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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2Fc1npF
Да, мама уже в Москве!
I’ve confirmed, by the way, that the website interface for Duolingo’s Russian course doesn’t actually have grammar lessons either. I thought, oh, those essays are the introductions to them, the anon that messaged me about this must be pointing me toward that…
No, those essays are the sum total. That’s it. You can’t even charitably call them “lessons” at a stretch. They’re like, 300-500 words about concepts of grammar that may or may not be touched on in the accompanying lessons at all– mostly, not. (You’d think it’d be easy to include, as the essay’s example words, something you’d see in the practice drills, but they don’t.)
(For example, they explain the concept of word order in one of these essays, and then, well, I’m like twelve lessons later already and I still haven’t encountered the words they used in this example. I know him. → Я его́ зна́ю. I know Maria. → Я зна́ю Мари́ю.That includes words like “here”, “in this way”, “then” and so on. That’s their example. But the actual lesson includes actively 0 of those words. Why not do this with a word we’d see elsewhere? Even just– they use example names like Ivan and Dima, why would you use Maria here when that’s not one of the example names we’ve ever seen before? Clearly a totally different person wrote this, and not someone who’d actually looked at the lessons. That’s sort of a minor quibble but when it’s literally all you’re getting you’d think they’d at least… coordinate it? Especially when it’s in an unfamiliar alphabet and your learner is going to struggle with every single word. Also I still don’t know how to say “here” or “in this way” or “then”, and I don’t know how this essay’s content applies to the things I have learned. I just get the word order wrong and the question flags red and I redo it the way it suggests, and I don’t know why, because I don’t understand how it relates to the single example I was given using words I was never taught.)
My method for getting anything at all out of Duolingo as I wait to get the Russian textbook I’m borrowing is that I go to the lesson, write down and look up all the words it says I will learn, look through Google Translate’s related words, try to figure out what the difference is between the singulars and plurals and such, skim the explanatory essays on the Duolingo website interface in hopes of picking up something relevant, and then plow through the lessons by rote, usually with Translate open on the desktop and doing the lessons on my phone because the phone interface rewards you with about twice as many lingots as the desktop interface.
Like, not to bitch, but. There’s a lot of stuff in the Spanish lessons, and maybe the French and Italian, like, the basic ones they started with, that just aren’t there in the other languages like Russian and Japanese.
I’m not trying to get fluent, i’m trying to practice enough that I can read street signs and conduct basic negotiations. I just figured I’d come back and point out that, in my defense, it wasn’t that I really genuinely failed to notice entire features of the app. Those features literally don’t exist in my target language. I’m not that oblivious.
(Your picture was not posted)
Да, мама уже в Москве!
I’ve confirmed, by the way, that the website interface for Duolingo’s Russian course doesn’t actually have grammar lessons either. I thought, oh, those essays are the introductions to them, the anon that messaged me about this must be pointing me toward that…
No, those essays are the sum total. That’s it. You can’t even charitably call them “lessons” at a stretch. They’re like, 300-500 words about concepts of grammar that may or may not be touched on in the accompanying lessons at all– mostly, not. (You’d think it’d be easy to include, as the essay’s example words, something you’d see in the practice drills, but they don’t.)
(For example, they explain the concept of word order in one of these essays, and then, well, I’m like twelve lessons later already and I still haven’t encountered the words they used in this example. I know him. → Я его́ зна́ю. I know Maria. → Я зна́ю Мари́ю.That includes words like “here”, “in this way”, “then” and so on. That’s their example. But the actual lesson includes actively 0 of those words. Why not do this with a word we’d see elsewhere? Even just– they use example names like Ivan and Dima, why would you use Maria here when that’s not one of the example names we’ve ever seen before? Clearly a totally different person wrote this, and not someone who’d actually looked at the lessons. That’s sort of a minor quibble but when it’s literally all you’re getting you’d think they’d at least… coordinate it? Especially when it’s in an unfamiliar alphabet and your learner is going to struggle with every single word. Also I still don’t know how to say “here” or “in this way” or “then”, and I don’t know how this essay’s content applies to the things I have learned. I just get the word order wrong and the question flags red and I redo it the way it suggests, and I don’t know why, because I don’t understand how it relates to the single example I was given using words I was never taught.)
My method for getting anything at all out of Duolingo as I wait to get the Russian textbook I’m borrowing is that I go to the lesson, write down and look up all the words it says I will learn, look through Google Translate’s related words, try to figure out what the difference is between the singulars and plurals and such, skim the explanatory essays on the Duolingo website interface in hopes of picking up something relevant, and then plow through the lessons by rote, usually with Translate open on the desktop and doing the lessons on my phone because the phone interface rewards you with about twice as many lingots as the desktop interface.
Like, not to bitch, but. There’s a lot of stuff in the Spanish lessons, and maybe the French and Italian, like, the basic ones they started with, that just aren’t there in the other languages like Russian and Japanese.
I’m not trying to get fluent, i’m trying to practice enough that I can read street signs and conduct basic negotiations. I just figured I’d come back and point out that, in my defense, it wasn’t that I really genuinely failed to notice entire features of the app. Those features literally don’t exist in my target language. I’m not that oblivious.
(Your picture was not posted)
