Denis' Micro Blog

Okay...

So a while back, I started to learn a new language using Duolingo.

Now, a few days ago, I managed to do this...

Well... For those of you who don't know. That is the highest league where you compete against the most addicted, I mean, willing to learn people. 

Now that I reached the "top" of that grind. What did I actually learn?

Ehrm... Yes. Let me elaborate. Reading works pretty well. (English and German knowledge helps I guess...)

En schrijven ook. 😉

When we talk about listening... It starts to get worse.  Aaaand, we won't talk about speaking. I'd rather not.

But it was fun and kinda addicting. That's the power of gamification. That's the process of implementing game elements into a non-gaming context to make it feel like a game.

Also, those random moments of kinda "stupid" sentences, which you have to translate. They provided a few laughs. I mean. How can you stay serious when a sentence like "I am an apple" comes up? 

Yeah. But it isn't sunshine and rainbows. You get intuitively taught various language concepts by different examples. When you're looking at grammar concepts, where you don't get any formal definition, and you're always unsure if you got the concept right... In the end, you still have to look it up elsewhere. Not good. 

Something similar applies to important words. I mean. Something feels a bit wrong if you learned the word "rhinoceros" a lot earlier, than the word "with". No word shaming at this stage, but I think you get my point.

So yeah. At first, it all seems great, and you also learn a lot, more than with other online learning methods. But it isn't the best method either. Well... That was just a personal retrospective, and maybe you get something out of that as well... I guess.

See ya.