I’m taking a CEFR A2 Russian language exam in a few minutes. Let’s see if a massive Duolingo addiction is all it akes to crack it.

  • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Hooray! Good luck! I just finished up the Duolingo Chinese course yesterday. How is the Russian course? Do you feel pretty fluent?

      • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        Ehhh… I wouldn’t say I’m fluent, that’s for sure. I can grasp simple conversations, and I would say I can discuss things via text pretty okay, but outside of some, say business specific vocab, I wouldn’t even put my level of fluency at that of a high schooler. Their speaking detection errs so far on the side of “just accept anything”, that most speaking portions I get about 3 words out out of the entire sentence and it auto accepts the entire thing. So my vocal fluency is absolute trash, my tones are miserable, and other than my wife, most Chinese people can’t understand me for shit lmao.

        I’d recommend against it for Chinese entirely, honestly. I only pushed on because it seemed okay when I started and I paid for a full year, so I figured I might as well use as much of what I paid for as I can. Now I think I’m going to hire a private online tutor because there’s no formal Chinese education near me since the Confucius institute closed, and have them really drill my tones and teach me more complex subjects like poetry and geopolitics.

    • pancake@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      6 months ago

      No, tbh I don’t. I did okay in the written test, but I’m sure I can’t manage a conversation.

    • Comrade Rain@lemmygrad.ml
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      6 months ago

      Not the topic starter, but at some time I have sifted through that course. Seems pretty good for a free course. Of course one might need some additional materials, more grammar-oriented, depending on your learning needs, but otherwise, as somebody already pretty fluent in Russian, I can say that it is decent.

      • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
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        6 months ago

        Thanks, I might check it out while I still have a subscription. Russian is a language I want to learn also.

    • pancake@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      6 months ago

      Surprisingly, it did go pretty well! As expected, not very great on the writing skills side, but overall OK aside from that.

  • lorty@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    Good luck! I tried lerning russian through Duolingo but I didn’t last very long unfortunately.

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
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      6 months ago

      In my opinion it’s not enough by itself. I learn Chinese. I use many apps, have books and take group lessons. I occasionally go to meetups for learners too. In addition to all of that I try to expose myself to Chinese language via people IRL (family, neighbours etc) and from going to China itself.

      If you want to learn a language properly you need to make it part of your daily life.