Anna reviews: Duolingo's Finnish course

Duolingo recently published their new Finnish course. Having studied other languages with Duolingo earlier, I was excited to see what the Finnish course is like. In this video I show you some gameplay and give my review of the course. Note that I am not affiliated with or sponsored by Duolingo.
Happy learning!
Anna :-)

[StephenBolton]

I'm enjoying using the Duolingo app, it's a fun edition to my Finnish learning. I do hope sentences such as 'Onko norjalainen kissa viikinki?' come in handy when I'm able to visit Finland :)

[shaimaadoma]

Thanks for the review! Doing the course three years after this video came out, it's great to see that the corrections have been applied in the app and that it has improved overall. E.g. several variants for the word order within the sentence are considered correct.

[Pavanrajr]

Now finnish overtook the navajo course today
Edit: and now the Esperanto course

[ravenheart]

I'm using the Finnish lessons on Duolingo since it's released, it's a gread addition to self-studying with exercise books and your videos of course :) but I agree with the rest, there's not enough grammar in Duolingo. Anyways, it's a lot of fun to use it and this gamification learning helps a lot. I'll visit Finland again next week and hope this time I'm finally brave enough to speak some Finnish.
Keep going with your videos, I'm really happy every time you post something new, I write everything down and try to repeat and speak it. Terveisiä Saksasta <3

[scottturnbull]

Good review! I've been using Duolingo/ Finnish since it was released. It's a little silly sometimes but it does help reinforce my learning. Thanks, Anna!

[franklinm]

great review Anna. Duolingo is good but not enough for a serious estudent, but it is good like complement. Thanks you are te best super Anna, kippis!

[kucukhusam]

Kiitos. :) Language learners can use application such as "lexilize flashcards" and can create their own expressions, words with it. Also make excercise with their own words, sentences. I don't know there are better application but it is very useful and enough for me. I like both Finnish people and language. :)

[vcf]

Obviously Its not perfect or everyones cup of tea...but it sure helps a lot!

[aifayashajaganshi]

I hope you csn share your notes with duo. Finnish is still in beta and these notes may help them a lot.

[AJBonnema]

Thank you for the review Anna. I enjoyed it! Apart your remarks (which I had as well, and many other users with me), I miss the active part of word retrieval. If you learn new words, then your brain needs a 2 way retrieval: from Finnish to English and from English to Finnish. Duolingo offers a sentence in the target language or in English and then asks you to choose from a menu of words. The problem is that this retrieval from memory is passive. Apart from the passive retrieval we need active retrieval. Duolingo does offer this, but not as much as passive retrieval. It sometimes asks you to translate a sentence in format (typing the answer). That requires the brain to actively find the translated word. For me, these exercises are not enough.
Today I got the tip that this happens in several ways: 1. increase level so the exercises get more difficult and more of these typing exercises 2. Set an option that you want to use the keyboard mainly. Also, apparantly there is a way to set the exercises to "hard" which I think you did. I still have to figure out where to set that.
In conclusion: I like the tool, next to my course. The main effect it has is motivation. A side effect is learning words I haven't seen in my course yet. I go to my course for the grammar.
Again: thanks for the review!

[learnalanguagewithleslie]

Hmm, I am not sure how I can test the Beta version?
To be perfectly honest, I'm not that big a fan of duolingo. Apparently there are already "123 thousand" active learners of Finnish on there. Is that a realistic figure though? I see you have 3k subscribers here. Which is great! :) And two other Finnish youtube channels each have about 3k subscribers too. But it's no where near 123k. And just wait until it is released from the beta phase, there will all of a sudden be *millions* of learners as it becomes more mainstream. Although I do think that surely if people were truly serious about learning finnish, a lot more people would already be here, where the action is at. They wouldn't wait for duolingo to start learning. Would they? So if you ask me, I think a lot of duolingo users are inherent game players... who simply... like to collect flags. I suppose the good news is that your channel will surely grow.

[pilfernandez]

I am taking it. I like it . I am complemente it with yours for grammar.

[jeremiasrobinson]

A couple of weeks ago, the pronunciation on the Duo Finnish course has been updated. Was it improved?

[coolweek]

It’s ok for people who have known some basic knowledge of Finnish, I’m now using the website ‘17-minute-language’, it’s good to learn Finnish words, although you should pay for that. The price is about 50 euro, but I can use it to learn languages for 10 years in that price, I think it is suitable.

[lorenamelo]

I was afraid to use duolingo for finnish because the finnish grammar is too much different and has a lot of variations (comparing with my native language, portuguese) and sometimes duolingo show us phrases that doesn't make sense, and it mess me up :(

[justamusician]

No... The speaker is an artificial voice

[elcuajinais]

Duolingo it´s good to practice when you can´t sit on your desk with a notebook, or when you take a break in your job like 15 minutes or less. It help to "keep it fresh", if you want to learn you need write a lot, practice "input" and of course take lessons with Anna. Greetings from North Mexico Anna, i love your lessons ñ.ñ (sorry if my write sucks, i have never take english courses but cause USA is like 2 hours from here, its easy acquire the language)

[DamascusJuly]

Thanks for sharing your review.
Despite all the great apps out there, nothing compares to learning from a native speaker through interaction. Your lessons are great and benefited me a great deal. I play them all the time while commuting. All the best wishes.

[solensol]

The thing that in my opinion is the worst in the Finnish course in Duolingo is that grammar is not explained.

[danielbelmir]

One of the things I don't like about Duolingo is that the streak system can't be disabled. I stopped studying German on Duolingo after I lost my 300-day streak on Duolingo. I will make sure I lose my streak to avoid getting disappointed. I don't think the way duolingo teaches grammar is really bad, because you can study it somewhere else if you need.(depending on the languages you speak and the languages you're learning, you can learn a language without studying too much grammar). But i think they could make better tests to make sure the user learned the grammar and tell the user what he/she needs to study. The feature I miss from duolingo are dialogs and more practice. Stories are available for some languages, I think 10 minutes of dialog for every level on the tree containing the vocabulary that was taught would be enough to finish the learning progress and making sure the user can understand the vocabulary and grammar outside of duolingo. edit: I'm actually really excited about the Finnish course on duolingo, I just don't think duolingo provides enough features to allow people to practice what they learned on duolingo.