Competitive Learning: Japanese Language Group

A bit surprised that this has never come up before especially considering how heavily this community relies on Japanese VF content, but are there any members among us who are interested in starting an online Japanese learning group? I have personally made a few attempts to learn Japanese in the past, but sadly I usually let myself get distracted, so I end up quitting prematurely. Also, I've never ever had anyone to really practice with so finding reason to quit comes very easily.

Currently, we have a few members here on VFDC who are already fluent in the language and I'm hoping some of those members would be willing to join the group and help participants by guiding them if they get stuck or offer advice to ensure that we as a group, are learning things correctly.

During LAG, it was brought to our attention that Yamada-san, Homestay's wife who spoke English relatively well, learned to speak the language with the Doulingo app. I've tried Duolingo before and it is in fact a great app for learning, so for the third time now, I have downloaded the app and will once again make an attempt to learn. To start things off I created a private group within the app for members to join? As I said it's a private group, so you will need the code below if you want to get in on the fun.

Club code: 45GCCD

Lastly, the app does have a points leader board which I think is a nice touch to make the learning experience competitive. However, the primary reason for this group is to promote fun and learning so for anyone joining, please hear me when I say to leave your douche bag egos at home. Be competitive, but more importantly be kind and push people to log into the app everyday and practice. If someone is stuck, offer to help them advance rather than try to make them feel incompetent. I haven't thought about rules for the group at this point, but if things pick up and the group gets lots of members, I will definitely iron out some. Just to reiterate, if anyone is being a douche bag or negative in anyway I am booting you without warning. You read it here, so this is your first and final warning.

 

Great idea. I too have been itching to get back into learning the language and have played around with the Duolingo app.

Just joined your club. Ganbatte!

 

Downloading...Looking forward to picking up JP studies again!

 

Bari Gaijins, LOL!

 

Great post. I talked to Gutti about practicing with him soon. I barely just a day into it but I have been using FLR aka Foreign Language Roadrunner as made famous by Youtuber and recently viral on Worldstarhiphop laoshu50500. He speaks probably around 30 languages. I'll let these vids speak for himself but the FLR method gets you using a language really fast.



https://www.youtube.com/user/laoshu505000

Just need to find the time to exercise these into my mentals.

 

Yeah I’m familiar with that guy and wow he is amazing. I’m not familiar with FLR though, so I’m going to be looking into it. Feel free to join the group if you are interested or share any FLR methods, content, etc you think can help others. Hopefully @ChiefGutti and other fluent speakers will consider joining the group as well. Highly doubt they will need to do any of the lessons, but perhaps those individuals could provide support and guidance for us noobs.

 

Fun app. But how do you get to Clubs? I'm on Android version

 

Suprisingly I was able to flow through and shortcut past the first 10 lessons in hiragana just from where i left off from learning almost 2 years ago. I fell of in the early stages of katakana so I'll probably slow when I get back to that point. Anyway I just opened up Leaderboards which I assume is where Club access is supposed to be but still cant find it.

 

I think you can only join one club per language and you may already be part of one for Japanese. See if you can see an option to leave the club when you’re on the club/leaderboard tab.

Here’s an additional resource for practicing hiragana and katakana: https://realkana.com/. I used the site back in college and it looks like they have an app now.

 

Perhaps you can join via an android tablet or iPad if you have access to one of those?

 

As @Oioron said you can only be a part of 1 club per language. It’s possible you might be in one already. I’m on iOS, but I’m sure the process to join a club is the same as android. You can get to clubs by selecting the shield like icon at the bottom of your screen and to join just enter the code from the main post.



Next select LEADERBOARD to join or leave a club.

 

According to Dualingo subreddit a recent update to the android app caused many longtime users to lose the Club feature.

https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/search?q=club&restrict_sr=on&include_over_18=on

A fix many found successful is deleting the app and reinstalling. I did that 5 times and Club option never showed up. So I prolly have wait til there is a proper fix from the dev.

ps. this is my first time using this app so I was never previously in a club

 

Same issue I'm experiencing. Looks as though I'll just have to wait. :\

 

Without the club functionality we can still use the leaderboard section in our profiles. Just add/follow friends and it will show how you stack up in general xp.

 

If you are an iOS user, I strongly recommend that you DO NOT UPDATE to version 6.2.1.

It seems they are testing a new health bar feature that prevents users from binging. After a certain amount of lessons you either have to let the health bar replenish, which can take like 4-5 hours, use gems (new and replaces lingodots) to purchase more health or buy a 1 year subscription.

LAME! Duolingo forums are on fire right now.

If you did update already, I read in the forum if you use the web version, I don’t think it matters if that’s PC or mobile, it hasn’t been updated with these new features. As of right now it’s iOS exclusively.

 

Add me! Username cobra845103

 

Here’s mine: Monty488871

 

Japanese wasn't on the app when I last used it but I'm down to learn. Let's use our competitive drive to learn faster!

 

Android users feel free to add me. My username is Rodnutz or follow the link below.

https://www.duolingo.com/Rodnutz

** UPDATE **

The group is small for now, but I'm sure once the Android issue is worked out we will definitely get more members. With that said, if you've ever had the interest to learn, here is your chance. Don't think about it, download the app and jump in. My wife also joined up and is gonna try real hard to participate when time permits. She was the one who alerted me to the new iOS features, which she absolutely despise, when she downloaded the app. However, accessing her account from the web on mobile Safari seems to be a great work around to avoid the new features.

While not the aim and focus of the group, competition has been going pretty strong with @Oioron leading the weekly leader boards within our group since we started. As of this morning though and overall for this month, it seems @cobratron is destroying everybody. Keep it going guys!!!

 

My initial thoughts on the app:

1. Pro - Gamified design makes it fun and easier to make into a habit.
2. Con - The negative side of gamification is that I was sucked into getting as much XP as quickly as possible. It hasn't hurt me yet since I have a good foundation from my studies in college. But I can see it becoming a problem once I start encountering new words and concepts. So I may slow down and minimize the amount of drills I do per session and supplement it with writing/compiling vocab in a notebook.
3. Pro - Social aspect makes it more encouraging to continue and fun.
4. Con - The app doesn't really explain grammatical concepts. Maybe this is just in the beginning and may get better as we progress.