Do you like Duolingo? Do think it has a good learn structure?
Discussion
Mostly, yes, but we'll see how I fare in El Salvador in Nov compared to last year.
Duolingo obv aims for practice and repitition instead of direct instruction (e.g. conjugate -ir verbs in the past tense by doing blah).
My engineer's brain would prefer to know those rules (to the extent that they exist and aren't a mess of exceptions), so it feels like a bit of a learning style mismatch. But I believe them when they say they've leveraged the experience of teaching millions of people. The way I think I want to learn might not be the best way for me to learn.
Well thats the same problem I had with it while learning swedish.
I also was disappointet that it was (in the beginning) lacking basic sentences which a tourist would need visiting a country.
But I wish you good luck with it. Let us know how it turned out for you in El Salvador.
Last year my rusty Spanish that I learned in high school was almost barely conversational. Way better than I was expecting! That was really encouraging. But haven't directly spoken with anyone in Spanish since so I have no clue what to expect this time.
Most of the last year on Duolingo has been review, but it has reminded me of a lot of things I'd forgotten. How much that helps...?
I'm actually giving a talk in Spanish in Nov so potential harsh reality coming my way!