did you do your homework by yourself in italian duolingo

Past (Verbs)

(from duolingo).

Unlike the imperfetto , which refers to continuous or habitual actions in the past, the passato remoto is a tense that indicates a single action that was completed a long time ago. This tense presents lots of irregularities, and some verbs even have multiple correct conjugations.

In fact, even native speakers find this tense a bit difficult sometimes, and that’s probably why in the spoken language the passato remoto is often replaced by the passato prossimo (ho mangiato, ho bevuto…), which is easier and far more regular. Oddly enough, in southern Italy the exact opposite tends to happen: for some reason many southerners often prefer to use the passato remoto , even when talking about recent events.

So, why learn the passato remoto ?

• Just because many native speakers try to avoid it, it doesn’t mean they never use it! Some verbs in particular are very common and very easy to learn.
• It’s without a doubt the most common tense in Italian literature, where events usually take place at some indefinite point in time, or in the distant past from the narrator’s point of view.
• It will definitely take your Italian skills to the next level!

Here’s an example with three different past tenses:

• Lui mi diede un consiglio. [passato remoto] = He gave me advice. Once, a long time ago.
• Lui mi ha dato un consiglio. [passato prossimo] = He gave me advice. Once, maybe recently.
• Lui mi dava consigli. [imperfetto] = He gave me advice, for a period of time. / He used to give me advice.

TIP : You might be wondering, “how should I learn all those other irregular forms outside of Duolingo?” The same way native speakers do: through exposure , and mostly through reading ! Luckily, many irregular verbs share the same patterns.

(by DuoItalian)

Here are the basic rules on changing the infinitive endings to form the passato remoto :

-ARE Verbs Drop the infinitive ending and add these endings to the root: -ai , -asti , -ò , -ammo , -aste , -arono

-ERE Verbs Drop the infinitive ending and add these endings to the root: -ei , -esti , -é , -emmo , -este , -erono

-IRE Verbs Drop the infinitive ending and add these endings to the root: -ii , -isti , -í , -immo , -iste , -irono

TIP : Many regular -ere verbs have an alternative form in the first person singular, third person singular, and third person plural forms (as seen in the Duolingo examples above).

Here are a few more commonly used irregular verb conjugations for the passato remoto :

… and a few of which only SOME of the conjugations are irregular (seen in RED):

Study and Test Yourself

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Duolingo Friends Quest – EVERYTHING You Need To Know

• Posted by by Matt
• Last updated: November 27, 2023
• 5 minute read

Learning a language on Duolingo has long been a social experience, but now, with friends quests, it’s also a cooperative one!

Maybe you’ve completed a few already and you’re wondering what they’re all about. Or perhaps you haven’t done one yet but you’re super keen to get involved.

Or maybe you’re fed up of getting paired with the same partner each week and being left to do all the work?!

Well, in this article, I’ll give you all the need-to-know details about friends quests on Duolingo.

Let’s get into it!

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What are friends quests?

Friends quests on Duolingo are weekly challenges that you complete with one of your Duolingo friends.

They are one of the 3 main Duolingo quest types — the other two being daily quests and monthly challenges.

Friends quests are mostly random — meaning both the friend you do them with and the quest itself can change every week.

Both you and the friend Duolingo pairs you with will be set a joint challenge, and everything you both do will count towards your progress.

There are no fixed ratios, meaning one friend could contribute more to the quest than the other. For instance, if the quest is to earn 250 XP , then one friend could contribute 200 XP, while the other could contribute 50.

If you manage to complete the friends quest before the time runs out, you will both receive a special reward!

Friends quests are currently only available on mobile devices.

How to find your friends quests

It’s really easy to find your friends quests.

To do so, on mobile, simply tap the chest icon to go to your challenges page…

Then, scroll down to your friends quest section…

If you have a friends quest active, it will show here. You’ll be able to see what the quest is, your current progress, who you’re completing it with, and how long you have left.

You’ll also be able to send your friend a nudge or a gift.

A nudge is just a gentle reminder that you can send to your friend to get busy!…

Whereas a gift is always an XP Boost …

Nudges are free to send but gifts will cost you 20 gems .

How to start a friends quest

The only thing you need to do to start a friends quest is, firstly, make sure you’re on mobile and, secondly, make sure you have at least one Duolingo friend that is also on mobile.

This means that you both need to be following each other!

Apart from this, there isn’t anything you need to do. There aren’t any buttons you need to press or invites you need to send out.

Friends quests usually start on a Tuesday and finish on a Saturday.

Before the next quest starts, you may get invited to choose your partner. This doesn’t always guarantee you’ll be paired with them, but it lets Duolingo know your preference.

After this, Duolingo will set up your next friends quest. When this happens, you should get a notification both outside and inside the app to let you know that a new friends quest has started.

What are the different friends quests?

Friends quests change every week.

While some weeks you can be paired with the same friend over and over again, the quests themselves usually switch up each time.

Some of the most common friends quests include:

• Earn {…} XP
• Complete {…} lessons
• Complete {…} perfect lessons
• Complete {…} lessons with 90%+ accuracy

What is the reward for completing a friends quest?

If you both manage to complete the friends quest before the time runs out, you will both receive a special reward.

In fact, you’ll receive not one… not two… but THREE rewards!

The first is an XP Boost that lasts 30 minutes. You can either activate it as soon as you complete the challenge, or you can claim it later in the shop…

The second reward is a chest of 100 gems.

And the third reward is 5 completed quests towards your monthly challenge badge.

The rewards are the same for both friends regardless of who contributes more or less to the quest.

Friends quest not working (no friends available)

It’s not uncommon for friends quests to not work.

Usually, it has something to do with availability. If Duolingo has already paired off all of your friends, then there won’t be anyone available for you to complete a quest with.

In this scenario, you’ll have to wait for the current cycle to end and hope that Duolingo pairs you up the following week.

You can increase your chances of finding a weekly match simply by adding more friends. You don’t have to know them, but they will need to follow you back as well.

Probably the best thing to do in this case is to flick through your weekly leaderboards and add some users that appear to be regularly active.

If they follow you back, then not only will you increase your chances of getting a friends quest every week. But if they’re regularly active as well, you’ll also increase your chances of completing your quests!

Tips for completing friends quests

Friends quests are generally pretty straightforward and shouldn’t take you too long to complete (even if your partner doesn’t pull their weight!).

However, if you’re looking for ways to smash them every time, consider some of these tips:

send nudges

Think your partner is slacking a bit? Then it doesn’t hurt to send them a gentle nudge!

A nudge is just a reminder that will pop up in their notifications, as well as when they open the app.

You get 4 to choose from and it’s a useful way of keeping you both focused on achieving your goal.

Of course, they won’t necessarily pay it any attention, in which case you might be better served sending them something else…

send gifts!

If the stick doesn’t help, then it stands a chance the carrot will!

Sending your friends-quest buddy an XP Boost will set you back 20 gems, but it’s a great incentive for them to crack on with some lessons.

I’d say it’s also pretty thoughtful as well. You never know – they might appreciate it so much that they send you one in return!

get familiar with the requirements

Friends quest requirements aren’t usually that taxing, meaning you should be able to comfortably complete them within the timeframe — even if your partner isn’t active.

That said, it still makes sense to familiarise yourself with the requirements each time.

For instance, if you need to score over 90% in a certain number of lessons, then being aware of this requirement will likely change the way you approach your lessons. If you usually go at them all guns blazing, then you might opt for a more measured and thought-out approach while completing the quest.

Keeping the requirements in mind will give you a much better chance of completing the quest quickly and getting your hands on the 30-minute XP Boost much sooner.

be aware of how much time you have

It’s also important to be aware of how much time you’ve got left.

Friends quests generally last about 4 days so you’ll always have plenty of time. However, you don’t want to be coasting along thinking you’ve got plenty of time left, when in reality you’re down to your last hour!

You can avoid this by checking your friends quest on a daily basis. This will keep you up to speed with how long you’ve got left, as well as how much of the quest you still need to complete.

This will increase your chances of getting your hands on the juicy rewards!

For more on Duolingo friends quests, as well as daily quests and monthly challenges, feel free to follow me on Twitter .

I’d also recommend checking out my Duolingo challenges guide , which explains all the different quests and challenges in detail!

Hey! I'm Matt, the Duolingo-nut behind duoplanet. I started using Duolingo back in 2014, and my current streak stretches all the way back to May 2016. Using Duolingo I've reached a comfortable level in Italian and acquired a basic understanding of Russian. I've also gone deep into the Spanish, German and French courses, and intend to explore more languages in the years to come. Needless to say, I'm obsessed with language learning!

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What is the longest Duolingo streak in 2023?

How To Add Friends On Duolingo (And Why You Might Not Be Able To)

I got to get used to content being delivered consistently! I noticed you’re sending out tutorials rather than Duolingo updates lately.

I want to know the deadline for the friend quest because I hate when I’m being randomly failed while trying to collect the last exp needed on my own as my “friend” is not active. It would be great if it could be the same deadline as the leaderboards (this deadline also seem to change randomly but that can have something to do with time zones)

Google claims the information I’m searching for is here but I can’t find it.

Agree, it says it ends Saturday. But what time on Saturday?? Frustrating.

I am on Super Duolingo with latest version of ios and app and there is no Friend Quest section when I click on the Chest. I have one friend and we follow each other. Do you need to have more than one friend for this function to appear?

What do I do if Friends quest menu is not available in my account due to a bug????

By the way, I have Friends Quests only on desktop. I don’t have it on mobile!

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Duolingo Italian Review: Builds Your Vocabulary Fast, But Won’t Make You Fluent

The owl has long been seen as a symbol of wisdom and knowledge .

So it’s no surprise that Duolingo —one of the most popular language-learning programs out there—chose the owl as their mascot.

But can the program actually teach you Italian ?

The short answer: yes.

Duolingo will increase your vocabulary, introduce you to Italian grammar and get you to about an A2 level of Italian. But it won’t make you fluent.

In this in-depth Duolingo Italian review, we dive into the features, pros, cons and frequently asked questions about the program’s Italian course.

Is Duolingo Good for Learning Italian?

What is duolingo, duolingo’s features and functionalities, the duolingo tree: making italian approachable, quizzes and exercises: making italian enjoyable, experience points, lingots and streaks: making italian motivational, crowns: making italian customizable, discussions and forums: making italian social, pros of duolingo italian, it has a great interface, duolingo’s gamification is motivational, duolingo is always improving, you have access to all languages for free, cons of duolingo italian, you shouldn’t use duolingo by itself, duolingo doesn’t teach grammar thoroughly, it gives impractical example sentences, duolingo exercises can feel too repetitive, there’s a lack of content for advanced students, alternatives to duolingo, faqs about duolingo italian, what level of italian does duolingo get you to, how long would it take to learn italian with duolingo, and one more thing....

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

Yes, Duolingo is a great resource to use for learning Italian.

It will help you increase your vocabulary, learn Italian sentence structure, pick up basic to intermediate grammar patterns and get in daily practice. But it won’t make you fluent.

Duolingo is best used in combination with other resources.

Duolingo is probably the most popular language learning app, with 300 million active users.

Duolingo was born out of the desire to make the Internet approachable for non-English speakers.

The two founders—Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker—wanted to build something that could instantly and accurately translate websites and make it feel like actual bilingual speakers worked on them.

Not some automatic translation software that spews out nonsensical and, sometimes, tragic translations.

Duolingo uses interactive game elements and principles to help you remember words.

And according to research , spending 34 hours on Duolingo is equivalent to taking a semester in a university language course.

At present, Duolingo teaches 90 different language courses, with Italian being one of the most studied programs. There are almost 40 million interested learners.

Duolingo Italian has 43 units with around 5-10 lessons each, promising you hours of enjoyable study.

Lastly, Duolingo is free forever (on the app and the website), which is one of their major selling points.

There’s Duolingo Plus , which comes ad-free for $7.00 a month, but you don’t get a sense that the company is really pushing for it. You also get unlimited “hearts,” which are basically lives that you lose each time you make a mistake.

One of the first things that you need to know about Duolingo is that you only need five minutes a day to reap its benefits.

The lessons are bite-sized and can be devoured on the go. It takes so little commitment that it demolishes all those “I-just-don’t-have-time” excuses.

The Italian “Duolingo Tree” maps out the different topics you’ll be going through in the course.

You see an array of icons and the one that lights up in color is where you are in the course.

The Italian tree starts you off with the most basic vocabulary, like donna  (woman) and lei  (she), with the topics getting more challenging as you progress.

With Duolingo, you never feel overwhelmed—complexity is very gradually built from one lesson to the next.

One of the most important elements of the Duolingo experience is its high level of interactivity.

You’ll be doing something every five seconds. The lessons are gamified little exercises or tasks.

For example, you might be asked to pair Italian words with their English counterparts.

Or you might be shown an English sentence and asked to give its Italian translation by tapping on a specific sequence of Italian words.

These repeating exercises are really the heart and soul of the platform.

Since Duolingo intends to develop all four linguistic competencies (reading, writing, speaking and listening), there are even times when you’re asked to speak into your phone’s mic and repeat after a prompt.

Then, the voice recognition software checks if your pronunciation is correct or not.

Duolingo is gamified language learning. Every question you answer correctly is converted into Experience Points (XP).

When you’ve finished a lesson or practiced a skill, your XP increases accordingly. (You can set a daily XP goal in the Settings section.)

There’s a leaderboard so you can gauge your performance vis-à-vis other students.

Gems known as  “lingots” are the platform’s currency.

You earn lingots for completing tasks like maintaining a 10-day practice streak, reaching your practice goals or inviting friends to use Duolingo.

Lingots can be used in the virtual shop where you can buy “power-ups” like “Streak Freeze” or “Double or Nothing.”

“Streaks”  refers to the number of days you’ve consecutively met your XP goals. While XP reflects how long you’re studying in a day, “Streaks” tells you how often you’re studying.

This is really the most important metric for you because it reflects just how consistent you are at studying Italian.

One of the challenges for platforms like Duolingo is to reconcile the different goals and objectives of many different Italian language learners.

Some casual learners simply want a fun time working through the Duolingo tree. Then there are those serious learners who want more in-depth content.

Duolingo has resolved this with “crowns,” which essentially add a new dimension to learning.

Students can breeze through the different lessons if they like, but they can also retake the same level. Each time they do so, the exercises get a little bit more difficult.

You work through the same set of targeted vocabulary, but the tasks required get increasingly difficult.

So, maybe the sentences involved get more complex.

Or instead of tapping presented words to form the translated sentence, this time you need to type the Italian words yourself.

Every time you repeat and finish a level, you gain a “crown.” The max for each level is five crowns.

There’s probably no more robust Italian language learning community than the folks at Duolingo.

You can throw a query out there and have no shortage of replies from fellow learners.

There’s always a healthy discussion going on in the forum and simply reading the threads can be a very educational experience.

You’ll get tips on how to study Italian or be pointed to some useful resources that can get you a needed leg up.

You can also click “Report” after answering a question during your lesson if you think something is incorrect about the way Duolingo graded your choice.

One of the best things about Duolingo—and what makes it so popular—is that it’s free.

Yes, there’s a paid version that comes with no ads and unlimited hearts, but Duolingo isn’t very pushy about it.

Plus, the ads that come with the service are minimally invasive.

But as a free service, Duolingo is definitely one of the best.

The first time you use Duolingo, you immediately get a sense of its smooth graphic interface.

The layout is very intuitive.

The fonts are easy on the eyes. The colors pop but aren’t jarring to the senses. The audio is relatively crisp. The sights, sounds and movement of the elements clue you into what’s happening.

Oh, and then there’s “Duo”—the Duolingo mascot—who occasionally pops up on your screen to shout some words of encouragement.

He’s the easily recognizable green owl who’ll be your companion as you knock out one Italian lesson after another.

Duolingo makes learning Italian feel like jumping through little hoops… and liking it.

There are levels, leagues, leaderboards and lingots. There are streaks to be protected, skills to be developed and a virtual shop to be visited.

Bars are filling up, displayed numbers are telling you something.

The reward system can get you easily hooked.

You also always know your progress in the course.

You know if your skills need practice. You know how you measure up against other Italian learners. And the way it presents this information is fun and motivational!

Granted, Duolingo Italian has a lot of room for improvement. (More on this later.)

But as a brainchild of founders with computer backgrounds, you can be sure that the platform uses the latest in machine learning and AI research to improve and keep users motivated.

And because Duolingo has some of the most vocal and passionate users, it can quickly get robust feedback on what needs to be changed.

So expect a continuous flow of improvements on the product.

Many language programs come as individually packaged courses.

So if you’re going to learn Italian, you’d have access only to that course and have to pay or install a different app to study another language.

Well, Duolingo gives you the whole shebang for free.

So, if you’re spent on Italian, you can study Russian for a bit or maybe try your hand at Japanese.

Then, suddenly, you’re sucked in and before you know it, you’re learning multiple languages at the same time.

Many Duolingo users are serial learners and the program makes it easy to give it a shot.

Duolingo has changed the game and is a hard benchmark to beat.

But that said, it’s not the perfect product either. There’s always room for improvement.

Here are a few things that the program could do better.

To be fair, there’s probably no single language learning platform or product that can be everything for everyone.

Duolingo works as part of a healthy mix of other learning materials that would have to include things like Italian textbooks , audiobooks , videos , songs , movies , language exchange websites and so on.

Duolingo has a part to play.

If you want a slew of vocabulary-building exercises that keep close tabs on your performance, then Duolingo is your best bet.

But for other things—like actual conversational practice— the platform might not be the most ideal tool.

I recommend pairing it with tools that let you put your skills to practical use, like language exchange apps or immersion programs like FluentU .

FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.

P.S. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)

Try FluentU for FREE!

Yes, there are keys to Italian grammar at the start of every lesson, but these feel too “buried.”

(Many users don’t even know that they exist.)

Duolingo could do with a lot more short-but-spunky grammar explanations that are embedded in the individual questions themselves.

When you get an item wrong, you seldom know why. You’re shown the correct answer, but many users are still left guessing why their answer is unacceptable.

Duolingo can do a little more in these instances and use them as teaching moments.

I understand that the platform wasn’t designed for explicit grammar instruction, but a little more grammar explanation—like a well-placed, single-sentence pointer—can be a huge time-saver.

Duolingo doesn’t advocate simply memorizing “survival phrases,” and claims that sentence examples should be relevant and useful in the real world.

But s ome Italian example sentences are so remote from reality that you’d be hard-pressed to think of a suitable moment to use them.

They’re more useful as vocabulary teaching tools than actual commonly-used groups of words. (e.g., Lei é una donna. — She is a woman.)

Sometimes, the sentences sound like they’ve been machine-generated.

Example sentences do get better later in the course, but many users might have dropped off before getting to them.

Repetition is at the heart of learning.

But there comes a point when repetition is too much.

In the case of Duolingo, you might find the exercises begin to rub you the wrong way.

Working with the same words, phrases and sentences over and over can be demotivating.

This is alleviated by algorithms that shelf words you’ve already mastered, but I’m not just talking about vocabulary sets.

I’m also referring to things like that all-too-familiar sound you hear when you get an item right or that distracting buzz you get when you answer incorrectly.

Duolingo could mix things up better and add more variety not only to the content but even to the very mechanics of their exercises.

Duolingo is a very good vocabulary builder, but don’t expect to be fluent when you finish the course.

You’ll learn a lot, but the program won’t take you beyond the intermediate level.

Content development for Duolingo Italian may not have been as brisk as other major languages like Spanish, French, German and Portuguese.

For instance, these languages have “stories”—a feature that challenges your reading and listening comprehension and can seriously address the lack of variety we talked about previously.

Unfortunately, Duolingo Italian doesn’t have this feature yet.

Like Duolingo, Babbel has a structured, well-designed learning path for Italian that starts from the basics and gets progressively more challenging as you improve.

However, there’s a much stronger focus on grammar and the lessons go more in-depth with exercises.

They include the typical translation exercises but also practice conversations. Babbel also offers live online classes (“Babbel Live”) and a podcast.

You might choose Babbel if you want to stick with a resource that will get you to a higher intermediate level. Babbel has courses for complete newbies (A1) all the way up to upper intermediate (B2).

However, Babbel is not free and a subscription only gives you access to one language.

Like Duolingo, Memrise is completely free and is best for vocabulary building.

You can find countless premade flashcard decks—official decks made by Memrise and those made by other students—that use a spaced repetition algorithm to put new words in your long-term memory.

The Memrise official Italian courses start at Level 1 and go through Level 7.

Other decks you can find include the most common 1,000 Italian words, Italian adjectives, verbs, etc.

However, unlike Duolingo, Memrise has basically no (or at most, very limited) grammar lessons, since the courses are flashcard-based.

If you have another resource for grammar and just want to focus on rapidly growing your vocabulary, Memrise might be a better choice to Duolingo.

But if you’re starting from scratch, Duolingo will introduce you to the sentence structures you need to know first.

Most sources online agree that Duolingo can get you to an A2 (or possibly B1) level of Italian alone.

Of course, this also depends on the resources you use in conjunction with Duolingo and how often you practice outside of your study sessions.

There are currently 43 units in the Duolingo Italian course. Each has about 6-10 lessons.

Completing one unit a week would get you through the entire Italian course in 43 weeks, whereas two units a week would take 21-22 weeks.

All things considered, Duolingo Italian is an awesome tool that will build your vocabulary, teach you basic grammar and help you reach an upper beginner to low intermediate level.

Since it only takes five minutes a day, there’s simply no excuse for not working with Duolingo.

I highly encourage you to include it in your resource mix!

If you're as busy as most of us, you don't always have time for lengthy language lessons. The solution? FluentU !

Learn Italian with funny commericals, documentary excerpts and web series, as you can see here:

FluentU helps you get comfortable with everyday Italian by combining all the benefits of complete immersion and native-level conversations with interactive subtitles . Tap on any word to instantly see an image, in-context definition, example sentences and other videos in which the word is used.

Access a complete interactive transcript of every video under the Dialogue tab, and review words and phrases with convenient audio clips under Vocab .

Once you've watched a video, you can use FluentU's quizzes to actively practice all the vocabulary in that video. Swipe left or right to see more examples of the word you’re on.

FluentU will even keep track of all the Italian words you’re learning, and give you extra practice with difficult words. Plus, it'll tell you exactly when it's time for review. Now that's a 100% personalized experience !

The best part? You can try FluentU for free with a trial.

Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)

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Italian course, 79 units

Post by jzsuzsi » Sun Oct 15, 2023 2:05 am

Copied from duolingodata.com

https://duolingodata.com/dat/itfen79.html

Duolingo Data: Italian from English 79 units (2023-Oct-10): Up to CEFR "A1" 766 levels ㅤ 2071 lessons ㅤ 84 Stories Path image numberOfSentences=16533 ㅤ wordsLearned=2962 (3002) ㅤ DebugNames ㅤ JSON

Units in "Section 4: Champion" have personalized names.

Section 1: Rookie (5)

CEFR Intro:

Section 2: Explorer (14)

Section 3: Traveler (43)

Path Extension Practices:

Section 4: Champion (17)

Section 5: Daily Refresh OPTIONAL

ㅤㅤ .- ㅤ Edited by Mat!/Ozone ㅤ -.

have you done/did you do your homework?

• Thread starter yuri05
• Start date Mar 28, 2014
• Mar 28, 2014

hi, i find it hard to decide which tense to use when there are no time references. for example, let's say a teacher walks in the classroom and asks his pupils:"have you done/did you do your homework?"which tense should be used in this situation? i'd use the present perfect but i'm not sure. thanks!  

Senior Member

The present perfect makes sense in that situation, but the simple past is also possible. Have you done your homework? Did you do your homework?  

owlman5 said: The present perfect makes sense in that situation, but the simple past is also possible. Have you done your homework? Did you do your homework? Click to expand...

"Have you done your homework?" This happened in the past, but somehow affects the present. "Yes." "You should give it to the teacher tomorrow." In this case, we might assume that the recently completed homework can be handed in now. The completion of the homework affects the present. "Did you do your homework?" This happened in the past. It doesn't affect the present or we don't care how it affects the present "Yes." "Why did you do so poorly on the test?" You are thinking about a past effect of doing the homework.  

Member Emeritus

• Mar 29, 2014

ChainReaction

• Sep 20, 2014

<< Moderator's note: This question has been added to a previous thread. Please scroll up and read from the top. >> Hi, I'm new here, and I have a question about something that was bothering me for quite a long time. What is the difference between the regular form of past tense, and the form 'have past_tense '? To give you the right context, what's the difference between: "Did you do your homework?" and "Have you done your homework?" << New example will need its own thread. >>  

You mean the simple past and the present perfect. Here's a good primer: http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/410/grammar/ppvpast.htm In short, the simple past is used when referring to a situation that is completely in the past (and thus concluded, with little to no relevance for the present situation). The present perfect (which is not a past tense) is used when referring to situations that are still happening and/or have a relevance for the present situation.  

That said, there is often little distinction between these tenses in the everyday use of the language. Using the simple past ("did you do your homework") in situations that actually call for the present perfect ("have you done your homework", because the enquirer wishes to know if the person's homework is now done) is especially common in American English. << Response to deleted question. >>  

"Did you do your homework?" and "Have you done your homework?" For example, if a child wanted to watch TV, mum or dad could say either of them but the second (the one using present perfect) is better because it emphasises that we are talking about now, today. If an investigator was asking about something before the present then the first one is correct. Teacher: On the night before you went on vacation last year, did you do your homework?  

post mod (English Only / Latin)

• Sep 21, 2014
• Mar 2, 2019

[This post and the following ones have been added to a previous thread in which the same question was asked. Please read down from the top. DonnyB - moderator]. Context: I want to ask if my son has done the homework or not Did you do your homework ? Have you done your homework ? Which tense is better and why? Do we need "the" before "homework" in the context?  

Since you live in the UK, use "have you done", since you are interested in the situation in the present. I think AmE usage is "did you do". Don't use "the" with "your". "Your homework" is the usual way of saying it.  

Thanks  

• Jun 25, 2019

A teacher gave a home assignment to his students one week ago. His students show up and say that the homework is still undone. What would they say? - We haven't done our homework. - We didn't do our home work.  

Steven David

Ivan_I said: A teacher gave a home assignment to his students one week ago. His students show up and say that the homework is still undone. What would they say? - We haven't done our homework. - We didn't do our home work. Click to expand...

Parla said: I think the teacher would use the simple past tense ("Did you do your homework?") since the reference is to work assigned the day before and it should have been done the evening before. Click to expand...

Helenejj said: What would the teacher say if the work was assigned three days ago? Click to expand...

Uncle Jack said: The present perfect indicates completion. "Have you done your homework?"asks the same question as "Is your homework complete?" Click to expand...

Helenejj said: Doesn't "Did you do your homework?" indicate that the homework is complete? Click to expand...

What Level Is Duolingo Italian? A Comparison With Language Proficiency Levels

If you are you considering the Italian course in Duolingo but are not sure if it is the right level for your Italian, then you are in the right place.

This article will detail what level of Italian each Duolingo section corresponds to, so you will get an understanding of what material the Duolingo Italian tree contains and how complex it is.

Keep reading to find out more!

Table of Contents

What level are the duolingo italian lessons.

In the table below, we have summarized the contents of the Duolingo Italian lessons within each section of the Duolingo Italian tree. We have also related the level of each Duolingo section to the European Framework for language proficiency.

This should help you to gain an understanding of what each section of the Duolingo Italian course will cover and what level of language proficiency you could expect to achieve from it.

How many of these questions can you get right?

(answers with explanations show here after you press submit), how does the duolingo italian course relate to language proficiency levels.

The contents of the Duolingo course can only be very loosely related to CEFR levels. This is because each of the CEFR levels for Italian (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2) is very much focused on conversational aspects, such as being able to exchange information about a variety of matters with another person and being able to hold a conversation on both practical and abstract subjects.

Although the Italian Duolingo course covers a lot of material in a small number of sections , it is unlikely for a student to become fluent in Italian by using Duolingo alone.

How advanced is the Duolingo Italian course?

The Duolingo Italian course packs a lot of complex grammar topics within its four sections , and therefore could be considered to teach up to an advanced level in Italian . However, it is very unlikely that someone could become proficient in Italian by using Duolingo alone.

In practice, there are many instances where native Italian speakers themselves replace the subjunctive mood with the indicative mood, particularly in spoken Italian.

The subjunctive mood is becoming increasingly less used in spoken Italian, so a learner of Italian should learn this mood gradually and not worry about being incorrect if they avoid using it until they feel comfortable doing so.

The fact that Duolingo packs a lot of grammar in a short course can leave learners of Italian feeling discouraged and frustrated about learning, and can foster the belief that Italian as a foreign language is too difficult to master.

Can the Duolingo Italian course make me proficient?

When taken in isolation, some of the grammar topics dealt with in the Duolingo Italian course could be considered to be at level C1 and C2. They are highly complex topics and take time and practice to master. Examples are, the subjunctive mood, the preterite past tense, clitics and correct use of modal verbs.

Which Italian tenses will I learn in Duolingo Italian?

… and the following moods:

Is the Duolingo Italian course suitable for beginners?

Related posts, does latin sound like italian, italian accents compared: which is best.

If you are interested in the Italian language, you might know that Italian is spoken in several different accents depending on the area. You may have wondered what is the best Italian accent? For example,…

Six Reasons Why You Should Learn Italian

Is learning italian easier than french – find out from two experts who learned both languages.

Unconventional language hacking tips from Benny the Irish polyglot; travelling the world to learn languages to fluency and beyond!

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Home » Articles » Fluent in 3 years?! What I Learned From a 1,033 Day Duolingo Streak — Plus How to Actually Learn a Language Fast

Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ?

written by Will Haines

Reading time: 8 minutes

Published: Mar 11, 2019

Fluent in 3 years?! What I Learned From a 1,033 Day Duolingo Streak — Plus How to Actually Learn a Language Fast

I learned Spanish, every day, for 1,033 days. That’s a long Duolingo streak .

That’s learning every day for 1,033 days—24,792 hours. When thought about it, I should have felt proud. Don’t they say that it takes 10,000 hours to master something? But I didn’t feel like a master.

Studying for 1,033 days meant almost three years of Spanish learning. But I wasn’t even fluent after those three years…

After reading about Benny’s approach to learning a language in three months , three years seemed like a long time. Too long.

In my first three years learning Spanish, I was dedicated. I increased my vocabulary. Got decent at reading and writing. But I couldn’t understand anyone speaking naturally. The phrase ¿Puede hablar más despacio, por favor? (“Can you speak more slowly, please?”) was my best friend.

Three years and I was stuck around lower intermediate level.

How did this happen?

My conclusion is that I got stuck at this level because I’m so good at studying.

How I Broke My Duolingo Streak and Started Actually Learning Spanish

I spent three years steadily floating along a Spanish plateau. Why? Because instead of thinking critically about my goals, I let Duolingo set my goals for me. The allure of gamification gave me a feeling of daily progress. All I had to do was put my time in and I’d get rewarded.

Really, it was too easy.

But why did I want to learn Spanish anyway?

Like most other successful language learners, I wanted to be able to listen and speak— to communicate with the people around me .

It turns out learning new vocabulary spoken by a robot and always with a transcript, wasn’t actually getting me there.

It was time to go back to first principles and define what I wanted to accomplish so that I could make progress on my terms. I researched the most effective ways to set goals and stay motivated and realized I needed to replace Duolingo with new routines .

That was the day I broke my streak and started actually learning Spanish.

Here’s What I Did to Learn Real Spanish While Still Getting the “Fix” of a Streak

Luckily, ending my Duolingo streak gave me plenty of time to explore better approaches to learning Spanish. Even assuming that I was just spending five minutes a day, three years of effort is nearly 90 hours!

I decided that if I wanted to speak and understand Spanish, I needed to focus on two things:

Listen to Spanish (a lot) Speak Spanish (at least a little)

As an introvert, listening was much easier for me. In fact, Duolingo had a lot of listening. So why wasn’t it helping?

After doing some more research, I realized there were a few reasons:

Grammar practice wasn’t exposing me to all the most important Spanish words I needed to hear a variety of accents, spoken at a natural speed Most importantly, the app was mainly focusing on single words and sentences are different

Here’s what I did to change what I was doing:

I started to make progress by learning the 5,000 most frequently used Spanish words in Memrise, a spaced repetition system (SRS) app with a focus on listening.

This new approach helped to build up my vocabulary faster and exposed me to more Spanish accents, as spoken by real people. Also, the daily cadence of an SRS was similar to Duolingo, so it was my natural tendency to stick with it. This was an improvement, but not the whole answer.

The main reason is that hearing single words does not teach you how to listen. Connected speech just doesn’t sound the same as single, well-pronounced words. Consider “going to” and “gonna” in English. You’re not going to learn “gonna” unless you hear it in a full sentence!

Similarly, in Spanish, I was learning what words meant, but I never practiced identifying how they sound in full sentences. In fast speech, words get connected together, syllables get dropped, and even the pronunciation of certain sounds can change. For example, va a andar (“he is going to walk”) becomes vandar and hard b s start to sound more and more like v s, at least to my ear. I wasn’t learning any of these nuances one word at a time.

To get sentence level practice, Glossika was key. Over the course of 300 sessions, I got exposure to over a thousand full sentences, spoken at natural speed by a native speaker.

Glossika’s audio-first approach also taught me to stop relying so much on transcripts, which can become a crutch. They also do some cool things to expose you to different types of grammar. But for me it was really just the amount of comprehensible input that made a difference. By the end of the program, I could understand spoken speech much, much better.

But because Glossika wasn’t gamified, I initially struggled to stick with it and make progress every day.

Enter Beeminder , a website that not only allows you to set gamified goals for yourself, but also to strengthen those goals by putting real money on the line. It seems ridiculous, but the threat of losing $5 if I lost my streak forced me to establish a really solid Glossika habit. Every morning, Glossika was the first thing I did, and every day I felt like I was making progress again.

Within a year, I’d learned the 5,000 most common words in Spanish, and I’d completed Glossika Spanish. But then I started to get bored…

I’d Finished Glossika and Memrise – What Next?

Word and sentence lists based on usage frequency and grammar patterns are efficient, but they can be pretty dry.

Fortunately, I found that I had enough listening comprehension to dive into much more interesting Spanish material. Recall that my goal is communication. That meant it was a great time to start communicating about things that mattered to me. This newfound meaning and interest was another boost to my motivation.

With the strong Spanish foundation I’d built, I found I could expand my listening practice naturally. The two things that worked best for me were simultaneously reading and listening to a Harry Potter audiobook in Spanish and watching Club de Cuervos on Netflix, supported with Spanish subtitles when the going got tough.

Honestly, anything would have worked as long as it involved listening to natural speech and had good transcripts to fall back on. It was very frustrating to watch movies where the subtitles didn’t match the audio very closely. In my experience, audiobooks and Netflix original programming don’t have this problem.

Once you know how to listen to connected speech, the world opens up and you can learn vocabulary the way native speakers do—by reading and listening to things you find interesting. I didn’t bother to make SRS flashcards to remember the words I learned, but you certainly could if you had the time and wanted to supercharge your language acquisition.

One final benefit is that when you choose material that’s relevant to you, you learn words that you’re more likely to use. You don’t need to learn many words to understand 80% of what you hear, but you need far more to get to 90% (or higher). The best way to combat these diminishing returns is to focus on words that are important to you .

How to Gamify “Speak from Day One”

Benny encourages you to speak from day one . I agree in principle, but in practice, this was by far the hardest part for me. As an introvert, I found speaking to be hugely taxing on my motivation. I can look at flashcards for hours, but a 15-minute conversation makes me want to sleep the rest of the day!

Here, my gamify everything approach won out in the end. I simply broke my quest to find a language partner into a bunch of tiny steps and used Beeminder to force myself to make progress each day. I mean, things as small as:

Sign up for italki Message one person today Do a 10-minute introductory conversation

It was tough to get out of my comfort zone, but once I found the right partner, it was simply a matter of setting a goal to do one exchange per week and never breaking the chain!

I recognize now that I should be speaking to more people, with different interests, accents, and points of view. But I can also look back proudly and say that I did manage to have at least 40 substantial Spanish conversations this year without traveling or doing some other kind of more extreme immersion.

While getting to fluency can be a sprint, meaningful communication is a lifelong endeavor.

Fluent in 3 years?

Here I am a year later, having made more progress in 12 months than I made in the previous 36— fluent by Benny’s definition in that I can listen and communicate comfortably. I still have plenty of words learn and grammar to perfect, but I can converse!

More importantly, I know what I need to do to reach my next level of fluency: regularly reassess my goals, adjust my language input in service of those goals, and use my “don’t break the chain” method to keep chipping away at it. I just need to be careful not to turn “don’t break the chain” into “chain yourself to something that isn’t helping anymore.”

How I Broke My Duolingo Addiction

In summary, I broke my Duolingo addiction and went from: Learning single words to learning whole sentences (or stories) Focusing on grammar to focusing on frequency and relevance Reading a lot to prioritizing listening in every practice session Watching an arbitrary number of days in my streak go up to goal based self-evaluation Playing a game to gamifying everything

It turns out that the means are the end. Set your goals first, then align your practice around them. Don’t let your practice define your goals.

I wish you every success in learning Spanish. ¡Buena suerte!

Will Haines

Product Manager & Entrepreneur

Will helps people build systems to turn their dreams into actions on his blog “It Can Be Easily Done” .

Speaks: English, Spanish

Have a 15-minute conversation in your new language after 90 days

Duolingo's new method for teaching English is our most advanced yet

Duolingo has just added our newest, most advanced content yet for English learners! Learners in our 20+ English courses now have access to nearly 200 new units with lessons about sophisticated language situations, including doing job interviews , negotiating, discussing cultural and religious traditions, and giving advice.

The newly-designed English units cover the language proficiency levels B1 and B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), an international proficiency standard. Current Duolingo learners will notice an important difference: The new lessons don't use translations!  

Our teaching experts have developed exercise types that use English to teach English—just as might happen in the classroom. Translations are a convenient way to check learners' comprehension, and they make developing new content using technology efficient and scalable, but learning entirely in English has real benefits. The new content gives learners the opportunity to use English as they would while studying abroad, working in an English-speaking country, or speaking English professionally.

Here's everything you need to know about our new English lessons!

In this post…

What is b1 and b2 english, what makes the new english lessons different, how do you learn without translations, where can you find the new english lessons, why did we take on this challenge.

This content covers vocabulary and grammar at the CEFR levels called B1 and B2—the level needed to live and work in the language. With B2 English, learners can use the language spontaneously and confidently, and they can talk in nuanced ways about complex topics well beyond the immediate, concrete needs of beginners .

Our new English content is an immersive, no-translation experience: Learners complete exercises entirely in English!

This gives learners an opportunity to use their English to learn vocabulary and grammar in a naturalistic way in order to reach even higher proficiency levels. 

Instead of translating from their own language to English, and the other way around, learners leverage context clues to level up their language skills:

• Vocabulary: Exercises use English words and phrases that learners already know to communicate the meanings of new vocabulary.
• Grammar: Lessons and exercises draw learners' attention to exactly what they need to notice in order to understand tricky grammatical concepts.
• Help when you need it: When learners need a little extra support, they can still see hints in their own language.

This new content style mimics real-life situations to provide learners with a naturalistic learning experience. The wide variety of exercise types also build reading, listening, speaking, and writing skills holistically.

Using English to teach English is easy to do in-person, but it's challenging to do with technology! But this was important to solve: Learners need to build strong connections between English words and phrases and their meanings—without going through their first language to get there. 

With Duolingo's new English content, learners work in "English mode" to understand information and use context to learn meanings. This is also what is expected of university students in college lectures or employees in a meeting being briefed on a new project!

To create an all-English course that teaches new grammar and vocabulary and checks learners' comprehension and usage, our teaching experts had to rethink the kinds of exercises we use in the course. Each of the new "monolingual" exercise types has a specific focus, for example, to introduce a meaning, show a grammatical contrast, or provide reading comprehension practice—using only English.

The new English units are divided across four sections: Sections 5 and 6 cover B1 content, and Sections 7 and 8 include B2 lessons.

Hint: To see all the sections in your course, click on the box at the top of your screen that says the current section and unit—for example, "Chapitre 1, Unité 6: Passe commande au resto, utilise le présent."

We built our new English content in response to the high demand for English on Duolingo. English is the most popular language studied on Duolingo—it's the #1 language in 119 countries —and English proficiency often means greater career and educational opportunities. We want to do our part in opening those doors to our learners!

Focusing on one high-quality learning experience for English learners has also allowed us to scale faster: Now that this new content is designed and built, it can be introduced to the millions of learners in our 20+ English courses.

Advance your learning with Duolingo!

Stick with Duolingo for all the lessons, language tools, and support you need to reach your English goals 💚

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