I have to say I discovered this by accident. I was planning to write a post about whether Duolingo was good for learning a language (I continue writing it) when instead of going to my page for learning German from Spanish, went to the page for learning German from English and so I discovered the new feature of Duolingo : the stories.

It was not the first time I have heard about something similar from Duolingo, because I am aware that have podcasts for the learners of Spanish at least and I am also know that this stories thing have been for a little time in Duolingo again for the Spanish learners but the news (at least for me) is that now you can do this stories in French, German and Portuguese (apart from Spanish as well) the only thing you have to do is to access to one of this courses from the version for the English speakers.

The second thing that surprised me is that, at least in German, there are lots of stories, way more than I had expected.

I am currently loving this feature of Duolingo and it has even become my favourite part of the whole page because it basically helps me with my main problem in German : the listening part.

How does Duolingo Stories work?

Duolingo Stories combine a narrator which will be telling the story through short sentences and the characters of the tale itself. During the narrative, there will be interactive exercises

• For improving you reading / listening :This kind of exercises check whether you understood the story or not

• Vocabulary exercises: Exercises like selecting a certain word in a sentences or matching the synonyms

• Listening exercises : Some of them will be about listening to a certain sentence and writing it down or about completing phrases.

How to access Duolingo Stories if you are not learning a language from English

First of all, remember that so far the stories are only available in Spanish, German, Portuguese and French.
In the sidebar of Duolingo's page just click in the flag of the language you are currently learning, and you'll see all the other courses you've joined. Just click in add a new course.


You'll get to a page where more courses can be added, if you go to the right part of the page you'll see the option "I speak ..." select English.

FIRST PHASE.

SECOND PHASE

UnReal is a series that I discovered in September, and I really like, I got a bit obsessed, actually, as I couldn't stop to watching it.
I really recommend you this series as it has only got one season (so far) and it's extremely entertaining.
Basically, the series is about The Bachelor's behind-the-scenes (The Bachelor is a program aired in the US, where a groom finds the perfect bride, so he lives together with the candidates in a house).
It is a very interesting series because you can see how manipulative is the television, for example, the character portrayed by Shiri Appleby (Rachel) is the one of producer assistants of the reality and so her job is to make the contestants do whatever the direction thinks is important for the audience (like making the girls cry)
This series had a very good reception and has won several prizes as the revelation series.

 

English Level

The level of difficulty of the series is medium, so it's good for upper-intermediate or advanced students who wish to watch the show without subtitles. It doesn't have a very complex vocabulary, but due to it's about a reality show the contestans sometimes speak quickly, and not very clearly.

I personally consider that the CEFR is a great way for people to show their command of a language. Nowadays, more non-European institutions and people are adopting this system.
I’ve recently found a free software developed by the Lancaster University called Dialang which provides an extensive examination of different aspects like reading or listening, and that finally gives a score in each of the areas compared to the CEFR, and most important, how to improve it.
Also, you can not only test your level of English but of many other thirteen European languages (like Spanish, French, German, Dutch…)
This exam is used by many European universities for determaning the level of the students.
There are two versions of Dialang , the online version  or the downloadable version, which you can get from the official page.
The first time I’ve downloaded I wasn’t able to launch it, because of some plug-in missing, (that I think you can find in the web), but in my case, it worked downloading the next archive from the UNED page (I suppose is the same archive)

One of the most difficult parts when you are preparing an exam on your own, is the writing part, because there is not specific guidelines to correct it, or you are not able to correct your writing for yourself.
Surfing the internet, you may find some people that correct writings (not a lot, though) but the majority of them are really expensive, if we consider that for preparing an exam you cannot do only one writing.
Fortunately, Cambridge English has developed a very useful tool called "Cambridge English; Write and Improve"   which corrects your writing for free and gives a feedback in seconds (along with your writing command of English compared with the CEFR).
You can write about the topics that are available in the page (that change every month) and that varies for a wide range of kinds of writings (like a letter, composition, a story…) and that links with the writings that may appear in the Cambridge exams, or write about your own topic (which is absolutely perfect), with an extension between 150 to 600 words.

 https://writeandimprove.com/


PS. I've created a workbook with some writings taken from the CAE exam, the code to join it is YN8ABYFC

Maybe some of you know I am learning German with Rosetta Stone, which I think is a good method for learning a new language if you have no idea, and it is your first contact with it.
One of the things that I dislike about Rosetta Stone , is it lack of grammar explanations (but this is something that I will speak about in other posts) however, I do really like it, and due to I want to practice further, I’ve found on the Internet several official workbooks and tests ready to print (and with keys :)  ) of Rosetta Stone.
I consider it is a good material, because practicing “on paper” is better sometimes than doing exercises always online.
But the good news don’t end here, because in the same webpage there are also workbooks for English, French, Latin and Spanish.

CLICK HERE FOR THE WORKBOOKS

I hope you like it!!!

PD: Please remember that the the workbooks are for students with low command of the language, (because they are correlated with the original CDs)