Five Golden Trees

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jeff_lindqvist
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun Jun 25, 2017 9:32 pm

Yeah, I avoided it like the plague until very recently when I realised the benefits (basically: more points in less time). Even if you get stuck on the first sentence and fail totally, it's nothing like the torture from a regular review with a limited set of sentences which you have to get right in order to finish the exercise. The possibility of multiple skill improvement is also something I like.
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Whodathunkitz
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby Whodathunkitz » Sun Jun 25, 2017 9:44 pm

I've only used the website a few times.

Mostly I use the Android app on a phone while doing other things, or being able to stop Duolingo while I feed, play with kid or something comes up. I also used to use it while waiting in meetings for people, public transport.

I believe the experience on Android is VERY different to the website. Same for Memrise. But I have blocked Memrise updates when they stopped non wifi use. So my Memrise is probably a year or more out of date, so I can't compare.

Phone use suits my situation much better.

With games I can rack up a lot of hours with little motivation needed.


I was wondering if it might be good to stagger your five languages on Duolingo. Start each a month apart?

Think about whether related languages should be separated by an unrelated one. That way the related languages are 2 months apart for less interference as they will be at different levels.

Good luck.
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Sun Jun 25, 2017 10:31 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:
I was wondering if it might be good to stagger your five languages on Duolingo. Start each a month apart?

Think about whether related languages should be separated by an unrelated one. That way the related languages are 2 months apart for less interference as they will be at different levels.


Thanks again Whodathunkitz,

Yep, a super good issue, and one I have not devoted much (or really any) planning to yet. Which is very different from my previous wild swing at language learning as set out on the old site some time ago, where I spent essentially all my time planning out a multiple language learning strategy to avoid interference problems, take advantage of efficiencies, etc., all the while not really actually studying or learning much.

I have previously taken tepid swings at French (probably a high A2 now?), German, Spanish, Icelandic, the Japanese syllabary and a wild month-long ride through Toki Pona, the latter of which was the most fun I have had. Super concerned about interference, stalls, my brain exploding, etc. with the current ill-advised scheme.

I had made a reckless commitment to myself to start and continue with Italian, before coming up with an even more reckless plan to grow and nurture five Duolingo trees, and before an even far more recklesslier* commitment to join a friend in 8 weeks of Spanish Advanced Beginner evening classes beginning late September.

The smart thing to do would be to pause Italian since I'm only a few weeks into it, charge into Spanish for the next, say, 4 months and only then return to Italian. But I have lived my life to this point stubbornly refusing the smart thing, so....

Current plan is to continue with Italian to say mid-August, then park and maintain but not grow whatever Italian I may have learned (sort of like a secret garden) while switching to study Spanish. Then either return to Italian, or at that point, turn to German and maintain Spanish and continue to maintain Italian. And then have a nervous breakdown, and then decide what to do at that point.

Part of the fun of the five golden tree idea will be figuring out from ongoing experience what turns out to have worked or not worked!

thanks again,
lavengro (still not my real name, and not actually my original fake name)

* "recklesslier" - pretty sure not a real word in either English, Italian, Spanish, German, French or Czech/Japanese.
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Whodathunkitz
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby Whodathunkitz » Sun Jun 25, 2017 11:17 pm

Just my thoughts. Like yourself I'm prone to jump onto fads. The best thing I can do is find games etc that make it easy to put the time in. Suboptimal in terms of efficiency but keeps things improving.

Duolingo

100 plus days into Spanish now only needs 2 or 3 sessions per day to maintain at gold.

Start each a month apart and keep golden in that order. Ie don't practice second until first is gold.

By the time you start the fourth one (three months in) the first will be easy, second gold most of the time and third improving.

By the time you start the fifth, first two hardly need any work, third mostly gold, fourth improving.

Has the advantage of being simple, check 1, practice until gold or out of time, do 2 the same etc.

All assumptions based on Android experience.
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Sun Jun 25, 2017 11:53 pm

Whodathunkitz wrote:
Start each a month apart ....


There would be a guaranteed trip to a sanitorium for me on deck for sure if I were to try that!

Apart from an untimely intrusion of Spanish in the fall, I was thinking more along the lines of four to six month blocks per language, with something creative about maintenance along the way and during the final six months of the three year projected time line.
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Mon Jun 26, 2017 2:03 am

Summary to date:

Duolingo Italian - Level 6 - at present, 5 of 66 modules completed and golden.

Memrise Italian 1 - 35 of 206 words in "LTM" - long term memory.

I started Memrise Italian at 1,632,346 points with a Membrain ranking from previous Memrise activities. I am hoping to run that up to a Meminence (10,000,000 point) rank, at which point I expect I will run madly amok with power while sitting on a golden throne, surrounded by trees (which are themselves golden - sort of a theme here).
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Tristano
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby Tristano » Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:24 pm

Hi!
Since I use Duolingo myself and I'm also interested in multiple languages, I have a little suggestion for you.
Instead of maniacally keeping the tree gold, you can instead use your hard gained skills and learn new stuff while learning a new language.
Memrise and Duolingo are a very good duo, I would add a third element: Clozemaster. Maybe you can start Clozemaster after having completed the Duolingo Italian tree and simultaneously starting your new tree (French for example). You can even ladder languages using different combinations (like French for Italian speakers) both with Duolingo and Clozemaster, in this way creating sinergies between your languages. Czech or Japanese would be wise to start last for they are way harder than the other languages in your list (but do first what motivates you the most).
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:09 am

Thanks Tristano, I will give Clozemaster a look in the near future.

I love the idea of laddering languages with Duolingo, and if I brush up on my French, I might be able to study, German from French. I doubt I will get far enough in Italian or Spanish to be able to use that as my base language, but who knows? One thing I would like to try is a reverse tree - that is, once Italian is completed, "learn" English from Italian. I have read that can really cement whatever has been learned.
Last edited by lavengro on Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Mon Jul 03, 2017 4:18 am

Status report:

Duolingo: level 7 (of a possible 25) achieved. 8 of 66 units completed and freshly gilded.

Memrise: Italian 1 - 91 words (of 208) in long term memory. Just shy of 1.7 million points.

I sat in on an evening Italian Language class recently, but don't think I will be returning for further classes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbMNlDmSCoY
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lavengro
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Re: Five Golden Trees

Postby lavengro » Sat Jul 15, 2017 8:40 pm

Just back from vacation, during which I completed exactly as much language study as expected, though I did learn a few words of Olelo Hawai'i and engaged in some very broken French language discussion with a couple from Québec met on the beach. As a result, I have lost the golden status of 4 of the 8 units of Italian previously achieved.

Wound up reading my first Dostoevsky (in translation): Notes from Underground.

I, for example, would not be the least bit surprised if suddenly, out of the blue, amid the universal future reasonableness, some gentleman of ignoble, or, better, of retrograde and jeering physiognomy, should emerge, set his arms akimbo, and say to us all: “Well gentlemen, why don’t we reduce all of this reasonableness to dust with one good kick, for the sole purpose of sending all these logarithms to the devil and living once more according to our own stupid will!” That would still be nothing, but what is offensive is that he’d be sure to find followers: that’s how man is arranged.

Jury is still out as to whether Russian literature is up my alley, though I recall enjoying some Nikolai Gogol (in translation) years and years ago. Decided just now to choose Russian rather than Japanese or Czech as my fifth golden tree: Duolingo Czech is 99% hatched, but once released will be working through improvements in beta for a while, and does not appear to me to be as well supported in Memrise yet as Russian or Japanese, and I have heard that Czech is a little more challenging to learn for an English speaker than Russian. And Duolingo Japanese at 68% hatched is still some time off. So, for better or worse, Russian it will be. Am proposing to engage in, say, 15 minutes of Russian per day as a background learning activity while studying other languages (little chance of language interference), until tackling it in a more substantive manner down the road.
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