[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Any alternatives to Duolingo without gamific...
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Ask HN: Any alternatives to Duolingo without gamification?
I like Duolingo, but the delays between each session, and the
number of buttons I have to push between each learning session, are
absolutely killing me. I'm already paying for premium, so no ads,
but each time a session ends the number of buttons I have to push
just to get out of "rewards", committing to a streak when I don't
want to, or getting some gems or acknowledging some news feature,
are killing my desire to learn new languages. Is there any way to
turn off the gamification on Duolingo? Or reduce the number of
buttons I need to press to get from one session to the next? Or,
alternatively, are there any language learning apps that avoid this
gamification? I do like Duolingo's progress tracking, and gradual
buildup of vocabulary. I've tried making my own flashcards in Anki,
but that's a ton of work and it's hard to factor in any language
roadmap element on my own. Duolingo is not bad, but the percentage
of time doing things other than learning, specifically pushing
buttons and waiting for or watching animation, is far too high. I'd
love if I could just turn all of this stuff off.
Author : abbadadda
Score : 43 points
Date : 2023-10-07 12:44 UTC (10 hours ago)
| ckz wrote:
| ~B1 French here with Duo being an important step on the way.
|
| The trick for Duolingo is to use the desktop version and disable
| all the "helpful" bits you can or at least use the browser
| version if on mobile. Desktop had _far_ fewer gamified bits than
| the app as of a year ago (sadly the new UI broke my workflow and
| I dropped Duo altogether). Gems weren 't a meaningful thing, etc.
|
| In particular: Use your keyboard for everything. You'll probably
| want to be able to type in the target language anyway and it
| helps you avoid the trap of being really good at pattern
| recognition instead of really learning all the grammar quirks.
|
| You can disable both animations and the leaderboard gamification
| in the settings (the latter by setting your profile to private).
| CSS/uBlock can help hide other distractions, add dark mode, etc.
| as needed.
|
| It takes some extra work now to unbury the learning tool beneath
| but Duolingo itself, especially if you go in with a general idea
| of how to go about learning a language, is still really useful.
|
| Super helpful link that I used along the way as well (not mine):
| https://runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html
| blah_why_not wrote:
| language penpal sites.
|
| It's not an app... but rather learning with others.
|
| Advanced-level language learners may want to transition into
| actual real live conversations-- it's so you can spontaneously
| learn new concepts, expressions, and vocabulary.
|
| I used to use a good penpal-language learning website called
| MyHappyPlanet. It was back around 2007-2010-ish, and the site no
| longer exists.
|
| But looks like there are alternatives here:
|
| https://www.fluentu.com/blog/foreign-language-penpal/
| satvikpendem wrote:
| There are Anki decks for most languages, what are you having
| trouble with?
| tayo42 wrote:
| What drove me crazy with anki was how much it sticks to the
| idea it's not a flashcard system, even though it looks like one
| in every way. The "cards" are shared between decks and things
| automatically get overwritten based on the content of front.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Anki is pretty good, but you have to find the good decks, and
| more importantly constantly update them for your purposes
| klakierr wrote:
| Not exactly Duolingo alternative, but: I'm currently building an
| an app for language learning by reading books. It takes an (your)
| ebook and inserts translations:
|
| --Arthur --dijo con tono cortante, ["Arthur," he said sharply.] y
| su voz sono como el chasquido de una ratonera--, [and his voice
| sounded like the click of a mousetrap.]
|
| There is zero gamification, as it's not needed - you're motivated
| by the pleasure of reading.
|
| It won't help you to learn to speak (there is an option to read
| aloud a selected phrase though), but it will help you with
| vocabulary. I went with it from not being able to read even one
| page, to being able to understand 70% of a book (intermediate
| Spanish level) in about a month.
|
| ATM looking for beta users, completely free of charge. Pls leave
| a contact in a comment if you're interested
| mbbbb wrote:
| Seems awesome would like to try! What languages? (I am learning
| Polish and am approx A2 level)
| markgavalda wrote:
| This is an amazing idea! I use a much more rudimentary version
| of this to read (and learn along the way) multiple languages.
| My favorite method so far.
| tba wrote:
| Sounds great! My Telegram is ttf92.
| jph wrote:
| Super idea! You are welcome to use my ebooks which are free
| open source guide books for technology-related terminology.
| Your readers could learn many professional concepts and
| phrases.
|
| https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ has the guide books.
| Topics include startups, UI/UX, programming, project
| management, etc.
|
| Feel free to DM me. I can give you access to the repos, if you
| wish to add your translations there too. You're on to a really
| great idea IMHO.
| kej wrote:
| This sounds great and I'd love to help test. Kevin at silent
| planet dot com. Thanks!
| skydhash wrote:
| I moved back to audio courses (michel thomas) and grammar
| workbooks. Worked very well
| jsyang00 wrote:
| You might have better luck with an app specifically for your
| language by an indie dev
| kleton wrote:
| https://kosmonautas.com
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Pimsleur has rebranded to an internet product, but the old
| Pimsleur tapes are great if you can find them. I started learning
| Armenian with these and it put me on the right track.
| pling87 wrote:
| I've enjoyed using Clozemaster - it's an app that uses the
| sentence-mining concept advocated by Glossika. That is, it uses
| pre-made cloze deletions that help you learn words in the context
| of a sentence. It has some advanced material and has been a good
| language learning tool somewhere "in-between" Duolingo and Anki.
| somsak2 wrote:
| For a free, Anki-native version of this see
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1713698257
| rgovostes wrote:
| Fluent Forever is an alternative to Duolingo which is based on
| flashcards which you customize from app-provided vocabulary and
| sentences, and are presented to you in spaced-repetition
| intervals. (The founder based the method off of his own
| experience learning languages with Anki.)
|
| The gamification is less than Duolingo. When I complete a review
| it praises me for my keeping up my streak, and they also added
| achievements. However there aren't gems, premium upsell ads (it's
| a paid app), etc.
| prymitive wrote:
| I feel your pain, it was getting worse and worse over the years
| and now it's just trying to game as much "engagement" as
| possible. Feels like screen time is the only metric they have.
|
| I switched from Duolingo to Busuu for my Japanese learning and
| it's so much better. They did add leagues to it too but you can
| just ignore it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| ChatGPT4
|
| ask it for a 12-week curriculum and have it go through it with
| you
|
| It can do languages and you can get google to pronounce things,
| and ChatGPT again to explain unexpected nuances
|
| when multimodal is rolled out to your profile, you can practice
| handwriting too
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Mango is a nice alternative. I have access to Mango via my local
| community library (I am in US - Michigan)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I used to use Mango too, great alternative.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Is this the one- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=
| com.mango.andr...?
| random_ wrote:
| I recommend Lingq. Support to many languages, you can add your
| own texts, simple and clean interface and nice for begginers and
| advanced users. The owner is quite a nice person too.
| rozenmd wrote:
| Language Transfer: https://www.languagetransfer.org/
| betaby wrote:
| Did you personally have a good result with it? What language?
| (Didn't retain much personally)
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(page generated 2023-10-07 23:01 UTC)