Comment by anbende | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anbende | Hacker News Reader

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You asked if your French was good, so here you go. I have some experience with French standardized testing. I had to pass a B2 (upper intermediate) exam for Canadian immigration and a C1 (lower advanced) exam for my professional license in Quebec.

I think this actually highlights a lot of the problems that people have with duolingo. You aren't terrible at French, but you are missing exactly the skills people malign Duolingo for not teaching. There are problems with word order, which looks like a lot of word to word translation or bad Google Translate (e.g., "Est-ce que mon francais bon?" is odd and unnatural). Your present-tense is spotty (e.g., it should be "j'apprends" not "je apprendre"), and your ability to use other tenses correctly appears non-existent (e.g., it should be "j'ai changé" not "j'ai changement" which translates as "I have change").

I don't think you'd pass a B1 exam (lower intermediate) given the above. Maaaybe A2 (upper elementary) for comprehension if your comprehension is better than your production. I suspect you'd have a great deal of difficulty communicating with a native speaker without the help of translation software as well.

Yep, I don't think my French even compares to a primary school student. I just haven't been learning long enough, and I speak to no native speakers on a daily basis. I've probably been learning for less than a year. I think A2 is generous, I think I'm still learning at an A1 level.

I'm hoping after 2 to 4 years, I'll have a bit more understanding.

Thank you for your insights!

1.) Genuinely, do you seriously argue that someone who took French for a year two classes a week would wrote something much better then that? Because from what I see, this is actually pretty motivating and good result after a year of painless causual learning.

2.) I really don't understand why your benchmark would be formal B1 test after a year. That is too high of an expectation. Most people do not reach it with the usual "a lesson with tutor a week or two classes a week in a year either.

The post in French did not mention how long they had been studying. That came in a later comment, so that wasn't part of my thinking. I think you're right that B1 in a year would require more work than a casual 2 classes per week.

So I wasn't giving B1 as a benchmark for any amount of time, because no amount of time was given in the post I responded to. I was just answering the question about the quality of their French, since they had asked that in their post.

Does the fact thar they have been learning less than a year change your mind at all here?

I don't think most people would pass a B1 exam in any language after only a year of learning unless they were extremely motivated and maybe a bit of a language savant.

I suspect most Canadian-born anglophones who took French through high school but stopped there would not be able to do better, despite having years of French instruction in classrooms.

Change my mind? I hadn't meant to make a value judgement about their progress. How could I not knowing how long they've studied?

My comment was about the current level of their French. It's in the elementary range A1-A2, with some problems that look Duolingo-specific around tenses and conjugation.

Would a year of classroom instruction produce better results? I think it would produce different results. I think they'd know basic present-tense verb conjugation, especially first-person. I think they might also get the passé composé (main tense used for past actions) and "aller-verb" ("going to" verb) construction for future tense (which wasn't relevant to the post).

My main point was about the Duolingo-specific errors. Classroom instruction tries to give grammar and conjugation tools that will allow you to construct French. It does not always do so well or efficiently (Language Transfer is much better, IMO). The French I was attempting to assess was missing a lot of this. The author appeared to have words but be missing a lot of grammar, conjugation and common word order information. Duolingo does not really convey these building blocks, and that's one of the primary criticisms of the method.

Yes, your analysis of my deficits also reflects what language concepts I wish Duolingo would focus on, but for some reason it’s dozens(?) or hundreds(?) of units before you get to other tenses.

They don’t focus on word order explicitly at all, and instead correct you with guidelines only after you fail to answer, which I find to be incorrect instruction.

All in all, I’m learning something, but I feel frustrated with the lessons taught and at such pace.

Why should it take me 2 years or more of instruction before I learn tenses or appropriate word order?

Their focus seems to be primarily on building vocabulary, but it too is spotty. There’s no app feature in any language to look up common language features like how to pronounce the alphabet or count.

It’s bizarre. A United States preschool class will cover these things.

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