[bluefirebrand]

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.

[anbende]

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.

[andrewmcwatters]

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.