard that you "are fluent when you start dreaming in the new language". (...)

It is my dream to dream in a foreign language.

I believe dreaming in a foreign language is not so important and doesn’t mean that you are fluency in that. I never dream in my mother language, I mean I never talk in my dreams. 🤭I would say, when you start thinking in a foreign language, it mirrors better your knowledge. It happened with me many times, when I was abroad at least 2 days or 3 and I experienced something important or funny things that I wanted to share with my friends, I immediately started to form my thoughts how I will tell the story after my return. The most interesting thing was that my thoughts “spoken” in a foreign language.😝

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