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- Microphone being too generous?
Microphone being too generous?
Has anyone else noticed this? Sometimes I can say completely different things than what Duolingo wants me to say, and it will count me correct. I'm just wondering if anyone else thinks the microphone is being too forgiving.
50 Comments
I've done that with German. My guess it sort of counts the syllables. I think it is a good way to introduce idioms and other constructs where the beginner would have little chance of translating it. (Now that the translation is not given, that is less useful. However usually the translations can be found with the comments.
You're not the first to notice.
http://www.duolingo.com/comment/787255
http://www.duolingo.com/comment/781351
But I definitely agree.
Definitely agreed. When I started with DL and French (for he first time in my life) I was like - wooow...I must be really good and my french pronunciation must be really great (it was like 95% success) - but then i realised that mic is waaay to much benevolent when it comes to incorrect speaking. I found out when I tried Rosetta Stone and was thunderstruck when 60-70% of my speaking was unrecognised and marked as incorrect. Then I tried to use this "like Siri" dictation function on my Mac (changed language to French) and only confirmed that my "great" speaking isn't so great after all :)
DL do you plan on improving this? Speaking is definitely important to all of us when learning new language and without native speakers around us is really hard to realise that your speaking sucks.
Voice recognition is really tricky, even with good microphone, a native speaker and with a large sample of the user's voice.
I think the choice of going toward being more tolerant is reasonable as you do not want to alienate your beginner speakers(like me) and it still pushes you to try to speak a little if you do not practice with every sentences. It is also possible to replay your voice and see how it compares (thought the result can be frightening...).
That said, improvements in the voice recognition would be great, especially now, with the translate and speak feature, it is quite obvious when Duolingo is tolerant, which I am generally reporting.
I feel the opposite way to you. I do the microphone excerises via my the app on my phone. It annoys me beacuse 9 times out of 10 it will say that it is not correct. Even though i'm pretty certain it is correct. I will then get frustrated, say some gibberish with only minimal resemblance to the question and it will say that it is correct.
I love the idea but i find it way too frustrating and annoying. It was a cool update at the beginning, it now just irritates me, when ever one of those questions pop up.
271
I haven't been asked to do the microphone - is there a setting for that? I am doing Spanish. I would like to try it
I sometimes test my pronunciation on my phone translation apps, google translate, and iTranslate Voice. If the app can get what I am trying to say, even word by word, then I am happy.
Each of these apps seems to have it's own strengths, but I do not know which of their Spanish options best fits the version we learn here. (Google translate has: Argentina, Latin America, Mexico and Spain options, while iTranslate has Spain, Mexico, and United States.) Any thoughts?
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I agree that it's a bit too generous - but i still use it as it's still worth the practice parroting what duo says. That's how children learn, after all.
The microphone marks everything I say as correct, even if I say things that are completely wrong. It doesn't ever let me listen back to what I've said, which is what I assume the play button is supposed to do. What's up with that? I know I can turn it off, but I do find that when I'm not making fun of the feature it does motivate me to say the sentences out loud with my best accent, regardless. It's like an 'A For Effort' system.
1299
There are still problems four years later. Sometimes I get an OK after having said only half the sentence. Sometimes I get wrong without really understanding why.
304
This happens to me in Chrome (on a PC), but not in my app on an Android tablet. In Chrome, it'll count me as "correct!" even before I've finished speaking. On the tablet, some words it never recognizes me speaking. (On my phone, it always think the mic is turned off -- it's not.)
I have stopped using Duolingo as a new user as it is pointless as the performance of the recording is terrible sometimes it is correct more often than not it shows errors and my wife who is pitch perfect in French gets the same results and it is not my sound or mic system as it works ok in other apps so Duolingo is like using a broken app that is so disappointing. They should do a sound test or some basic stuff or own up to a lousy app BUT if I use my iPad instead of MacBook it is ok?