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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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Making the most of Duolingo

Here’s a list of what I do that really helps me learn the language using Duolingo; it’s extra work than the app gives you, but it helps me get my answers right most of the time and I feel like I know the language much better than I would have normally.

Completing the tree

The first thing you should do is complete the tree! Most people think they stop using Duolingo after that - this is absolutely not the stopping point! There’s a reason I listed this as step one.

To complete the tree, set a goal for yourself. One lesson per day, one unit per week, etc. Experiment a little and find one that works for you.

The XP feature on Duolingo helps me stay on track by measuring my frequency, not my learning. Use this to make you motivated to start each day, but don’t use it as a measure of how well you’re doing. It’s like a homework grade that gives points for completion but not accuracy. But, because of this, you can choose any goal you want. I’m on the “insane” goal (50pts per day) but I often go way past the limit. Trust me, if you’re following these steps, that won’t be a problem.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT RULE!!!! Before ever starting a new lesson, all of your previous lessons must be golden.

Duolingo builds off of previous skills in a fairly linear way. You’ll notice especially as you get farther in the tree that whenever you learn new nouns, they will always be practiced in the context of the most recent verb tense you’ve learned, and they will always mix up adjectives and phrases that you’ve also recently learned. Because of this, if you’re even a little shaky on a previous lesson, you’re screwing yourself over if you don’t review that first.

When you first open Duolingo, use “Practice Weak Skills” - this will give you a random lesson to run through and practice, and often it will mix multiple to allow you to strengthen multiple skills at once.

Keep using “Practice Weak Skills” until every lesson is golden. This takes about 3-4 times if you get most of the questions right, 5-6 if you’re getting most of them wrong - and it will get you past your XP goal. When you’re done, scroll through to check that every lesson is golden. Feels nice, don’t it?

Your lesson strength deteriorates quickly. It often feels like you’re taking one step forwards and two steps back. This is the case for a short while - the more you practice, the longer your skills will stick there. When you need to strengthen them again, all you have to do is prove that you know it from before. Instead of 15 questions on the same lesson, you’ll get about 3 - if you get all of them right, the skill goes straight back up to golden!

HOWEVER:

If you are having trouble with a certain lesson, maybe you find yourself constantly tripping up on it? Practice these lessons individually.

I constantly mess up on verbs, and now that I’ve finished the tree, whenever I review it mixes up to 4 tenses at once. What happens then? I get mixed up.

Personally, I rushed through the tree when I shouldn’t have. Whoops.

Because of this, I review each verb lesson on its own before using “Practice Weak Skills.”

When I feel confident enough, the next day I might test myself using “Practice Weak Skills” and see how it turns out. It’s your personal judgement call on when you should stop isolating lessons!

Grammar time!

So, if you’re anything like me, you love learning languages. If you’re even more like me, you have a preference for doing it, and it is not memorizing vocab (though this is necessary!). Duolingo is nice for vocab and grammar….practice. To practice, you have to learn it first, right? It teaches you the vocab well, but there’s one huge problem I found while finishing up my Spanish tree: The farther you get, the less grammar lessons there are.

This is crucial! How am I supposed to know what’s going one with he/habia/habias when I don’t even know what the tense is?

So, I prepared a list of grammar resources/courses that I think do a good job of walking you through, step-by-step, the lessons in a similar order to Duolingo.

My recommendation for using these requires looking ahead. Look at your next Duolingo lesson and, before taking it, look at the corresponding lesson on one of these websites. Take notes on it! Go back to Duolingo and now that you actually know what you’re doing. (If you get things consistently wrong, you can then review the grammar lesson on whatever website - in case they’re out of order). These apply to any website or program other than Duolingo, especially self-teaching, since they’re all basic grammar lessons.

The ones I’ve listed are mainly Spanish and German; these are the languages I’m studying. I can’t speak on other websites and their ease/comprehensiveness if I’m not studying that language! Please feel free to edit this post and add your own websites/languages when you reblog.

Spanish

StudySpanish.com (This is my personal favourite! Separated into units that progress from basic to advanced.)

SpanishDict.com (good for referencing what you got wrong. Organizes by subject of lesson rather than easy-hard)

Bowdoin (Another one that goes through basic-advanced. Has lessons written in Spanish and exercises to practice! Also has more information than most of these other links, however this can be confusing and that’s why it’s not my favourite.)

German

German-Grammar.de (Has a TON of information and exercises; can be hard to navigate.)

Dartmouth Review (A little chart to separate very broad categories; once you pick a section, it goes on for a while.)

Deutsch Lingolia (Left column has a list; the top part is the important tenses, nouns, etc. grammar stuff.)

All Languages

ielanguages (Contains French, Spanish, ESL, Italian, German, Swedish, and Dutch, with a little information about various non-European languages.)

Rocket Languages (Another good reference. Ads pop up, but you don’t need to pay in order to read the free coursework. On each of these pages there should be a blue column on the right listing grammar lessons. Good luck!)

Spanish

Portuguese

Korean

Japanese

Italian

Hindi

German

French

Chinese

Egyptian Arabic

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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What she says: I’m fine What she means: Gandhi was a racist, misogynist, sexist who said that the rape of a woman was her own fault. He slept with naked underage girls to test his celibacy and degraded them to mere sex objects. He talked foul things about his own wife, said that menstruation was the manifestation of the distortion of a woman’s soul, and yet he’s praised by the world for ‘bringing peace’.

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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50 Top Online Learning Sites

Rejoice fellow uni students looking for some studyspo, we urge you to take a few free lessons, as well as academic lessons provided from actual universities on several topics. Have a look at the 50 top learning sites you can find online to help you save some time.

Art and Music

Dave Conservatoire — Dave Conservatoire is an entirely free online music school offering a self-proclaimed “world-class music education for everyone,” and providing video lessons and practice tests.

Drawspace — If you want to learn to draw or improve your technique, Drawspace has free and paid self-study as well as interactive, instructor-led lessons.

Justin Guitar — The Justin Guitar site boasts over 800 free guitar lessons which cover transcribing, scales, arpeggios, ear training, chords, recording tech and guitar gear, and also offers a variety of premium paid mobile apps and content (books/ ebooks, DVDs, downloads).

Math, Data Science and Engineering

Codecademy — Codecademy offers data science and software programming (mostly Web-related) courses for various ages groups, with an in-browser coding console for some offerings.

Stanford Engineering Everywhere — SEE/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere houses engineering (software and otherwise) classes that are free to students and educators, with materials that include course syllabi, lecture videos, homework, exams and more.

Big Data University — Big Data University covers Big Data analysis and data science via free and paid courses developed by teachers and professionals.

Better Explained — BetterExplained offers a big-picture-first approach to learning mathematics — often with visual explanations — whether for high school algebra or college-level calculus, statistics and other related topics.

Design, Web Design/ Development

HOW Design University — How Design University (How U) offers free and paid online lessons on graphic and interactive design, and has opportunities for those who would like to teach.

HTML Dog — HTML Dog is specifically focused on Web development tutorials for HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.

Skillcrush — Skillcrush offers professional web design and development courses aimed at one who is interested in the field, regardless of their background — with short, easy-to-consume modules and a 3-month Career Blueprints to help students focus on their career priorities.

Hack Design — Hack Design, with the help of several dozen designers around the world, has put together a lesson plan of 50 units (each with one or more articles and/or videos) on design for Web, mobile apps and more by curating multiple valuable sources (blogs, books, games, videos, and tutorials) — all free of charge.

General – Children and Adults

Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share — Scratch from MIT is a causal creative learning site for children, which has projects that range from the solar system to paper planes to music synths and more.

Udemy — Udemy hosts mostly paid video tutorials in a wide range of general topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, software, health, music, language, and more.

E-learning for kids — E-learning for Kids offers elementary school courses for children ages 5-12 that cover curriculum topic including math, science, computer, environment, health, language, life skills and others.

Ed2go — Ed2go aims their “affordable” online learning courses at adults, and partners with over 2,100 colleges and universities to offer this virtual but instructor-led training in multiple categories — with options for instructors who would like to participate.

GCF Learn Free — GCFLearnFree.org is a project of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries, targeting anyone look for modern skills, offering over 1,000 lessons and 125 tutorials available online at anytime, covering technology, computer software, reading, math, work and career and more.

Stack Exchange — StackExchange is one of several dozen Q+A sites covering multiple topics, including Stack Overflow, which is related to computer technology. Ask a targeted question, get answers from professional and enthusiast peers to improve what you already know about a topic.

HippoCampus — HippoCampus combines free video collections on 13 middle school through college subjects from NROC Project, STEMbite, Khan Academy, NM State Learning Games Lab and more, with free accounts for teachers.

Howcast — Howcast hosts casual video tutorials covering general topics on lifestyle, crafts, cooking, entertainment and more.

Memrise — Lessons on the Memrise (sounds like “memorize”) site include languages and other topics, and are presented on the principle that knowledge can be learned with gamification techniques, which reinforce concepts.

SchoolTube — SchoolTube is a video sharing platform for K-12 students and their educators, with registered users representing over 50,000 schools and a site offering of over half a million videos.

Instructables — Instructables is a hybrid learning site, offering free online text and video how-to instructions for mostly physical DIY (do-it-yourself) projects that cover various hands-on crafts, technology, recipes, game play accessories and more. (Costs lie in project materials only.)

creativeLIVE — CreativeLive has an interesting approach to workshops on creative and lifestyle topics (photography, art, music, design, people skills, entreprenurship, etc.), with live access typically offered free and on-demand access requiring purchase.

Do It Yourself — Do It Yourself (DIY) focuses on how-tos primarily for home improvement, with the occasional tips on lifestyle and crafts topics.

Adafruit Learning System — If you’re hooked by the Maker movement and want to learn how to make Arduino-based electronic gadgets, check out the free tutorials at Adafruit Learn site — and buy the necessary electronics kits and supplies from the main site.

Grovo — If you need to learn how to efficiently use a variety of Web applications for work, Grovo has paid (subscription, with free intros) video tutorials on best practices for hundreds of Web sites.

General College and University

edX — The edX site offers free subject matter from top universities, colleges and schools from around the world, including MIT and Harvard, and many courses are “verified,” offering a certificate of completion for a nominal minimum fee.

Cousera — Coursera is a learning site offering courses (free for audit) from over 100 partners — top universities from over 20 countries, as well as non-university partners — with verified certificates as a paid option, plus specializations, which group related courses together in a recommended sequence.

MIT Open Courseware — MIT OpenCourseWare is the project that started the OCW / Open Education Consortium [http://www.oeconsortium.org], launching in 2002 with the full content of 50 real MIT courses available online, and later including most of the MIT course curriculum — all for free — with hundreds of higher ed institutions joining in with their own OCW course materials later.

Open Yale Courses — Open Yale Courses (OYC) are free, open access, non-credit introductory courses recorded in Yale College’s classroom and available online in a number of digital formats.

Open Learning Initiative — Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is course content (many open and free) intended for both students who want to learn and teachers/ institutions requiring teaching materials.

Khan Academy — Khan Academy is one of the early online learning sites, offering free learning resources for all ages on many subjects, and free tools for teachers and parents to monitor progress and coach students.

MIT Video — MITVideo offers over 12,000 talks/ lecture videos in over 100 channels that include math, architecture and planning, arts, chemistry, biological engineering, robotics, humanities and social sciences, physics and more.

Stanford Online — Stanford Online is a collection of free courses billed as “for anyone, anywhere, anytime” and which includes a wide array of topics that include human rights, language, writing, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, software, chemistry, and more.

Harvard Extension School: Open Learning Initiative — Harvard’s OLI (Open Learning Initiative) offers a selection of free video courses (taken from the edX selection) for the general public that covers a range of typical college topics, includings, Arts, History, Math, Statistics, Computer Science, and more.

Canvas Network — Canvas Network offers mostly free online courses source from numerous colleges and universities, with instructor-led video and text content and certificate options for select programs.

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple — Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple” is, as the name implies, a set of just three lectures (plus intro) very specifically about Quantum Physics, form three presentations given by theoretical physicist Hans Bethe.

Open UW — Open UW is the umbrella initiative of several free online learning projects from the University of Washington, offered by their UW Online division, and including Coursera, edX and other channels.

UC San Diego Podcast Lectures — Podcast USCD, from UC San Diego, is a collection of audio and/or video podcasts of multi-subject university course lectures — some freely available, other only accessible by registered students.

University of the People — University of the People offers tuition-free online courses, with relatively small fees required only for certified degree programs (exam and processing fees).

NovoEd — NovoEd claims a range of mostly free “courses from thought leaders and distinguished professors from top universities,” and makes it possible for today’s participants to be tomorrow’s mentors in future courses.

IT and Software Development

Udacity — Udacity offers courses with paid certification and nanodegrees — with emphasis on skills desired by tech companies in Silicon Valley — mostly based on a monthly subscription, with access to course materials (print, videos) available for free.

Apple Developer Site — Apple Developer Center may be very specific in topics for lessons, but it’s a free source of documentation and tutorials for software developers who want to develop apps for iOS Mobile, Mac OS X desktop, and Safari Web apps.

Google Code — As with Apple Developer Center, Google Code is topic-narrow but a good source of documentation and tutorials for Android app development.

Code.org — Code.org is the home of the “Hour of Code” campaign, which is aimed at teachers and educators as well as students of all ages (4-104) who want to teach or learn, respectively, computer programming and do not know where to start.

Mozilla Developer Network — MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) offers learning resources — including links to offsite guides — and tutorials for Web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and even if you’re not using Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Learnable — Learnable by Sitepoint offers paid subscription access to an ebook library of content for computers and tablets, and nearly 5,000 videos lessons (and associated code samples) covering software-related topics – with quizzes and certification available.

Pluralsight — Pluralsight (previously PeepCode) offers paid tech and creative training content (over 3,700 courses and 130K video clips) for individuals, businesses and institutions that covers IT admin, programming, Web development, data visualization — as well as game design, 3D animation, and video editing through a partnership with Digital-Tutors.com, and additional software coding lessons through Codeschool.com.

CodeHS — CodeSchool offers software coding lessons (by subscription) for individuals who want to learn at home, or for students learning in a high school teacher-led class.

Aquent Gymnasium — Gymnasium offers a small but thorough set of free Web-related lesson plans for coding, design and user experience, but filters access by assessing the current knowledge of an enrollee and allows those with scores of at least 70% to continue.

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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~August 11, 2017~ Today I hit my reading goal for my required reading and got a lot of stuff for college done! I use a bujo type thing, another planner, lanes.io & Habitica to keep my mind organized. Honestly my bujo isn't pretty like all the ones I see on here because I just don't have the time or effort. I like that I can just brain dump on there & be more organized in either the planner or lanes. I also order some new Juice pens (my favorites honestly) from Amazon.

#studyblr #college #organization #college prep #study #studyspo #planner #bujo #bullet journals #bullet journal #college tips

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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a real ass guide to life

there’s a lot of shit on here about lighting candles and waking up early to see the sunset and if we are being hella honest, no one actually does that. u probably don’t own candles or if u do there in a closet and the only time you wake up early all year round is never. so here’s a guide to actual human beings.

-wake up when you need to. don’t wake up at 5 to “journal” and “meditate.” sleep is more important. if you have a class at 9, wake up at 8. it’s simple. - eat something. it doesn’t have to be avocado toast. just have a bagel or a bowl of cocoa puffs. - have ur meds if u take any - attempt to look nice. at least brush your hair and your teeth. but honestly no one cares how u dress. if you wanna dress like a stripper, then dress like a goddamn stripper. honestly no one cares. (but if ur in hs try to follow the dress code a little bit?) - wear makeup if u want, or if you don’t then don’t. - ur probably not gonna exercise or stretch. who cares. i dont. your friends don’t. if ur feeling up to it then go jog 4 miles, but if ur not then don’t. - actually try to have a plan of what ur doing for that day. attend ur classes, and do ur work. ur education is hella important. FUCKING DO IT. kill those grades, murder everyone else in that class, impress and surprise ur teacher, parents, and everyone else who thought u couldn’t do it - attempt to be social. make plans with friends and try to go. it can be lowkey and only like an hr. eat pizza or go to a bar. just have fun. - eat healthy. eat a hamburger when u really want a hamburger and eat a large pizza when u really want a large pizza but try ur hardest to eat healthyish. - watch ya shows. who doesn’t love some amazing netflix binges? watch it. do it. - actually read. books are honestly the best. at least try to pick up the first harry potter. - go to sleep before 2AM!!!!!!¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ sleep is hella important. - shower. you don’t need to buy expensive bath bombs or candles and have a fancy bath and coat ur skin in so much lotion that you are a walking wet rag, but try to smell somewhat pleasant. - do what u want. just make sure it’s legal. have sex, travel, learn how to code, be with ur family, have a family, marry someone nice, build an empire, be fierce, be strong, but most of all: be happy. you live once on this planet. live it to the fullest. and don’t let ANYONE bring you down. not a girl, not a guy, not a parent, or a so called friend. keep your standards high, and heels higher.

#study hard #studyblr #study tips #live life #break

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anxiouslystudying · 7 years

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the no bullshit guide to getting your shit together: for the lazy student

Let’s be honest: time management and organization? They’re really hard. Sure, at first you might feel like you’ve gotten the hang of them, that you’re in control of your life. But how often have you fallen off the wagon? Procrastinated on one thing and the next moment, you’re behind in all your classes? I know that sometimes laziness feels like a part of who you are, but honestly, fuck that. Do you really want to give up your success for the disinterest of a moment?

If your answer is no (it better be no, or you really need to get your priorities straight), let’s get to it.

STEP ONE: BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF

“This class doesn’t even matter.” “I don’t care about my grades.” “I can finish this the day before.” Sound familiar? You might feel great now, but when you’re staring down at your report card later, it’ll feel like you just got punched.

This is a cliche, but the greatest obstacle to your success is yourself - especially the lies you tell yourself! Sit yourself down and be honest about what you need to improve on. Be as blunt as you can, but for god’s sake, don’t throw yourself a pity party! There’s no use agonizing over what you can’t change. Instead, set realistic, achievable goals, and make a game plan. Struggling with math? Go to extra help. Behind in all your classes? Stay in for a couple nights and actually work.

STEP TWO: STOP WITH THE FANCY SHIT

Now you know what your goals are, but maybe you want some inspiration, so you log on to tumblr and are instantly bombarded by all these beautiful, well lit shots of the most gorgeous bullet journals, planners, and notes. Impressive, right? Well, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: they’re all useless! A simple phone planner works just as well, if not better, than a fancy agenda, because you’ll always have it on you, it’s not a hassle to carry around, and you don’t feel obligated to make it look pretty.

Riddle me this, where are you going to find all this extra motivation to keep prettying up your bullet journal? To write all your notes in perfect, colour coded printing? There aren’t many times in life where taking the easy was out will actually benefit you, so take advantage! Stop wasting your time; get a phone planner and write your notes in your natural goddamn handwriting.

STEP THREE: CLEAN YOUR ROOM

Yep, your entire room - not just your study space! This one can be put on the back burner for a bit if you’re on a really pressing deadline, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I’m notoriously messy, and if I don’t watch myself, I’d find myself in dirty-laundry-and-old-notes hell. A little bit of organized chaos is fine, I even encourage it! But try working when your desk is covered in mounds of paper and you have nowhere to put your laptop – it’s just not conducive to success.

Keeping your entire room clean is a way to stave off stress, frustration, and even embarrassment, because nobody wants to show potential roommates how much of a mess they are.

STEP FOUR: ACTUALLY WORK

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: “actually work? Who does this girl think she is?” I’d probably think the same thing, except I’ve learned the valuable lesson of sucking it the hell up, and you will too. When you get home from work, grab a snack and work. When you have a free period, figure out what’s due and work. Stop reasoning yourself out of work: you’re not going to finish this later, and that will be on the test. There’s really not much to say about this one, because it’s the step that requires the most raw effort, and you’re really only going to find that within yourself. Tell yourself what’s at stake, and realize that, by setting the standard for your mediocrity now, you’re potentially trapping yourself in a cycle that will last for years.

STEP FIVE: CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK

Maybe you’ve been on top of your shit for a day, a week, or even a month, and that’s really great. But then… you fail. You miss a deadline or you bomb a test. So what do you do now? Do you allow yourself to fall back into your old habits? Fuck no! Everyone fails, even that studyblr with those perfect bullet journal photos and a perpetually clean study space. I’m going to tell you something that’ll sound really strange: you should value your failures, especially if you worked hard to avoid them. What?! Be HAPPY about failing when I actually TRIED? Yeah, you heard me right. If you don’t know how to handle failure, then when you inevitably experience it, your reaction will be much worse.

Failing hurts, and boy, I know how embarrassing it can be. But learning how to deal with failure, and especially how to keep trying after it happens, is an invaluable lesson.

STEP SIX: TREAT. YO. SELF.

Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting you treat yourself after the most basic of tasks, because please. Treat yourself when you know you goddamn well deserve it. Remember that “all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.” If all you do is study and do your homework, then, pardon my french, your life sucks. If you don’t have friends, play a video game! Eat an entire jumbo chocolate bar! Indulge in whatever the fuck you want, you deserve it. I’m someone that has trouble prioritizing future benefits over immediate gratification, so by allowing myself little pleasures, I save myself from crashing and burning.

Hope these tips helped, but remember to take them with a grain of salt - you’re you and I’m me, and different things work for different people. Good luck!

#studyblr #study #study tips #study motivation

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