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by ghaff 267 days ago
I accept that some people are doubtless much more talented in acquiring languages than I am. But I did take 4 years of high school French and was considered "good." And, traveling with a friend in Paris, I clearly knew a lot more of the language than they did. But I'm a very very far way from being fluent.

Maybe the people who claim to spend a few weeks with Duolingo and get the language are uniquely talented. Or maybe they're BSing.
1 comments
amonith 267 days ago
A few weeks is definitely BS, but I took 3 years of German in high school and after roughly 3 months of 30min-1hr daily Duolingo I was already past the high school material.

I mean in our high school (Poland) it was like maybe 1 lesson (45mins) per week shared with a group. And of course excluding all the holidays and what not. That's not a high bar.

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ghaff 264 days ago
To be fair, you already had the high school material and you spent at least as much time on Duolingo as in the classroom.

Styles are different oo. I would say my high school was a lot more focused on writing, translation, and grammar than anything truly conversational though they did work on on pronunciation to some extent.

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