mentecuerpo wrote:Thank you for your contribution, Deinonysus.
Do you find that you can learn new words with Duolingo besides the written practice?
Lately, I have been thinking of doing Duolingo in combination with listening to natural language content as much as I can during my day.
Of course, I will not understand the new language sounds with extensive listening, but Duolingo will help me decode the sounds as I slowly learn new words with the app.
Yes, Duolingo is quite effective at teaching new vocabulary if you use it right. It should be used in a browser where you can type your answers from scratch, not in the app which usually forces you to use word banks. Duolingo uses a combination of overlearning (you need to complete a lesson five times to finish it) and spaced repetition (completed skills will "break" and need to be reviewed).
What's even more effective is combining multiple resources together with media. This is core to why Barry Farber's "Multiple Track Attack" (also adapted and evangelized by Iguanamon, as referenced earlier in the thread) is so effective. IMO Duolongo's spaced repetition schedule is much too slow, but this doesn't matter so much if you use it in conjunction with other courses and media. For example, I learned several new German words yesterday in Duolingo, but one of them (Verein, meaning club), is now seared into my memory because I coincidentally ran into it in a YouTube video as well.
I'm not sure if Duolingo is the best for decoding a language's sound system, but depending on the quality of a course's audio it can certainly contribute. Of my main trio of resources, Pimsleur is probably the best for wrapping your head around a new sound system, but what's even better is to find some something with minimal pair drills. I had a surprising amount of trouble finding anything good for German (I still struggle with long vs. short ä, ü, and ö despite having studied German for many years and having completed all five levels of Pimsleur), but I'm trying out the Fluent Forever app.