"Die Schüler setzen sich Ziele."
Translation:The students set goals for themselves.
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the behaviour is not standardised across questions. At first i thought duolingo raised it's pedantry level the higher up we got, now i think it's just cranky.
This is a reflexive pronoun meaning "themselves" in this sentence. http://www.dict.cc/?s=sich+ein+Ziel+setzen
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I didn't capitalize d in 'die', and duolingo reported that this is an error. Is 'die' in this sentence used as a noun?
You mean the d in 'Die Schüler'? It must be capitalized since it's the first word of the sentence. That's obligatory in both English and German.
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I've been wondering because the same mistake was considered OK on other problems. I know that's obligatory but even when I write 'i' instead of 'I' for the English translation of 'ich', or writing 'german' instead of 'German' this wasn't considered as incorrect. The same thing happens when I omit the capitalization of the first letter in English-to-German translations.
Normally the capitalisation and punctuation is not counted, even on nouns they just give a little 'remember' note but don't mark it wrong. That's weird. :/
I didn't capitalize the "die" and often don't capitalize the first letter of a sentence. I've never been penalized. Even if I forget to capitalize a German noun I just get a reminder but never lose a heart. You must have had some other error.
My answer "The pupils set goals" was not accepted. Correct solutions are listed as both "The pupils aim high" and "The students set goals for themselves". Can't get why the "set goals" can be used only with "the students", and where did this "aim high" come from...
Perhaps because a literal translation would be 'set goals for themselves' (otherwise you ignore the sich), while 'aim high' may be accepted as a looser translation. To me 'aim high' seems a little too far off - what if their goals are very achievable? But maybe this makes sense to a native speaker.
No, I agree with you. As a native English speaker, "aim high" doesn't carry the same meaning to me as "set goals for myself", and I wouldn't use the two interchangeably like the provided solutions suggest. I don't think that "aim high" should be accepted as a translation.
To reply to KevinOHara3 question accrding to Pons Dictionary " sich ein Ziel setzen" means to set oneself a goal.
However, the sentence "The pupils set themselves the goals" was also not accepted...