Brief weekly update

[fuzzyred]

I sort of watered the flowers this week (probably not as often as I should have, but they aren't dead or wilting, so I think I'm ok), but I didn't weed. I maintained my streak on duolingo, and surpassed my daily goal, though I did do less than last week. Did a tiny bit of editing, worked on my basket a little, and saw a friend and his partner last night (first time meeting her but she was really nice and it went well.)

I would like to weed this weekend, and make progress on Duolingo, my basket, and edits. I'm feeling kind of zapped though, so I might spend all weekend on the couch (I have a few Netflix recommendations, so that wouldn't be the worst thing.)

On a related note, for those who use Duolingo, do you get word banks in your lessons/tests? Duo seems to default to them for me even though they never had them when I first started. It feels a tiny bit like cheating to use the word banks when testing out of a skill, but I frequently mess up phrasing while still catching the meaning of the sentence, so I don't feel too guilty about using them. (And I do try to translate it in my head before looking.)

Comments

[ex_flameandsong751]

I get word banks some of the time but not all of the time. I don't, IMO, think of it as cheating because it's still possible to get it wrong (either with wrong words from the bank or the wrong order; in the Norwegian course specifically there are some sentence translations which feel completely out of order to me as an American English speaker and where I've gotten it wrong even though I had all the words correct but had them out of order, like really minor stuff), and a lot of times in the courses that's your first introduction to a word or sentence so you're coming into it cold and have to choose between unfamiliar words in the bank. Just my $.02.

[fuzzyred]

It does depend on the day, and maybe the course, but usually it starts me with a word bank, unless I switch it to typing (which I have done because clicking on the words kind of sucks on my touch pad XD). I have also gotten the word bank ones wrong, usually by accidentally missing a word, or misreading the words and hence picking the wrong one. Also, it still teaches you the words, if not quite as well as having to get them to stick in your brain without help.

Also, squeeeee, because I just got the Level 10 Sage achievement for getting 30,000XP overall!!!!

[ex_flameandsong751]

At least with my lessons, it does seem that they throw the word bank at you less and expect you to be able to type the translation more around level 4, and then even more at level 5. I personally would struggle a lot more if I didn't have the use of the word bank the first few levels and had to do it all without help, but that's just my brain and how I learn and probably also the idiosyncracies of the Norwegian course.

Congrats on the 30k XP! That's very impressive. I'm hoping to get there myself. :D

[fuzzyred]

That is good to know. Most of my skills (that I'm working on) are level 0 or level 1 right now, so that might be why. But French is throwing new exercises at me now, I think because I have tested out of a lot of skills, and most of my tree is level 1 or higher. I now have exercises where they ask me what part of a sentence means, either in English, or with other French words (English example: "will buy" is equivalent to "going to buy"). I would definitely be having a harder time without out the word bank too. For sure there would be a lot less tired progress on duolingo; thinking from scratch is *hard*.

Thanks! Over 23,000 of that is in French O.O I'm sure you will make it! You seem to be doing a lot lately, and have a lot of languages you want to learn. :)

[warriorsavant]

No word banks, but I'm at a fairly early level. I do put words I'm trying to learn into Anki. (If you're not familiar with Anki, it's a really good electronic flashcard like program. https://ankiweb.net/about )

[fuzzyred]

Ooo, I like that idea. I'll have to give it a look. I've also been toying with writing down sentence structure rules for some of the languages, because it's not explicitly stated anywhere I can see.

[warriorsavant]

I started using it several years ago, when I realized I was falling behind on keeping up on my professional knowledge, and had gotten out of the habit of knowing how to study. Now that I’m using it, I think I’m a better student than ever. I not only use it for professional knowledge, but also general knowledge (misc bits of whatever that I want to learn), French, and more recently Vietnamese. The jury is still out on that last, but overall, I find it a great learning tool for facts.

[fuzzyred]

That does sound like a very useful tool. I will definitely need to look into it. I was never great at studying to start with, so this might help.