jessfun

I believe there are studies that back up the efficacy of Duolingo. It seems to be better than a first year university course on the same language as far as results go. But it's a clever way to teach you the language by making you do the translations and having someone else verify it. You get much more practice doing this compared to weekly or monthly assignments that the university may assign.

I think it's a great way to get exposure into the pronunciation, tone, and delivery of some of the words. When I was in high school and was learning french, we would often watch french videos, or learn by listening to audiotapes. Having exposure through movie watching should be used in conjunction with active studying of the grammar and vocabulary to ensure proficiency in the language.

Anything that promotes reading will help develop and reinforce comprehension skills. The more you are exposed to written material the better that you will get at mastering the semantics of the language, given that you are consciously making an effort to improve yourself. You have access to thousands of material you can use. I also believe that the Kindle has a built in dictionary as well.

It's how the origin of the language has evolved over time. In order to communicate with others on an international scale, we need to ensure that we follow the same rules and that's convention. With texting and emails, the notion of having capital letters could very well disappear and that could be how our language evolves in the future. But personally, I prefer the capitalization standard. Imagine typing in all caps all the time.

Shakespeare was part of my high school curriculum and I was required to study several of his plays. It was always tough to understand as the language is quite different and there is a lot of contextual humor and references that were often overlooked by me. But years later, I had the opportunity to visit Stafford and witness All's Well That End's Well performed by Patrick Stewart. It was hilarious! I think that having it acted out definitely resonated a new found appreciation of Shakespeare for me. It wasn't that I didn't like it before, it was because I not comprehending what Shakespeare had intended.