10 Comments
User's avatar
Shea's avatar

Congratulations on a solid of of language learning! Memrise didn't work out for me when I checked out before, either. Bidirectional translation seems interesting but at the same time, I wonder how sustainable it is. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

Sheev Callahan's avatar

I've found conjugation and vocabulary anki decks help immensely. Also am a fan of the language reactor plug in for streaming services. I typically save unfamiliar words or phrases translated from shows/movies and add them to my anki decks. Auto narrating what I;m doing during my daily routine also helps. As for speaking, nothing helps more than good old forced immersion, tutors, joining group chats in discord or twitter spaces in the target language

Oleg's avatar

What languages are you learning? And it's a good idea to only save unfamiliar stuff rather than words that come up very often and can be just "absorbed" without flashcards. My problem has always been adding everything I come across to a deck, finding it too easy/pointless, and thus dumping it altogether.

Sheev Callahan's avatar

Spanish, almost at C1 but I've been learning for a while. I try to pick out words I've used regularly in google translate.

Lou's avatar

Good job putting in a constant effort! Let me know what you think of the bidirectional translation method, I never managed to make it work.

PS: the Duolingo memes are always appreciated.

Oleg's avatar

Thank you for your support!

Victoria's avatar

The start of learning a language is so fun!

It's great that you've decided that Memrise doesn't work for you. I like memrise to get started but once I've got a foundation in a language, finding my own sentences from native materials is more fun.

Oleg's avatar

There's a lot to be cherished in those "aha!" moments. For example, I was reading one short story in Spanish and discovered that the word for puzzle (rompecabezas) follows the same logic as the Russian word for puzzle (golovolomka). Finding stuff like this on your own feels extremely rewarding.

Oleg's avatar

One step at a time man, one step at a time.