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- Gilded German in 40 days: wha…
Gilded German in 40 days: what you need to know
So after 3 years since I first started using Duolingo to learn German, today I finally finished the skill tree for the first time, with everything golden. It took me around 50 hours of studying, but it could be done in much less time, with the same learning curve.
After finishing Duo's tree, I'm currently being placed at B1.1 according to Expath (44 right answers out of 100). Awesome!
Here is what I discovered about my learning process, and I suppose this could be helpful for many of you out there in order to speed up the process and avoid mistakes.
Don't stop.
This is the single most important tip I could give. In all those years, I would go long streaks (I believe my longest streak was 90-ish or something a few years ago), quit for a while and once I came back, I would discover I had forgotten most of what I learned. Once you get back after stopping for a while, lessons feel a lot harder than they actually are. You start making many mistakes and this is very frustrating. You will start to doubt yourself and what you learned so far.
Faster is better.
The faster you commit yourself to finish the tree, the better. I know this may sound counter-intuitive, but by doing it like this, you'll always keep what you learned fresh for the next lessons. This will make them feel easier, and easy lessons equals a faster course and the building of confidence in the target language.
Forget grammar.
German grammar is hard! If you focus too much on it, you'll find yourself hitting barriers that, with the little understanding of the language you currently have, will feel impossible to trespass. By following the two previous tips, you won't have problems to finish Duo lessons at all. It's all about keeping the Woo Woo Train of Knowledge moving.
Most Germans can't even explain you their grammar, they just know it. The same goes for all the other languages around the world. Kids don't learn to speak their mother tongue by going through extensive grammar textbooks.
This quote was a game changer for me:
“Communicative competence is not a matter of knowing rules, but a matter of knowing a stock of partially pre-assembled patterns” (Widdowson, 1989).
Once I understood that, my mind exploded. I'm a sponge now! Slowly absorbing German. :)
Make your daily goals based on words learned, not skills learned nor XP.
I only decided that I would finish the tree by day 40 when I was around day 20. So, during half of the time in these past 6 weeks, I wasn't as committed as in the past few days. Having a definite goal will keep you on track.
And the best way to keep track on the vocabulary you're learning with Duo is using Memrise. Here's the course that has all the words used here for the German course. Memrise is going to be your best friend if your goal is to actually retain new words in your long-term memory. It's based on spaced-repetition and many other scientifically proven mnemonic methods.
So, our German course has 2348 words. If you want to finish it like I did in 40 days, you divide it by 40 and that will give you roughly 59 words per day. I know this may sound like a lot, but it's not. Memrise keeps it very simple and fast to do. I recommend doing the equivalent Duo lesson in Memrise first. This way, you'll move faster through the tree without the need of clicking on the words to know their meaning. You'll already know the vocab, now you'll be learning how the words are arranged and interact with each other (aka grammar) in a natural way.
If you have the time and enthusiasm, do more than your daily minimum goal.
This will give you a safe margin for those days you can't study, no matter what the reason is. There will be days that you'll lack the time to do it, other days the motivation, and some days you'll just be plain tired and only want to chill. Compensate this by learning more in the days you feel like learning or have more spare time, like weekends.
But even in the days that you just can't do your self-established minimum goal, don't forget tip #1. You still have to show here at Duolingo and Memrise and keep your streak alive.
Well this is it, hope that helps! I'm starting to understand German, what was once just gibberish now makes sense. The next 2 months will be crucial to consolidate what I learned with Duo. I'll be using Glossika and Yabla. Cheers!
42 Comments
Herzlichen Glückwunsch! You've got some nice insights there. I love the Woo Woo Train of Knowledge! X-)
I absolutely agree with the strategy of learning the corresponding words of a Duolingo lesson on Memrise first, and only then doing the actual lesson. (I wouldn't have survived the Russian tree without using this method.)
Going through the tree quickly is indeed a nice way to keep it interesting without getting too bogged down in the (tricky) details. But with a grammar heavy language like German (and Russian...) one does have to tackle the grammar eventually. But I guess having some idea of how the language works and knowing the words one is using helps once it's time for the serious grammar learning. (At least I hope it does.)
Thanks for your reply! And yes, eventually grammar will come in, but it's best to avoid it if you have no idea what's going on (beginners). Along those 3 years, venturing in grammar was always my dead end. Every time I would study it, I felt overwhelmed and would simply stop and lose interest in everything at once. So much time lost because of this mistake! If I were to study grammar now, things would go a lot easier. But I will push it a while longer, and Science is backing me up on this decision.
This quote was a game changer for me:
“Communicative competence is not a matter of knowing rules, but a matter of knowing a stock of partially pre-assembled patterns” (Widdowson, 1989).
Once I understood that, my mind exploded. I'm a sponge now! Slowly absorbing German. :)
I fully agree with learning the vocabulary using another system. I used Anki, and Memrise seems a good option too. Duolingo (at least the website) involves too much typing for drilling the vocabulary. I used the Anki default of maximum 20 new words a day though, and that ends up being a serious load in steady state once the spaced repetition fully kicks in. Personally I wouldn't generally recommend going beyond 20 words a day before trying it for a couple of weeks.
In case the 40 days is intimidating for anyone, I'll say I did first did the German tree in 90 days and don't think even that was necessarily sensible. It was fully gold when I finished, but the reality is I couldn't keep that pace up and keep it all gold. It wasn't until much later that it stayed gold most days. I don't think I could learn the material in the German skill tree in anything like 50 hours.
Similarly I rushed through the "reverse" English from German tree, but when the realities of everyday life kicked in, most of it rapidly degilded. I'm working back through it more steadily, but the last section is currently all not gold. I don't think I should have rushed it all.
Some advice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aOO3oBZnAY
English dubbed version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Q_JYYcBP2Q#t=14m45s
I don't know why the word number difference, I did find people saying different numbers too, but it's probably just a different counting system between the guy who created the course in Memrise and Duo. I can safely say that because not once I ran into new vocab in Duo after doing Memrise first. Also, the creator of the course at Memrise is constantly updating it and you can shout the new words at him in the thread for it on the description of the link I gave. He usually replies within a day.
Also, nobody said that gilding the course was the end of it. This is just the beginning.
Very insightful. I am currently using tiny cards and I love it. It works. I will try the method that you mentioned of studying the vocab beforehand. Thanks! And how fluent are you in German. I've been learning for 2.1 months and I can have a basic basic conversation. I am also using pimsleur though.
Just did a placement test at http://www.expath.de and according to it, I'm at B1.1 (44 out of 100)! Awesome!
Not sure how fluent I am, I'm trying to do that placement test at DW.com but the webpage keeps crashing... I'd guess I'm between A1-A2. I can read and understand simple stuff but when it comes to conversation, I'm still not there yet. But my German will grow a lot in these next 2 months!
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I have Pimsleur (you are talking about the CD's correct? I bought the entire set.), but my CD player got misplaced during a move 2 years ago. I know I can go back to that at some time. I go from learning system to learning system; I've used Memrise (I should go back to that to augment vocabulary). Last half year or less I've been steady on Duolingo, and I watch any German movie, TV show or listen to any German podcast that I can get my hands on. I had 3 years of German in H.S., and 1 year in college. I was stationed in Germany in the 1970's- 1980's and because I was married we lived off base; which meant a lot of time speaking with locals. I did horrible in German in H.S. It was probably my worse grades but we were told that we had to take a language to go to college and I was into science so German seemed like a good choice. Little did I know that I later would be in the Army and stationed in Germany. I am determined to get back what I once knew and go beyond. - Susan
It seems that the faster you go through the tree, the lower your word count. I have seen many reports on here of people having 3000 words. I am on a slower pace, being on a 213 day streak, yet having 22 skills yet to get through, and my word count is currently 1578. I go back and re-gild my tree frequently, rather than moving forward faster. Duo adds new words to skills I have finished previously.
Could be. My word count in Duolingo is currently at 1601. But if you finish the tree fast that's not a problem, because if you're really committed to learn German, you'll keep doing the tree for it to stay gold. I'll review 20 skills today, so if there is new vocab in those, I'll learn it anyways, and so on! But by finishing it faster, I've gained the described benefits in the thread.
Never the phrase "you're an animal" sounded so flattering before. Thank you! And yes, I'm a Pro Member... and there's no secret to it, I just make myself a daily word goal and stick to it! The points come naturally. If I wasn't using so much the "Turbo!" feature, I'd have a lot more points since the Normal Review racks up a lot more, but currently I don't have enough time for it, unfortunately.
I think its name in English is Speed Review... not sure if it's only limited to Pros, but they'll give you 100 words and you have to tap the meaning of them in a short amount of time. You can only make 2 mistakes, the 3rd one will resume the Review. This is good if you're short in time, but terrible for getting points. You get like 50 points for each right answer (the Basic Review will give you 150 each).
How come your word count is so low? Did you reset your progress? Why? https://www.memrise.com/user/sujiro/courses/learning/
I'm actually doing the exact same in Memrise like you with the speed reviews.
We seem to have very similar methods and approach to learning.
I've followed you there to see how are you progressing.
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Hast du ein leben? ;-) I just lost 9 levels in German because I was trying to correct my profile. So I've been spending the day testing out of stuff I already worked through. Aargh! Oh, I'm going to give you a Lingot for working so hard. - Susan