@1 he had just begun the class

Until it accidentally tells you to call someone a fat toilet. haha.

Sure, but it's not very accurate.

Google translate doesn't put the words in the right order. For some languages, the adjective comes before the noun so whatever you're translating may sound wrong to someone who speaks the language.

Although Google Translate obviously has its flaws, and is in no way an appropriate tool to translate official texts or homework or whatnot, it can be a great help in quickly getting the general meaning of a text. It has to be used intelligently though, and that's where a lot of people fail.

you are ******* right

Not a very good idea. I've witnessed friends using Google Translate to post quotes in English and failing miserably. There's a huge difference between using it for a word or two and translating the whole thing. And PLEASE don't even think about translating word by word. Good luck OP.

Google Translate translates the words exactly from one language to the next while any bilingual person knows words change order in other languages. If you need to translate sentences Google is the least reliable place to go.

Google translate is perfectly fine to do French -> English to at least have a good idea of what the other person said.

And the right order is usually restored by the native speaker of the target language. Which, in this case, happens to be English.

My teacher seems to have an ability to sense Google Translate, I watched someone get ripped for using it today. Not risking that, yikes.

If you use it to do your work for you, you get the well deserved reward for plagiarism. If you use it to get the sense of what some text says, it's good enough for reading feedback or the instructions on a packet of food.

Google Translate is the worst. Try SDL Translate, it has way less errors than Google Translate. It's helped a lot

it isnt a matter of being hard on them self. how is op suppose to understand and learn the language with out some form of understandable feed back since op is a complete novice to give feed back in a language that op doesnt understand is like give some one a differential equation when they don't even know long division. Poor form on the professor.

It could be a beginner's course, #9. I speak a lot of different languages (5-6 now, including French) and I'm currently trying to learn Finnish, but if someone sent me a response to a lesson entirely in Finnish I certainly wouldn't understand all of it as I don't know that much yet. Languages take time to learn and especially since op said they were taking a class it's pretty ******* safe to assume op isn't that good at French yet. Op wasn't not applying their logic but rather just new to the language. That, if anything, should be common sense.

I'm with #64. My beginner Spanish class in college had a wonderfully sweet professor, but she had a terrible habit of explaining things in Spanish. I'd already had a couple courses in high school and I still didn't understand her. It's just not practical or helpful for the students to teach in the language you're learning when it's a beginner course.

#65 that's the point of writing to them in Spanish, of course you don't know everything they wrote, but if you know at least a couple of basic identifying words the then you could put it into context and have a general idea of what was being said. That's why they teach it like that in schools. When your parents taught you how to talk did they speak baby? No you learned by hearing other people talk and seeing what was going on in context with the words. That's how dogs understand some words as well.

#83 You grew up with English as a child which is why it was easier to learn. As a child it is easier to pick up languages because you don't have one firmly dominating how you think. Plus, speaking and writing is different. In speech, you can't pick up every word that is said if it's in a language you are new to. However, in writing, you can see the words, how they fit together, AND the spelling, which in French I know can make a major difference in similar sounding words with completely different meanings.

Are you being sarcastic? I'm really surprised this is even an issue, in my country it's considered normal for foreign language teachers to communicate with you using only the language they're teaching, it's considered to be the fastest way to learn.

its called imersion learning. thats how its normally done. you'll get it eventually

Yes yes yes. Misunderstood the FML. Please give me all the downvotes possible because I'm a horrible person.

Thank you, I'm aware of what immersion language classes are. I thought the instructor said that "he can't understand shit"

My spanish teacher did this, but she waited until after we had learned some of the language. Even then she tried to stick as much to what we were learning as she could.

Yet the teacher should be considerate especially if the op just began this class. Immersion is great but a beginner needs some adjustment time and a few lessons so they actually know some of the language.