the-language-man-blog

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One and a Half Months with Duolingo

I have never learned French before. I chose a language that I had to start from the very beginning so I would see if it is possible to learn a language from no other source than this application. I like French movies and I have always been amazed by the speech of the actors. I find that language very pleasant and I would be happy to understand these movies without subtitles. So, Duolingo, don't let me down!

First time with Duolingo I created an account, picked my chosen language and I jumped into it. The plan was to play only 10 minutes every second day but I just couldn't stop after 10 minutes. I spent about an hour with the tasks and I found the learning quite entertaining, in fact, even relaxing at the end of a long, tiring day. My first task was to pair French words with pictures or with English words. There were just a few words that came up repeatedly in various ways. Really easy. After that new words came and they were mixed with the previous one. Still easy. Then, surprisingly soon, I had to make sentences which made me much more interested. They were just really simple sentences but I liked the way I had to figure out the word order and the little grammar involved. Just an hour and I already felt that I do more than just memorizing words, I already knew some grammar that made me feel very satisfied. You know, even words can be memorized much easier if you use them in sentences.

Second time with Duolingo Today (the following day), I decided to learn every day, not just every second. However, this time I was learning only for 20 minutes. I did the exercises and I can proudly declare; I did remember quite a few words from yesterday! I still enjoy the game, I hope it is going to stay that way.

Third time with Duolingo I would like to see the words I have learned so far to be listed somewhere but I cannot find such a list anywhere. It would be useful. Anyway, now I know simple sentences such as "Je suis Paul." meaning 'My name is Paul" or phrases like "une femme francaise" which means "a French woman". Pretty cool, huh?

Fourth time with Duolingo I admit I didn't do my daily exercises for three days so I spent an hour with it today to catch up.

More than one month with Duolingo I stopped doing notes after every single time because I just couldn't tell more. Now I can tell I have learned French with Duolingo for more than a month and I would like to share my experiences. Although the grammar of French I don't find difficult to learn its pronunciation I do. There are tasks with the microphone that test your pronunciation skills but they are not explicit at all. I intentionally pronounced some words of the sentence incorrectly to test if it works and no, it accepted my bad pronunciation too. The other problem is that although I can recognize words and figure out what most sentences mean, I cannot use too much on my own.

After one and a half month with Duolingo I feel a little bit disappointed. I enjoy learning with Duolingo but I don't think this application in itself can teach me to use French. However, it may be very helpful if you learn French in a traditional way with a class and a teacher because the tasks are very good for practicing things you have already learned or to make your vocabulary richer. I started this same application with another language that I speak on a basic level and I found it very interesting that I work with the grammar and words I have but needs a lot of practice and in the same time I always learn something new, even if just a little.

All in all, I'm happy that I have all the experiences that I received in using this application and I definitely advise you to learn with Duolingo. I don't say that you can learn a language entirely with it but it still can help a lot and what is just as important; you can have a good time because Duolingo is really entertaining and reliable.

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English Pronunciation

Is it difficult? You just sit down and listen to a native speaker whoever s/he is and whatever s/he is speaking in English and you just imitate what s/he says, that’s it, no? You say it is more complicated? Well, yeah.

Where do you get a native speaker? If you find one, will that person repeat any word you didn’t catch? Will he use words that fit your level of English skills? Well, in our amazing modern world, you need nobody, you just turn on your computer check out some cool English-teaching websites and you will be all right.

There is that site called TALKENGLISH.COM, let’s see how it teaches us speaking decent English. I’m going to look at the basics.

So Talkeenglish.com gives us sentences written down so you can read them and then listen to them with a single click. We can listen to it as many times as we just want so it is already better than just listening to somebody in presence. The only problem here is that you can repeat the sentence but who will tell you if your pronunciation is correct? Exactly! Nobody. One more little problem; it just brings random examples and soon becomes very boring. Without any kind of motivation, it is very boring to learn anything. So let’s see another site with which we can learn a good English pronunciation; Youtube.

Well, Youtube is not a website specialized for teaching languages but do we really need a site titled as a language teaching website to use it effectively for language learning? In youtube, there is an indefinite number of teachers making videos to help people with English pronunciation. You can see how their lips move and what body language escorts their speech and it just feels much more natural to be taught by a person you can see than just letters typed on a page. What is more, you can find the person whose voice and pronunciation you prefer and you think can better learn from. Also, these teachers usually involve interesting topics, tell some jokes and make the whole language learning more relaxed and enjoyable. When you get more advanced, in youtube everybody can find videos about topics that really interest them which means they can spend a lot of time with them and all along hear the proper pronunciation.

So that’s how I see it but of course, it depends on your personality, which one fits your expectations.

Websites:

https://www.talkenglish.com/lessondetails.aspx?ALID=2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGKLAP3i2XE

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This time, I had a little fight with five English TONGUE TWISTERS.

Let’s see, if I succeeded!

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Which one to choose for learning grammar?

British Council vs. English Grammar Online This time, I compare two English learning websites according to how they teach grammar. One of them is the British Council and the other is the English Grammar Online (from now on referred to as BC and EGO). First of all, it is fair to say that both have a pleasant style, their interface is aesthetic and simple. Furthermore, they are really easy to use. The tasks the two sites give are quite similar, it would be hard to tell which is more efficient or enjoyable. Both of them provides a coherent explanation of the grammar you choose to learn before it gives you the tasks. However, there are some interesting differences.

EGO gives you the opportunity to choose what kind of task you would like to practice on while BC does not; it selects them randomly. Is it good if you can choose? Yes, if you think some of the tasks are more difficult for you so you would like to practice those, but no, if you are lazy and you just decide to avoid them. Also, it can happen that some tasks are just boring so it would be better not doing them too often. So it has both advantages and disadvantages in a sense.

The other significant difference is that BC shows you comment's of other learners on the very task you are doing. They ask about things they don't understand entirely and you can also see the answers to these questions given by English teachers who are workers of the website. In my opinion, we can learn a lot from other's problems and it may also happen that you had the same question in your mind. But if you want to make comment and ask your own question, you can, although you have to make an account for that.

Check out them both:

https://www.ego4u.com/ https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/

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Oxford University Press vs. Language Guide

I compared two English learning websites according to their methods of teaching listening skills and pronunciation. One of the websites is called “Oxford University Press” and the other “Language Guide” (from now on referred to as OUP and LG).

OUP has different courses for learners of different age; young learners, teenage learners and adult learners. In my opinion, this is remarkable because people are much more motivated to learn if the way they learn and the topics they meet during learning fits their interest.

It seems to me that OUP is more sophisticated in its method of teaching than LG. However, the simplicity of LG's website may provide a more relaxed attitude toward language learning. It really seems easy there. And yet, LG soon loses its beauty of simplicity after you spend lots of time on it. It gets boring and you start feeling that this won't help anybody to reach a high level of language skills. On the other hand, OUP, with its stories don't stop being interesting just as if you were watching movies; you keep watching, or in that case listening, just because you are curious how the story ends but for that you have to find out the meaning of the words and sentences. This is how you learn a lot; by being motivated.

What I really like about LG is how it uses the visuals. For instance, if you choose to learn about the body parts, you can listen to the pronunciation of all by simply moving the mouse to the body part you are interested in. Very convenient and it is well known that visuals help a lot with memorizing.

As for OUP, it may be only exciting for those who like reading books or listening to audiobooks. Personally, I love novels and short stories both reading and listening to so this is the best way for me to acquire listening skills and proper pronunciation. Also, watching movies or series in English are very effective for learning the language and for that you don't even need any website or application to use. However, the problem with learning via watching movies and series is that you cannot pick what level you are on, so it may be very difficult for those who are not yet on an advanced level. So yeah, if you want to watch movies and reading books in English but you are still just a beginner, this website may be a very good start for you

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Learning from drunken people

I guess that's not a surprise, but BBC has quite an effective way of teaching English.

I just open the site and a quite interesting title already catches my attention. The Drunk date. What can it be about? A video. Learning with watching a video? Sounds convenient. As usual, I had a really long and tiring day so I'm really not in the mood of sitting over all kinds of papers and trying to pay attention to only letters and words when I can hardly stay awake. So I watch this video because I'm curious how will I learn English via a drunk date. Ohh, it's a cartoon! I love cartoons. I mean, I really like them so that's already a good way to keep my attention. In fact, this little video has quite a quality, it is well directed, natural.

So, what the most important is that I actually learned something instead of falling asleep as I would have probably done if I had tried to learn with a book.

Furthermore, the voice acting is beautiful. When we are learning from books we do not hear how native speakers communicate. We have to spend as much time as possible with hearing those words and sentences and even as tired as I am right now at the end of the day, I still can enjoy this beautiful British pronunciation. And you know, it so much easier to remember the sentences and the grammar used in them if they are connected to an enjoyable story told by pleasant voices.

If I can think of any disadvantage of this little evening learning? Well, no. However, if learning English would have been urgent for me right now, and for instance, there was a problem with my internet connection, as sometimes, well...

Also, this is good for learning English with no specific goal but e.g. as a secondary school student you have to prepare yourself for the tests at school and it is much probable to be useful just to learn from the book what the teacher said you to and not all the irrelevant things you may find in sites that are not customized to help you with your tests. And yet, if you learn a lot in your free time from that site, in the future, you may find it much easier to prepare for your tests as you will own a lot of skills that you received from BBC Learning.

Ohh, and what happened on that drunk date, you wonder? Well, go and find out yourself: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/course/experiment/unit-1/session-22

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First 10 minutes with Dualingo

So I created an account and chose French, a language that I've never learned before. It is important for me to see what's gonna happen If I learn a language in no other way but via this application. I spent ten minutes with the tasks and I found it quite entertaining, in fact, even relaxing. But hey, I’m going to write about it in detail, just give me some time to get familiar with how this application works in the long term.

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I give a chance to dualingo

I've never tried any kind of computer application for language learning before. I've been aware of their existence but learning languages has always been something that I liked doing with others and personally. According to me, the best way to learn anything is to make it really enjoyable, and for me, having a good conversation is the most entertaining way to spend my time. The way I gradually learn to express myself in more complex ways and to understand others better using a foreign language is just amazing. I can't even imagine how could sitting in front of a computer and studying alone replace the interaction between teacher and students. And yet, I'm curious what programmers are capable of these days. It can even happen that I'm wrong and I will find these new ways of learning enthralling.