I have a cuntload of free time so I feel like learning a language. The furtherest I ever got was a D in French at school, of which I only remember the odd phrase. I've been having a look at Duolingo which looks fine and most importantly is free.
Anyone with any experience of learning languages using the internet? How long does it take to become competent?
Torrenting Rosetta Stone is also free. I've done a few lessons on that (I did eventually pay for it when it was less than half price) and it's pretty good.
I've been learning Spanish from DuoLingo, it says I'm 39% fluent which sounds like total nonsense to me. If you turn off the bullshit sound effects the experience is better.
DuoLingo can get incredibly repetitive: they'll ask you the same sentences over and over again (ask you to translate from the foreign language into the native language & vice versa, in the same exercise). Some of the sentences don't have much of a real world application either. On the whole, I'd say it's useful and quite fun. Retention seems like a bit of a problem though.
It's good for learning languages from scratch or near scratch, as I found it frustrating slow paced to top up my German.
>>5699 >DuoLingo can get incredibly repetitive: they'll ask you the same sentences over and over again (ask you to translate from the foreign language into the native language & vice versa, in the same exercise)
It's almost as though repetition is used to aid retention.
I think that Duolingo is by far the best entry-level course available, but you'll need to supplement it with other resources to develop real competence. Effective language learning can't be done passively - you need to get stuck in and start speaking and listening, even when you feel totally out of your depth. Without that interaction with the real language, you'll get stuck in that schoolboy stage of knowing words and phrases in isolation without the intuition needed to understand native speakers or express yourself effectively.
Start listening to real French speech early. Even if you don't understand it, you'll start to pick up on pronunciation and the rhythms of speech. Phone-in shows on the radio can be useful, as you'll hear a wide range of accents.
Speaking practice is absolutely crucial, and something that people learning independently often miss out on. Fortunately, the internet makes this easy - services like ConversationExchange and SharedTalk will pair you up with native speakers over voice chat.
Tools like Memrise and Anki can be very useful for building vocabulary; For grammar, I think the best option is a second-hand textbook and a lot of practice.
In terms of how long it will take you to become competent, that depends on your definition of competence and the effectiveness of your practice. See the link below for the standardised definitions of language proficiency. Generally speaking, an English speaker learning a major European language should take about 150 hours to confidently deal with practical day-to-day situations (A2), about 400-500 hours to hold a relaxed conversation(B1-B2) and 1000-1200 hours to achieve true fluency (C2).
Once you're starting to make progress with the Duolingo course, I might suggest going off on a tangent slightly and taking the course at the link below on learning how to learn. It shouldn't take you more than about eight hours to complete, but will make all your subsequent study much more effective. The way we're taught in schools (especially the way we're taught languages) is incredibly ineffective, and is much better at creating the illusion of competence than actual competence.
Get some penfriends and have a search address bar shortcut for wordreference (i have wrie/wrei for italian, wrse/wres for spanish etc). Also google translate. And find a nice conjugation website.
Learning your first foreign language is tricky, because you have to learn the fundamentals of grammar first. Once you have that abstract model in your mind, it's easy to apply to further languages.
Online games can be good too, if they have are not all out action, but have a tribe/guild room where people just hang out.
If you want to learn French, the best thing I have found are audio lessons by Michel Thomas, which I think was because of a thread we've had about languages in the past. The way he teaches is just genius and I'm still amazed at how simple he makes it all seem. You can torrent/download them for free if you wish but they're definitely worth the money, I'd say, then you can just bung them on your mp3 and do half an hour a day or whatever.
Thanks for the posts everyone. One of particular interest is >>5701 with your 'learning to learn' course. I kind of forgot how to properly learn stuff some time after I left secondary school which has really fucked me over since so I think this may really help me.
I'm probably going to Italy on holiday in the next year or two so I'm tempted to try that first.
