[HN Gopher] An opinionated critique of Duolingo
___________________________________________________________________
An opinionated critique of Duolingo
Author : agnishom
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-09-30 13:19 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (isomorphism.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (isomorphism.xyz)
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| One thing that I have found Duolingo helpful for is kana and
| kanji practice in Japanese. It's better than flashcards in that
| it also gives you stroke order.
| mepian wrote:
| When did they add that? When I was trying to learn Japanese 6-7
| years ago Duolingo didn't have anything for either kana or
| kanji...
| fvrghl wrote:
| What is a non-opinionated critique?
| hiatus wrote:
| I expect a critique of accuracy would be non-opinionated.
| agnishom wrote:
| I would say that my critique is rather unbalanced. Most of it
| seems to gripe on the shortcomings of Duolingo, but I do think
| that it is an overall positive.
| chasil wrote:
| I bought Rosetta Stone for a similar purpose.
|
| They cannot give you a chart or synopsis to save their lives.
| They are quite weak on tenses for this reason.
| dilap wrote:
| Duolingo is terrible+, but proper gamification combined w/ LLMs
| for real conversations could be an incredible learning tool. (I
| might build this if no one else does.)
|
| +It can be useful for going from absolute 0 to epsilon, just to
| kind of get familiar with the language, but if you're using it
| more than like 2 weeks, you're seriously wasting your time (vs.
| reading material in the target language, watching TV in target
| language, trying to talk w/ people in target language). Anki,
| too, can be a trap that feels like learning but isn't, really, in
| my experience.
| kakacik wrote:
| You can get quite far with consistent long term approach with
| stuff like Duolingo. The problem is, its just one or very
| few... vectors or dimensions in which you progress,
| specifically aligned with how the material is done. I have a
| friend, he is doing DL for French for maybe 2 years, every day.
| He can talk some stuff pretty well, freezes on some other
| situations. Passive understanding works quite well for him too.
|
| Real use of language has many dimensions, changing also ie the
| ways you think in that language for example.
|
| Nothing beats real use where you have to express yourself and
| not skip to other languages as a shortcut, no way around this.
| agnishom wrote:
| > but proper gamification combined w/ LLMs for real
| conversations could be an incredible learning tool.
|
| I don't necessarily disagree but I do believe it will require
| some really smart design ideas. I am pessimistic that a big
| name company will come up with them
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| lets do them ourselves, im done waiting around for those
| mooks!
| gs17 wrote:
| I've tried learning apps with LLMs and part of the issue is
| that you can't have much of a conversation early on. A
| conversation of "how many cats do you have?" "I have two cats"
| "what color are your cats", etc., isn't much different than the
| non-AI lessons. At the point where it would be really useful,
| the other options you mentioned are much better choices.
| dilap wrote:
| I think having a world (3d maybe, or maybe just 2d) you could
| talk about in a really simple way might be useful here.
| Imagine something like "el gato quiere la pelota roja" and
| you have to carry the red ball to the cat to pass to the next
| lesson, and there's a cat, and a dog, and capibara and
| various shapes; something like that...
|
| There's probably the opportunity to have simple stories and
| personalities come into play too, early on, to add interest.
| Think about e.g. the Frog and Toad books for children
| learning to read.
| gs17 wrote:
| There's two games I know of similar to that concept (I
| think Noun Town is more similar): https://store.steampowere
| d.com/app/2313720/Noun_Town_Languag... https://store.steamp
| owered.com/app/274980/Influent_Language_... I think it's
| interesting, but falls into the same issue Duolingo does,
| vocabulary is necessary but not sufficient for language
| learning.
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| I teach languages and teaching people how to functionally craft
| things with a language works much better in the medium to long
| term. By the time you get some basics down, you can actually
| have a conversation beyond "comment ca va, comment t'appelle
| tu?" because you know how to use the language, not just parrot
| phrases.
| brandall10 wrote:
| There's a newer app I use called Natulang, developed by a
| Ukranian software dev to solve this problem for themself, which
| is entirely speaking focused w/ AI support and aims to get a
| person to a B2 level over 360 lessons w/ about 15 minutes each.
| I'd round up to 30 minutes each for actual time commitment due
| to the extra SRS sessions tacked on.
|
| I'm 50 lessons in Spanish now and I definitely believe the
| claim. Recently was on a date w/ someone who knew about as much
| English as I know Spanish and only grabbed Google translate
| about a half dozen times.
|
| It doesn't have much in the way of gamification... to me the
| fact that it seems very evidently effective is enough
| motivation to do a daily lesson.
|
| Actual LLM powered free-form conversationalist assistants are
| better once someone has a solid base understanding, probably at
| least a 2000 word vocab. What you'd really want is a LLM
| powered instructor that develops and adjusts a lesson plan
| based on progress.
| dilap wrote:
| Playing briefly, looks pretty good! -- though I wonder if
| there's a way to move away from using a source language (or
| maybe it does this in later lessons?). You really want to try
| to get your head 100% inside the target language as quickly
| as possible, and not be translating back and forth.
| brandall10 wrote:
| You can do this with the "free dialog" option from the
| beginning. The only issue with this is you do have to
| reference the actual lesson material to that point, so it's
| more of a review piece.
|
| That said, my impression is getting to functional in a
| language quickly requires referencing a source language
| that is fully understandable by the user to build vocab and
| comprehension - ie. explaining a new concept in the target
| language using the target language for a B1 student is
| going to be inefficient and not expressive enough.
| Otherwise you're fortifying what you already know vs.
| actually building more knowledge. Things like
| comprehensible input are great but seemingly more indirect
| and less efficient.
|
| If you have an option to get from zero to B2 fairly
| quickly, you are functional enough in the target language
| to use a myriad of options to fluency, including doing
| nothing other than conversing with others.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Duolingo's marketing of "learn a language in 5 minutes a day" or
| whatever their similar slogan is, is bad. Duolingo won't teach
| you hardly anything at all in only 5 minutes a day, and even with
| considerably more time (30 minutes to an hour a day), on it's
| _own_ it is unlikely to teach you a language. However, in
| combination with other learning tools like classes, immersions,
| comprehensible input, etc. It is a very valuable tool. I finished
| the German class in about 2 years, and I found it helpful, and
| wished that the Duoloingo German class continued further than it
| did.
|
| Yeah, I agree, I don't like aspects of the league, and I think
| that the way they apportion XP encourages less-than-idea ways of
| spending your time. Basically, if you use Duolingo exactly the
| way they encourage you to use it, and only that way, you won't
| get much out of it. But if you are self directed, recognize the
| ways in which it is useful, and use it as another tool alongisde
| the rest of your learning, it's really helpful.
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| Theres a persistent myth that you can just "absorb" a language;
| you can't, you have to understand it either intuitively or
| unconsciously through experience. Duolingo took so much money
| from people by pushing this idea.
| medstrom wrote:
| > But if you are self directed, recognize the ways in which it
| is useful, [...] it's really helpful.
|
| Yes, but once you get the hang of how to learn well from each
| exercise, it's interesting how the app will seem purpose-built
| to... slow you down.
|
| You know that exercise where you arrange words into a sentence?
| I learned a lot better once I stopped looking at those words
| for cues, and just formed a sentence in my mind and _then_
| looked.
|
| At that point, it's a pure waste of time to assemble the
| sentence and tap through all the UI transitions, I'd rather see
| the next exercise right away!
|
| But the app doesn't allow me to! I have to pass the minigame
| first! At the end, it seems 80% of my effort was spent
| practicing "how to visually hunt for words in a word-cloud".
| creaktive wrote:
| Like I always say to my friends & family who are complaining
| about Duolingo not really teaching anything: it beats
| doomscrolling, what else do you want?
| agnishom wrote:
| I agree. But should they wish to go beyond "beating
| doomscrolling", they have other options
| gs17 wrote:
| That's a very, very low bar though.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| It's a bar that every Duolingo user is hopping over while a
| bunch of procrastinators are making excuses about why they
| haven't started yet.
|
| Duolingo is not a complete solution and I don't think they or
| anyone else claims that it is. What it solves fantastically
| well is the zero-to-habit transition.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, that's a ridiculously low bar for something that costs
| like $150/year, for that matter.
| aqme28 wrote:
| It's not much better for language learning than just playing
| Candy Crush. As long as you don't delude yourself into thinking
| this is time spent productively, then sure.
| gs17 wrote:
| I disagree. Duolingo will never make you fluent, but you'll
| at least learn some vocabulary. Even setting Candy Crush to a
| different language won't really teach you much.
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| Sitting in an empty room beats doomscrolling!
| pmichaud wrote:
| A language learning platform that works would be nice, instead
| of this.
| gs17 wrote:
| Duolingo should have been that. Founded by a professor who
| wanted to make language learning free for the world, funded
| by a MacArthur fellowship and a National Science Foundation
| grant. When they rejected making it a non-profit, it lost its
| potential to be that platform IMO.
| jghn wrote:
| People just need to properly set expectations. I've been using
| Duolingo for about 15 mins per day on average for a few years
| now. What I've found is that my reading skills are actually
| pretty good (roughly A2/B1 level), for instance I can open up a
| Spanish language subreddit and mostly make out what's going on.
| My listening is rudimentary at best, I can generally have a
| vague idea of what people are talking about if I listen to a
| Spanish conversation. My speaking is almost nonexistent.
|
| But you know what? That makes sense. I'm mostly just reading
| text and clicking words to fill in the blanks. And the
| listening component is so unrealistic that it barely builds
| anything up. And I don't do speaking at all.
|
| As you say, it beats doomscrolling. For a free service I'm not
| expecting that I can parachute into a Spanish speaking country
| and be fluent. At the same time, I'm a lot better in terms of
| my skill level than I would have been otherwise.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| TBH native Spanish speakers talk FAST. Like fast-fast.
| jghn wrote:
| Exactly, that's a big part of my issue. I'll catch some
| words & phrases so can sometimes catch a big picture view
| of what they're saying, but that's it. If I watch a video
| intended to be educational & at a slower speed, then I'm
| much better off.
|
| And that's not a surprise to me. 95+% of my listening
| experience is listening to Duolingo's unnaturally slow,
| computer generated voices and that's a poor substitute. But
| hey, I can also do it quickly while drinking my morning
| coffee instead of putting a lot of effort into it, so it is
| what it is.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I have friends and family who earnestly desire to learn a
| language, and ask me what to use. They often end up choosing
| Duolingo and make no progress toward fluency in the subsequent
| years. The criticism is that it subverts their goal, preventing
| their success by replacing learning with addictive behaviors
| that don't educate (like someone wanting to enter a new field
| and getting hooked on "educational" YouTube Shorts podcast
| clips). It also spoils their ability to focus on alternative
| learning methods as none deliver as much of an immediate
| dopamine rush as Duolingo. These alternatives could do better
| at that, sure, but it doesn't change that Duolingo fries their
| brains preventing them from adopting productive methods without
| therapeutic interventions.
|
| That's why people advocate against it and advocate for
| alternatives.
|
| Their goal wasn't to defeat doomscrolling, it was to learn a
| language!
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| Yes and mine say things like "why pay 500 for a language
| course when I can do this?" Of course they ignore me when I
| say language meetups are free, because "im not at that level
| yet." It's usually anxiety.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| I've been doing "Dreaming Spanish", which is a comprehensible
| input service, and using Duolingo as a self-test of sorts.
| Watching a lot of curated spanish-language content is very
| engaging, and I believe this method will work (for some
| definition of work), but it is nice to have duolingo as a
| fancy flash card system. I think duolingo by itself probably
| isn't very effective, but it serves as a motivator and i
| think it's useful as part of a more complete language
| learning strategy.
| a_c wrote:
| Exactly. I know I'm not learning much. But it is a healthy/less
| harmful distraction and I managed to read some Spanish tweet.
| Can't complain.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| The thing that sorta gets me about Duolingo: If it became
| mainstream for everyone to do what is essentially 5 minutes of
| anki every day (which is kinda the Duolingo pitch), language
| learning would be kind of a bad candidate. If you spend 2 years
| memorizing 400 words you still aren't close to knowing a
| language. But there are many situations where memorizing 400
| distinct things _is_ pretty useful: countries, capitals, recipes,
| history etc.
| cenamus wrote:
| In 5 minutes you could probably do 5 new words a day and 30-40
| repetitions.
|
| So 1500 words a year, which is useful, if you're not a complete
| beginner
| obk0943t wrote:
| It's worse than anki because there is no SSR built in ( at
| least when i was doing it ).
|
| >But there are many situations where memorizing 400 distinct
| things is pretty useful: countries, capitals, recipes, history
| etc.
|
| Just memorizing 400 vocabs alone is actually pretty good early
| on because then you aren't tied to practicing grammar with
| childish content like " I went to school by bus yesterday"
| because of limited vocabulary.
|
| I spent the first year alone learning about 2000 vocab without
| any grammar. And when I go on and do grammar I can actually
| practice with interesting content that related to my daily
| life. I now recommend new learner to learn their vocab by N + 1
| level relative to their grammar.
| robin_reala wrote:
| I used Duolingo a fair bit in 2015-2017 to improve my Swedish,
| and generally enjoyed myself. Having not touched it for most of a
| decade, I downloaded it earlier this year to try my hand at basic
| Greek and wow but it's gone downhill. Everything is massively
| over the top, all subtlety has left the system, and when I
| stopped after a couple of days because I couldn't deal with the
| intensity they sent me nagging messages for over two weeks in
| more and more pleading tones trying to get me to come back. I'd
| never use them again at this point.
|
| _Edit: just went to delete my account and they've got a tearful
| owl above the "Erase personal data" button to try to guilt-trip
| me into staying.https://drive-
| thru.duolingo.com/static/owls/sad.svg_
| LimeLimestone wrote:
| I had a similar experience, I was a heavy Duolingo user between
| 2014 and 2016 (I used it for Spanish) and I still believe that
| back then it was actually a pretty good way to learn the basics
| and I had learnt enough to be able to get by in Spain, have
| casual conversations with people, even hang out with a group of
| natives (but I also was a member of a few WhatsApp groups with
| Spanish people so I had a bit more practice).
|
| Then they dumbed down the phone app and soon enough they did a
| similar thing with the website. Tips & Notes section was gone
| (or they kept it but removed a lot of information? can't
| remember), the tree-style courses were gone and replaced with
| some kind of a Path, the exercises became too easy and they'd
| make you translate from Spanish to English most of the time,
| which is much easier than the other way around. Then they
| removed the ability to type with your keyboard, added the
| "match the word pairs" exercise (which sucks if you use a
| keyboard and yes, I know you can try to use the numbers on your
| keyboard), all of which made the whole experience even worse
| and less effective.
|
| I lost my streak somewhere in the middle of this
| enshittification process and I've never really gotten back to
| using the site, other than maybe checking once a year whether
| it's still shitty (and it always is).
|
| In my opinion, back in 2014 Doulingo used to be a learning
| website with some gamification aspect that made the learning
| process a bit easier and more entertaining. Now it's just a
| gaming app which tries to give you a false sense of learning a
| language but in reality you aren't learning anything. Just a
| waste of time.
| celltalk wrote:
| What do you guys think about DuoBook.co?
| Apreche wrote:
| Duolingo did a great job of encouraging me to find a real human
| to learn from.
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| It sucks balls. I learned more in one month of studying from a
| textbook and attending conversation classes than I did in two
| years using Duolingo. And its so much worse now than its ever
| been!
| dougdonohoe wrote:
| I can relate to this post - great thoughts!
|
| I took Spanish in high school and college, so had a rudimentary
| understanding of verb tenses and some vocabulary. Before I walked
| the Camino de Santiago el Norte (45+ days in Spain), I used
| Duolingo to brush up on my Spanish.
|
| It helped my reading most, my speaking a fair amount and my
| listening/conversation the least. I was able to ask questions,
| but was often flummoxed at any reply that wasn't the most basic.
|
| I grew to hate the gamification, but was addicted to my "streak'
| also ... using math lessons when I didn't feel like doing a
| Spanish lesson. The so-called "leagues" were kind of useless
| since the same people weren't in the league from week to week.
| Any friendly competitiveness to "learn more" was lost when
| randomly assigned to a different group each week.
|
| I finally abandoned the app this spring.
|
| I'm trying Babbel now since I'm going back to Spain for a month
| and Patagonia next year.
| jghn wrote:
| > I grew to hate the gamification
|
| I don't understand people who say this. I completely ignore the
| gamification. If I don't feel like doing it one day, I don't do
| it. I don't even know what the leagues are, despite seeing
| people talk about them. I never look at any score or badge that
| they provide.
|
| Why do people care about this?
| gs17 wrote:
| You have to click through a lot of it. If I open it and do a
| lesson, it will demand I commit to a streak (if I haven't
| done it in a while), show me the new 1-day streak, show me
| about streak freezes, see how much XP I got, see what quests
| I made progress on, see that I did not get promoted in the
| leagues, see my new league placement, and probably a dozen
| other things that aren't language learning. I don't care
| about this stuff, but I'm forced to interact with it to use
| their app.
| dougdonohoe wrote:
| Duolingo makes it hard to ignore - the whole app is gamified.
| It's like ignoring water while swimming in the ocean. Yes,
| you can turn off notifications, but sometimes they were
| helpful.
|
| I think gamification triggers some innate feature of our
| brain, just like TikTok or Reels or mobile games, etc. It is
| designed to be hard to ignore.
| jghn wrote:
| This may be part of it. I refuse to use the app. I use the
| website only.
|
| It sends me daily reminder emails, which I use as a
| reminder to do it if I have a chance, otherwise I ignore
| them. It flashes up a bunch of crap after I complete a
| lesson that I just mindlessly click through. Which could be
| the league stuff you mention but I ignore it.
|
| > just like TikTok or Reels or mobile games
|
| Fair, I have the same question about those. It boggles my
| mind that people fall for the gamification of those too. Or
| even back in the day stuff like badges in StackOverflow. If
| one doesn't care, one doesn't care.
| sandinmyjoints wrote:
| Curious if you have ever heard of/tried
| https://www.spanishdict.com/learn?
| duothrowaway99 wrote:
| Both of my parents are teachers of a European language. They both
| have phd's in linguistics, and rate very highly with students
| (who basically adore them).
|
| All of this context to say that not once has anyone using
| Duolingo been able to "test out" of the first ("101") class that
| they teach. Duolingo self-learners come in with a very unequal
| mix of vocabulary and... not much else. Unable to use declension
| properly [0], unaware of most rules around gender, verb tenses,
| etc.
|
| I'm sure (and I should look it up) that there have been academic
| papers written on these quite different methods/approaches:
| gamified learning vs "academic" learning, immersion by moving to
| a country, etc.
|
| But in my parents' experience of teaching (which spans ~40 yrs),
| Duolingo students pretty much all became disappointed in the app:
| these students thought that they had developed skills when it
| turns out they mostly got addicted to a game that overpromised
| useful learning over entertainment.
|
| ---
|
| Imho, the ugly truth is that language learning as an adult is
| deeply hard and requires a tremendous amount of effort and
| "tricks" to keep yourself motivated. People who watch native
| media with subtitles, play with AI apps (such as the YC backed
| https://www.issen.com/ which is quite nice), take a mix of
| "classic" classes, spend time in a country where the language is
| spoken and force themselves into situations where they "have" to
| speak, etc. all do much better. But it's a _ton_ of effort.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension
| KPGv2 wrote:
| > gamified learning vs "academic" learning, immersion by moving
| to a country,
|
| I think it's not unreasonable to point out that, at least for
| Americans (I'm guessing the largest user base of Duolingo), of
| the three options you listed, one costs tens of thousands of
| dollars for us (academic instruction), and the other is
| virtually impossible to do because we aren't part of a bloc of
| nations with border freedom (immersion).
| duothrowaway99 wrote:
| There are a number of institutes/colleges dedicated to
| language learning in the US: Alliance Francaise [0], Goethe
| institute [1] with multiple satellite offices around the
| country, all offering language classes for a few hundred
| dollars.
|
| There are a multitude, nay - infinite! number of online
| classes with teachers who will use "traditional", textbook-
| based approaches. [2]
|
| Young Americans regularly go for 1-2-3 month trips to Italy,
| France, Germany, etc. American passports give folks a ton of
| latitude. You can stay in a hostel and eat cheaply - many
| thousands of people have done it.
|
| I'm not saying it's easy, but I will definitely push back on
| the idea that it's impossible.
|
| (and will also absolutely agree that the convenience of an
| app will be 10,000,000x more tempting to use than doing any
| of the above)
|
| [0] https://www.afusa.org/
|
| [1] https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/index.html
|
| [2] https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/french
| foobarian wrote:
| I have a teen who's been using DuoLingo for French for a
| while but hit a ceiling with spoken language. I suggested
| to him to look around for voice chats with French speakers
| like maybe on Discord but it's a desert out there. Wonder
| if you have some experience with using these paid options
| to recommend. Would be neat if there could be something
| without a rigid course-like structure he could join
| occasionally for low-key conversation practice.
| duothrowaway99 wrote:
| Some Alliance Francaise outposts offer online classes,
| and italki has a number of great tutors. It always
| depends on the teacher you work with ofc, but I know
| someone who had great experience with both.
|
| There are also a number of social media influencers (who
| probably were language tutors in a past life) that run
| online paid communities aka you pay to be part of their
| language community, and then have access to classes, zoom
| calls, etc.
|
| They're harder to find / it's more difficult to
| immediately parse which ones will be good. But you can
| get a preview of "how they are" by consuming what they
| publish. For instance, for Canadian (Quebec) French,
| these are great:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingfrench
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@maprofdefrancais
|
| https://www.frenchwithfrederic.com/
|
| I'm sure there are equivalents for French from France,
| and other languages. Searching "Learn {language name}" on
| YouTube/Instagram would be a good start.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Young Americans regularly go for 1-2-3 month trips to
| Italy, France, Germany, etc
|
| Its really not that common outside of really wealthy
| people. Only 50% or so Americans under 30 years old even
| have a passport, much less spend _months_ overseas. And
| that 's a percentage that has gone way up over the years.
| In fact, its probably _more common_ to find people that
| have barely even left the same state than have traveled in
| Europe, especially so for spending any appreciable amount
| of time in any particular part of Europe.
|
| https://today.yougov.com/travel/articles/46028-adults-
| under-...
| agnishom wrote:
| issen looks rather interesting at a first glance. Thanks for
| the pointer.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| I'd broadly agree with this critique but I've had some success
| with Duolingo. About 10 years ago, I used it with the aim of
| learning enough Spanish to get by for a two-week holiday.
|
| While learning useful language constructs (gender of nouns and
| pronouns, how to conjugate common verbs), I also had to learn
| some useless - to me - vocabulary, e.g., names of animals at
| the zoo. Anyhow, after a 2-3 months of using Duolingo, I had
| learned enough to be able to communicate with bus-drivers and
| shop staff. My conclusion was that Duolingo would be a useful
| tool to complement more structured learning.
|
| I'm currently learning guitar and I feel the same way about
| Rocksmith: it's a lot of fun and a great tool to incentivise me
| to pick up the guitar but it doesn't substitute a more
| structured learning course and it completely neglects the
| theory of music.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's funny that Issen doesn't have HN on its "how did you hear
| about us" list.
| epistasis wrote:
| The biggest problem with Duo are the extremely limited
| exercises and educational materials. Gamification is great.
|
| But you're not going to learn declension and cases from
| repeating the same few stilted examples that don't even exhibit
| enough variety to pick up the underlying rules, especially as
| an adult.
|
| Duolingo is trying to do implicit language learning but the
| language input is far too narrow.
|
| I used Duolingo to start learning a language with a different
| alphabet, and it taught me the alphabet, the sounds, and some
| basic vocabulary. But it couldn't teach me verb conjugation,
| noun declension, plurals, ownership, etc. etc. etc. That I
| needed a teacher for.
|
| With the teacher, I then used Anki cards to help with
| remembering more vocab and with keeping things fresh everyday
| in between lessons. Duolingo could be that, if they had enough
| examples, perhaps. I would prefer Duolingo type exercises over
| my Anki cards, as well as the streak and friendship network
| effects, but there's simply not enough content.
| mentos wrote:
| Your parents have any impression of students that used
| Pimsleur?
| tazjin wrote:
| Personally I like Babbel. It looks a bit dated (or did the last
| time I used it), but its content is _really_ good and it helped
| me bootstrap 3 out of the 5 languages I speak fluently.
|
| There's no gamification like in Duolingo, you have to bring
| your own motivation and endure the UI, but it really does get
| you to the level where you can continue on your own.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| This. Same experience. It's worth noting that Babbel is
| designed with much input from actual language teachers, not
| just statisticians and coders. It also received funding from
| the EU, which makes a subscription a particularly good deal.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > spend time in a country where the language is spoken and
| force themselves into situations where they "have" to speak,
| etc.
|
| In the end this is the only one that matters.
|
| You can do things before going to that country that will help.
| But you'll never be close to fluent without taking that final
| step.
| amatecha wrote:
| For real. My French always skyrockets every time I take any
| vacation to France, even for a week. After just one day I'm
| back to being able to understand a lot of what people are
| saying and respond pretty comfortably. It's also surprising
| how quickly the words come back to me after having been away
| for a year or whatever, with minimal practice between.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Same. I need to practice more when I'm outside the country.
| I remember last time I'd just arrived in Brussels and got a
| snack at a cafe and had to check on my phone how to ask for
| the bill. I feel like a dummy for the first day or so until
| everything unlocks.
| HankStallone wrote:
| My high school French teacher said if we really wanted to
| learn a language, go live there for a couple months.
|
| Of course, that's easier said than done (and paid for). But
| if you can afford the money and time away from home, it's
| probably the way to go.
| mynameisash wrote:
| > keep yourself motivated
|
| As an entertainment device, Duolingo is fine. I used it to
| start my French journey, not truly appreciating the INCREDIBLE
| difficulty and quantity of effort required. Fortunately for me,
| I was and still am super curious about languages, and I really
| want to learn.
|
| I speak French now at roughly a B2 level. When I travel to la
| Francophonie, I get by, and people are usually reasonably
| impressed by my level (or at least are humoring me, which is
| fine). But my friends and family who have seen me hold
| conversations in French, as impressed as they may be, would
| _never_ put in the amount of effort that I have.
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I have a 2000+ day streak on Duolingo, mostly learning Russian.
| The app has got progressively worse since I started, for a while
| just giving me the same lesson every single day. I of course
| finished the course years ago, but I keep up with my one lesson a
| day to keep the bird happy. I find the UI incredibly annoying,
| I've disabled all the sounds and animations that I can. You might
| ask why don't I stop? Well I want to keep up my Russian, and the
| one lesson a day keeps my brain ticking over.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I've also got a 2000+ day streak (Spanish) and keep it going
| for similar reasons. I can't stand the goofy animations they
| keep adding to Duolingo. I'm about to dump my streak and move
| to something that doesn't make me feel like the developer
| thinks I'm a child clapping at the cartoons on the screen.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Last year they replaced all the recordings of native speakers
| with ML-generated recordings, in both Russian and Ukrainian
| (probably other languages too but those are the two I have).
| The ML-generated recordings are terrible, for example they
| can't deal with the ambiguity betweeen vse and vsyo (written
| identically in Russian) so they always say vsyo. They'll
| sometimes randomly say the names of individual letters instead
| of reading the word, particularly the hard and soft signs. One
| recording is for a sentence with the word "tochka" (period, as
| at the end of the sentence) and instead of reading "tochka" the
| recording just has a silence there.
|
| I've reported these issues hundreds of times since they added
| the ML recordings and none of them have been fixed.
|
| But like you I keep using it just to get that little daily
| exposure to the language. I suspect it's useless for actually
| learning a new language, but it's maybe just barely good enough
| to keep up a language you already know.
| forinti wrote:
| I've noticed some weird English (in the English for Russian
| speakers course).
|
| Sometimes the rhythm of the phrase is very strange and also
| sometimes the wrong pronunciation is used when there's a
| heteronym.
| forinti wrote:
| I was frustrated that the Russian course was so short, so I
| started doing English as a Russian speaker, but soon the
| Russian part got thin and it's almost completely English.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Anecdata: my daughter, when a rising high school sophomore in
| 2023, used DL to skip a full year^1 and join upperclassmen in
| Spanish 3. She went on to take AP Spanish, earn college credit w/
| her AP test score, and join the Spanish National Honors Society.
| She credits DL w/ giving her the confidence -- and vocabulary --
| to make the leap when she did. Of course that doesn't mean
| critiques aren't valid, and YMMV, but it does help show that DL
| isn't necessarily useless, either.
|
| 1. Despite US high-school language classes generally having a
| (usually deserved) reputation for failing to impart real fluency,
| our town's language instruction is actually first-rate.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Duolingo was exceptionally useful to get me _started_ on my
| language learning journey (Spanish, a bit of Japanese) while
| knowing basically nothing. It tapered off pretty fast, is
| _very_ slow to introduce new vocabulary, and the core lesson
| structure doesn 't explain much unless you dig into the
| submenus with intent.
|
| As a basic starter tool, it's cute and briefly enjoyable, and
| that's enough. But you'll need to supplement it with something
| else almost right away, and your daughter's structured classes
| and reading material were almost certainly that something else.
| I think Duolingo's *streak* is the only key feature worth
| imitating in any form, as it gamifies habit development, which
| is difficult for many people. If only the lesson content could
| keep up with that one good idea.
| KPGv2 wrote:
| DL was a core part of my German studies before my first kid was
| born so I could start speaking my family's heritage language
| with her. I spent about six months working through the entire
| tree (this was a small-ish tree, back in 2016), supplementing
| with Wiktionary + Hammer's German Grammar and by the time she
| was born, I was contacting tutors to work with them and saying
| "I'm guessing I'm around low-B1" only to have them evaluate me
| as probably B2 for spoken language.
|
| The caveat here was that I was intensely motivated, my native
| language (English) is related to German, and I already had
| learned two other languages, so I had internalized a good
| process to learn a language (plus an interest in linguistics
| meant I could read "here's how the subjunctive is constructed
| in German" and not have to read fifty pages of explanation
| about what the subjunctive even is.
|
| It CANNOT be overstated how useful it is to understand
| grammatical concepts at an academic level when you're learning
| a new language. There's so much that can be conveyed with one
| term instead of twenty examples you have to read over and over
| to grok what this construction is _for_. Pay attention in
| seventh grade English when you 're being taught what passive
| voice is, pay attention when you're learning about mood. When
| you hear past and past perfect, remember it! It will make
| things SO much easier when you decide to acquire another
| language.
|
| (Edit) Even very different languages like Japanese still have a
| lot of the same concepts. The most complicated verb ending IMO
| is the "causative-passive," and many of my classmates struggled
| to learn it. IMO it's probably because of the "passive" part.
| But passive voice exists in English, and if you can recognize
| it, the construction in Japanese is really easy. "To be allowed
| to XYZ" or "To be forced to XYZ" if you translate in your head
| (like most learners do at first). You speedrun the whole
| concept but for actually learning the mechanics of constructing
| it: for one category of verbs, drop -ru and add -saserareru.
| For the other, drop the -u and replace with -an and then
| -serareru.
|
| Bam, if you already know what passive means, you're done.
| You've literally just learned the entirety of it, a thing I
| watched take a full week in my university class.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I couldn't stand Duolingo because of the gamification. I'd
| complete a section and then there would be four screens telling
| me I earned points, then another screen saying I earned a
| different type of points, then a screen asking to share my
| results, etc... Each lesson was only a couple minutes so this
| ends up taking a non-trivial amount of time. Also, the sentences
| were often times nonsensical and nothing you would use in a real
| conversation. However, I would sign up tomorrow if I could get
| rid of all the gamification nonsense. There simply aren't that
| many half-way decent Hindi options out there. Pimsler is by far
| the best, but it only has two levels and you can only do it so
| many times.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Duolingo app doesn't even work at all anymore; it is non-
| functional. The sad thing is that it used to work in the past.
| emschwartz wrote:
| Duolingo is great at gamification and terrible for actually
| teaching you the language. You memorize a ton of random words
| without really learning how to put everything together.
|
| I found Babbel to feel much more like an app designed by language
| instructors.
| torm wrote:
| I'm currently holding a 1100 days of streak of Italian in
| Duolingo, so I think I am entitled to drop in my 2 cents ;)
|
| To some extent I agree with the critique. Would I be able to
| write an assay like the op in Italian? surely not. Is their
| marketing annoying? yes, very much. Is the platform perfect? far
| from this. However - after 3 years with Duo I am capable of
| having causal, simple conversations, I can navigate most of the
| websites in Italian, I understand most of the marketing emails, I
| can write simple emails myself. I trust this is mostly due to
| DuoLingo - building the vocabulary and quickly recognizing the
| patterns (and It was not super simple, my native language is
| Polish, and I was learning Italian via English interface - there
| was no Polish-Italian course back then, now there is one but it's
| just very low quality).
|
| Duolingo helped me build a habit, knowledge of words and
| patterns. During the 3 years I've spent with the platform I made
| trips to Italy, I tried talking to people, tried to read texts
| and and explored some grammar myself. About a month I go feeling
| I've outgrown the platform I started doing 50min conversations on
| Preply platform and I am now confidently moving into stage where
| I can build longer sentences, use past and future tenses and
| irregular verbs.
|
| In my discussions with friends I emphasize that IMHO Duolingo
| alone is not going to teach you (complete) language. If you have
| a goal to learn a language (in general, not on Duolingo) and you
| use it as one of the tools - it could be really helpful.
| netule wrote:
| Duolingo was helpful for me to expand my Spanish vocabulary,
| but it definitely did not teach me the language itself. Some of
| the most critical linguistic concepts are buried at the top of
| stages and not brought up in the gamified lessons themselves.
| I'm in a privileged position since my wife is a native Spanish
| speaker, so I quickly began to grasp how much Duolingo wasn't
| teaching me and how much speaking Spanish with my wife (and
| watching Spanish-language shows without subtitles) _was_
| teaching me.
| tarentel wrote:
| I agree with your last point. I get the criticism of Duolingo
| and it is fair, but I can't agree that it is completely
| useless. I learned/am learning French. I can get by with non-
| English speakers and people won't immediately switch to English
| when they hear me.
|
| It took about 5 years of on and off practice. Not sure how much
| actual time I put in. Duolingo was one aspect, where honestly I
| probably learned like 75% of my vocabulary. I also have a
| French wife and friends, took classes, hired teachers, watched
| movies, read news, etc, etc, etc. I probably could have got to
| where I am without Duolingo but I'll never know. Learning a
| language is a pain in the ass and I don't think any one thing
| is really going to do it. Duolingo is free and can be one
| aspect out of many that will help get you there.
| whatamidoingyo wrote:
| Duolingo was amazing for learning the Russian alphabet, something
| I struggled with from YouTube videos, etc. I can confidently read
| Russian nowadays (although I may not understand everything). I
| did get quite far in the lessons as well, but I don't have a high
| opinion of them. There were things I've learned from Duolingo
| that I said to native Russian speakers who were like... "we don't
| say that".
|
| Note: The alphabet lessons are separate from the main content.
| zebomon wrote:
| I first used Duolingo back in 2018. That was how I started
| learning French. I majored in Classics in college and had taken
| Spanish all eight years of middle school and high school, so my
| vocab progress was very fast. Within that year, I felt like
| Duolingo had become too slow, and decided to switch my learning
| over to reading books and watching movies in French.
|
| Earlier this year, I got back on Duolingo because my partner and
| her brothers were trying it out, so it was more a social thing
| than anything. I was on it for about a month before we all agreed
| that the quality was too poor and the pace too slow for it to be
| worthwhile.
|
| Duolingo is a case study in a good-enough-to-ship product that
| needed improvements and instead got dark-patterned into something
| much, much worse than it had been previously. I'm sure there are
| many superior platforms for language learning online today. I've
| gone back to books and movies. I'm currently enjoying watching
| Blaise le blase (a Quebecois cartoon) and reading Chair de poule
| (Goosebumps in translation).
| kej wrote:
| A lot of Duolingo criticisms to me read like someone saying "I
| was walking on a home treadmill for 30 minutes every day but I
| didn't really get in shape until I started spending 5 hours each
| week in the gym with a professional trainer."
|
| Yes, obviously an actual class with a qualified teacher is going
| to teach you a language faster than Duolingo. Obviously you will
| learn faster if you move to a foreign country or if you have
| people around you to regularly speak your target language.
| Obviously you can cheat at Duolingo and not learn anything, just
| like you could turn the speed way down on your home treadmill and
| not really get any exercise.
|
| But the treadmill, used properly, is still significantly better
| than an extra 30 minutes sitting on the sofa, and a ten minute
| language lesson will still teach you more than no language lesson
| at all.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >But the treadmill, used properly, is still significantly
| better than an extra 30 minutes sitting on the sofa,
|
| That's right. Most of the criticism directed at Duolingo seems
| to be about unrealistic expectations of engaging with an app
| for 10 minutes a day. That is not going to get you to fluency,
| but it does beat doom scrolling on your phone.
|
| Before I committed to study Japanese seriously I did about a
| year of Duolingo. I learned about a thousand words, maybe 100
| kanji, I could follow parts of conversations and read easy
| sentences, and that is exactly what I expected from the effort
| I put in. In fact I was happy with what I got out of it. What
| it excels at isn't teaching you a language fast, it's that it
| keeps you going and has course material laid out for you.
| layman51 wrote:
| Do you have any suggestions for supplements to the Japanese
| course on Duolingo? I feel like I'm almost ready to make the
| leap after having built up a good streak and slowly realizing
| that some of the Duolingo sentences apparently sound
| unnatural. For example, on review lessons, Duolingo quizzes
| the sentence "My name is" by using "iimasu"[0]. This older
| video[1] that is part of a playlist that tracks the Duolingo
| course claims that it incorrectly teaches you. It's not
| really explained why it's wrong though.
|
| [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%A8%80%E3%81%86 [1]:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FNrpMQZzJ0&t=457s
| projektfu wrote:
| I think Duo could be a good way to get started on language
| learning, but it is not effective on its own. What it lacks is an
| obvious way to graduate from its call and response mechanic to
| synthesis, as in creating your own sentences and participating in
| conversation.
|
| Tandem was a good way for me to improve my Spanish to the point
| that I felt comfortable traveling. I dropped Duolingo pretty soon
| after starting on Tandem. Language learning is much more than
| memorizing words. Unfortunately, Tandem is also basically a
| dating site for many people, and scammers are using it as well,
| and this makes it hard to use consistently for language learning.
|
| Once you get the minimal confidence that you think you could find
| your way back to the airport or bus station in another country,
| you really should just go visit. Couchsurfing really helped me
| meet people in many cities. I don't know if the community is
| still as strong, but it used to have regular meetups of people
| within a city who are interested in talking with foreigners. You
| don't need to stay on people's couches if you don't want to.
|
| A lot of people seem to be learning English through multiplayer
| online gaming. I do not know if this approach works for learning
| other languages, as I am not inclined to participate.
|
| I can't stress it enough, though. Any language learning approach
| that isn't writing or conversation is going to max out at a very
| low level.
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| See, that's my issue. If Duo is only a good way to "get
| started," then it isn't a good way to LEARN a language, as in
| learn how to actually use it to a level approaching fluency.
| The whole thing is false advertising, not because of the
| specifics, but because of the advertising which makes people
| think (and yes, millions believe(d) it) that you can become
| fluent by using Duolingo.
| projektfu wrote:
| It's all false advertising. Rosetta Stone was the pinnacle of
| false language program advertising, but the rest just take
| their cue from that.
|
| A part of what I was saying, which didn't come across, is
| that I think Duo lacks a way to get people to move on. Being
| "free", there is less incentive to give it up when it stops
| having a benefit. Eventually it becomes a daily
| accomplishment, like doing the Wordle, that doesn't really
| improve anyone. That doesn't make it bad, but it hinders
| progress at learning a language.
| spogbiper wrote:
| I think duolingo is taking some steps. Not sure how effective
| they will be.
|
| they have added some "write your own sentence" exercises in
| recent months. generally a story you listen to and then you
| write a summary or answer a question about why or how something
| happened in your own words. your sentence is then
| graded/corrected by AI. these are still rare but they do make
| me think more than the typical forms.
|
| there is also some new more expensive level called Max that
| claims to have audio conversations with you using AI. I haven't
| tried that one.
| fny wrote:
| Duolingo and many other apps avoid the hardest and most essential
| skill: translating from your language to the other.
|
| It's often easy to guess what words mean especially with the help
| of cognates and other similarities between languages. 99% of
| Duolingo mobile is like this. Even when you see words in your
| language first, your task is to tap the presented foreigin words
| in order.
|
| You'll never learn to speak this way. The best way is to flip the
| order: The language is difficult -> La lengua
| es dificil.
|
| But that's a slog by comparison. The dopamine rush isn't there,
| which I guess is why no one does this[0].
|
| I actually wrote a script to build Anki decks from Duolingo and
| Busuu[2] which did this. The front front is a short sentence. The
| back is a transliteration and translation. Then I discovered
| Mango Languages (free through many US public libraries) that's
| the same with great audio and a pretty good flash card system.
|
| I used that strategy 2 hours a day for two months, and I learned
| enough Italian to argue with a cab driver whose meter "non
| funziona."
|
| [0]: In Duolingo's defense, the desktop version isn't a tap fest,
| but there's not enough opportunities to
|
| [1]: https://mangolanguages.com (not sure why no one knows about
| this)
|
| [2]: https://busuu.com (probably the best for grammar)
|
| [3]: https://memrise.com (very, very good AI text convos with
| corrections provided and mixed language support)
| throaway5445454 wrote:
| ^^^^^
| sweetjuly wrote:
| > avoid the hardest and most essential skill: translating from
| your language to the other.
|
| The hardest and most essential skill, second only to: not
| translating from your language to the other :)
|
| (or maybe it should be the other way around; translating is
| useful but a really hard crutch to kick. Keeping it around will
| make it hard to keep up while speaking/listening and make
| reading a slog)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Big tech embraces blitz-scaling: the primary goal is neither
| financial sustainability nor the quality of materials but making
| the number of users grow."
|
| In most cases, there are no materials. It's intangibles only.
| Duolingo, for example
|
| There are exceptions. High quality materials are a goal for Apple
| Hexigonz wrote:
| > Games worth their salt are not created by bolting together a
| collection of numerical statistics. That is how you get cookie
| clicker.
|
| I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment of the article, but
| cookie clicker IS a game worth its salt. Input mechanic
| difficulty is not the sole factor to consider when determining
| the quality of a game loop.
| mithr wrote:
| I agree with some aspects, and think the author perhaps
| misunderstood some others.
|
| > If I collect 100 XP, what does it mean for my language skills?
| For that matter, why do I collect extra XP when I receive a
| potion? Can the XP I collect be used in a way to carefully guide
| me towards the specific language skills I would explore next?
|
| Using XP to guide the user towards a particular path is an idea,
| but it's just not one that Duolingo uses. The purpose of XP in
| Duolingo is simpler: people like numbers to go up, so they get XP
| for using the app. It also enables an ecosystem of rewards; I'm
| generally not a competitive person, and there have still been
| days where I took a few more Duolingo lessons because I was close
| to completing a "daily challenge".
|
| Similarly, friend streaks, leaderboards, etc, all have innately
| appealing hooks. They won't all appeal to everyone all the time,
| but one of them will appeal to someone some of the time. If they
| get you to practice for 5m a day more than you would've
| otherwise, I think they've served their purpose.
|
| Broadly, I agree with other comments about expectation management
| and time commitment. Could you get yourself to a solid level of
| understanding in a new language only by using Duolingo? Possibly,
| but you'd need a lot of dedication and hard work, and much more
| than 5m a day. If you really wanted to learn a language, and had
| the time, there are much more effective ways to get there.
|
| Duolingo isn't really built towards encouraging that kind of
| intense learning, because they know most people who download the
| app are looking for a bite-sized learning experience, and are
| willing to accept bite-sized results in return. For myself, I can
| say that after a couple of years of leaning Spanish on Duolingo,
| with no previous experience in the language, and an average
| effort of probably ~10m a day (many days less, some days more), I
| can read texts if they aren't too complex, follow a casual
| conversation, and communicate basic things. That's way more than
| I would've been able to do if I wasn't using the app.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > For myself, I can say that after a couple of years of leaning
| Spanish on Duolingo, with no previous experience in the
| language, and an average effort of probably ~10m a day (many
| days less, some days more), I can read texts if they aren't too
| complex, follow a casual conversation, and communicate basic
| things. That's way more than I would've been able to do if I
| wasn't using the app.
|
| This has been exactly my experience with it. I would probably
| progress faster if I had others to speak with, but for just
| doing the lessons offered, I'm pretty happy with my results.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| By contrast, when I was studying Spanish using something more
| similar to the Assimil method, I was reading full length novels
| and watching Yo Soy Betty, La Fea within about six months.
|
| It's not just me. There's been some research on this sort of
| thing, and it tends to find that just about the only thing
| that's slower than Duolingo is traditional classroom language
| education.
|
| Admittedly I was doing more than 10 minutes a day. But that's
| because I was legitimately having heaps of fun. I _wanted_ to
| spend a bunch of time with Spanish, and I didn 't need any
| weird gamification tricks to help me sustain that level of
| motivation.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Yeah, same for me using Assimil for French (along with a few
| other tools). Six months in I could read L'Etranger in
| French.
|
| My next project once I can pass the C1 test is to use their
| French -> Spanish course. I kind of recommend them to anyone
| that will listen, as their method worked really well for me.
| blktiger wrote:
| For me I mostly use Duolingo as a mechanism to encourage myself
| to spend time learning each day. I find that it's helpful for
| reviewing a lot of basic vocabulary, but I typically supplement
| it with other stuff (listening to music, watching shows,
| youtube language channels, AI conversations, etc). I find I
| make the most progress when I choose to do things that are
| challenging which Duolingo really is not.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I think the thing I dislike about Duolingo is it sort of catches
| the casual person into a trap by misleading them into thinking
| that by using this app they'll learn another language. It's not
| that it's a bad app, it's just that that's not going to happen.
| There's no one resource that will get you to even an intermediate
| level in a language. And the State Department's FSI estimates are
| unfortunately pretty accurate for hours to fluency [1].
|
| For me to put a foundation for French down it was: Assimil for
| about 6 months (30 min/day), 30 minutes of daily comprehensible
| input, and Anki & Clozemaster for vocabulary (~15-20 min/day).
| Mixed in there was a couple months on Yabla doing listening
| comprehension, some grammar study from Bescherelle books, and
| some tutoring on iTalki. After about maybe 9-12 months I could
| listen to RFI's broadcast targeted to learners [2], but even then
| I still needed to go to the transcription a lot at the beginning.
|
| To mislead people into thinking that doing some vocab study for
| 30 min a day in Duolingo is going to get them anything beyond the
| most basic grasp of a language is kinda not cool.
|
| [1] https://www.state.gov/foreign-service-institute/foreign-
| lang...
|
| [2] https://francaisfacile.rfi.fr/fr/
| jimbokun wrote:
| That's a super helpful list from the State Department!
|
| Good to know ahead of time what you're getting yourself into.
| jmkni wrote:
| So what's the hack? I'm guessing there isn't one?
|
| Asking as it's "hacker news" after all, I remember reading how
| North Korean agents would watch shows like Friends for hours on
| end to become familiar with English, is that a hack?
| qingcharles wrote:
| I have Dutch friends who swear they learned all their English
| simply by watching Friends on BBC in the Netherlands.
| golemiprague wrote:
| Those two languages are very close, if he had to learn
| Japanese or Arabic he won't be able to do it.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Probably traveling to the local and living there.. ie full
| immersion. If I were to wager and riff off ya ;)
| byearthithatius wrote:
| You would still need to study or this would be super slow.
| When I went to China even after I did DuoLingo for two
| years I understood only super basic sentences and sometimes
| I even missed those because of accents. I couldn't learn
| "new" words or concepts or grammar through immersion, it
| only gave me the question to ask my wife so I could learn
| it through study.
| nemomarx wrote:
| That's part of immersion or comprehensible input, yeah.
|
| Watching lots of hours of something in a language works so
| long as you know at least enough vocab and grammar to mostly
| understand it. To get there stuff like spaced repetition
| seems good
|
| but the "hack" comes down to putting in hours doing all that
| and doing the groundwork too, essentially. you can only speed
| it up so much
| summarity wrote:
| Immersion and transferring patterns you already know from
| other languages.
|
| Language Transfer is a good completely free resource:
| https://www.languagetransfer.org
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| This looks quite good! Thanks for the recommendation.
| byearthithatius wrote:
| Its in the article itself.... Nothing wrong with coming
| straight for the comments but this is what the author
| recommends as an alternative lol
| Alex-Programs wrote:
| Language Transfer is great. On the topic of immersion, I
| made https://nuenki.app in my gap year. It estimates the
| difficulty of sentences in webpages and translates the ones
| at your knowledge level into the language you're learning.
| hungryhobbit wrote:
| As others have said, immersion is the only way that you have
| control of.
|
| If you could de-age yourself, becoming a child would also
| help immensely, as child brains are _much_ better at learning
| languages.
| academia_hack wrote:
| I hear this a lot (that children learn languages faster, or
| the corollary from various app ads that the best way to
| learn a language is to do so like a baby does), but is it
| actually true?
|
| It takes children a very very long time to learn a language
| and they're quite bad at it for many years. I've even met
| some teens/young adults who are only borderline literate in
| their native language after years of schooling and
| immersion.
| Escapado wrote:
| I keep hearing this but sometimes I am not 100% sure if
| they are _much_ better so asking honestly: Is there any
| reputable quantitative analysis of this in the context of
| language learning?
|
| For example: I have spent the last two years in japan (I am
| in my 30s) and just got back to my home country. Went to a
| language school in the mornings there, immersed myself in
| the language a little but did not go all out on studying at
| home except for some Anki and the homework we got. I would
| spend 1 or 2 evenings per week talking to japanese people
| in my apartment building for practice. I just took the N2
| exam before I left and just failed by 1 point, without any
| extra studying specifically for it. I could have
| conversations with people in my apartment complex, make
| phone calls to get stuff done and get the gist of most news
| I heard if they were not hyper-specific and I can read easy
| novels. If I open the NHK news website I am still lost on a
| bunch of stuff and have to look up a lot. But again, that
| was 2 years and I was neither particularly good nor bad
| compared to the other fellow students and I did not go all
| out full immersion - lots of my interactions were still
| with foreigners in the afternoon. Anyway, I for sure know
| more kanji than a 2nd grade elementary school student. I
| also can say more than a two year old kid. I know of course
| children learn to navigate a language without explicit
| study in their first years of life but the point still
| stands. If time spent studying was equal, how much of a
| difference remains?
| npinsker wrote:
| I looked into this once and couldn't find anything --
| after all, vanishingly few people practice total, 100%
| immersion in their new language, where you must either
| speak or not get what you want.
|
| I don't believe it's true. I bet I could learn English
| pretty fast if I watched MrBeast for 3 hours a day too.
| themightyquinn wrote:
| Had a friend in college learn Ukrainian by switching his
| phone language settings and watching only Ukrainian reality
| tv... and then he also spent a summer in Ukraine
| qingcharles wrote:
| Lord have mercy. All the languages I'm learning are:
|
| > Category IV Languages - "Super-hard languages" - Languages
| which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.
| midtake wrote:
| I hate this take. Duolingo users understand fully, once they
| clear their language's Section 3 or higher, that they have a
| long road ahead.
|
| The point of Duolingo is to be a hook into language learning,
| not a complete replacement. It should be coupled with Pimsleur
| and other traditional study methods if one is truly serious
| about learning a language.
|
| Would you rather have teens shitposting on TikTok or learning
| Duolingo? Posts like yours are doomer cringe.
| Uehreka wrote:
| This is an app that constantly nags you to use it, to the
| point that its mascot is so widely known as annoying that
| they play it for laughs in their ads.
|
| All that to say: you and Duolingo's owners may disagree about
| what "the point of Duolingo is". I don't think they care if
| users are achieving fluency, they want users to keep coming
| back to the app so they can be served ads.
|
| And yeah, that doesn't mean users can't take initiative and
| build a better habit-based approach that incorporates
| Duolingo, but that's not what the app is pushing you to do.
| midtake wrote:
| Most apps are nagware, that is not a Duolingo issue.
|
| The ads are for converting users to paid subscribers, not
| just "ads."
|
| I don't see your point at all.
| MountDoom wrote:
| You're instinctively ranking TikTok as worse, but I think
| that parent is trying to say that Duolingo is effectively a
| waste of time. If you have two ways to waste your time on a
| phone, what makes one of them worse?
|
| If the difference is that TikTok is a thing that "the youth"
| does and that we don't understand, then I guess some
| introspection is warranted on your closing ad hominem...
| jnsie wrote:
| I think it's important for those responding about their Duolingo
| experience to include the tier that they are using. Specifically,
| I wonder if the conversations with AI, and the "explain this"
| feature in Duolingo Max change outcomes? I'm new to Duolingo,
| chose the max tier, and feel that I'm learning quite a bit
| specifically because I am having simple conversations in French
| daily (albeit with an AI that seems to me to have questionable
| hearing at times). I haven't used it long enough to provide
| insight or even judge the platform, but for those using the more
| expensive tier(s) I wonder your thoughts...
| babblingfish wrote:
| I did Language Transfer for Modern Greek and found it excellent.
| The host and creator is a native Greek speaker. I cannot
| recommend it enough!
| r5Khe wrote:
| Duolingo has been around for so long that I feel like there
| should be a wealth of case studies showing how folks have used it
| to actually learn new languages. I've yet to see one, personally.
| (But perhaps I'm not looking hard enough!)
| ggregoire wrote:
| My only criticism of Duolingo is the monetization. The ads on the
| free version are unbearable and makes me want to never use the
| app again. Also as soon as you stop using the app, they spam your
| inbox with emails every 2 days such as "Duo misses you so much!
| <sad emoji> Are you giving up on learning?? <crying emoji>". This
| made me uninstall the app.
|
| Otherwise I don't share the criticisms in this comment section.
| It's a fun educational game to learn a few words in other
| languages. I don't think it's misleading anyone into thinking
| they will become polyglot by using Duolingo. I wanted to learn a
| few words of Japanese while waiting for a flight to Tokyo and it
| did the job.
| basisword wrote:
| It's a shame their original business model didn't work out. If
| I remember right as you learnt the language you could translate
| real web pages, and companies would pay Duolingo for the
| crowdsourced translation work. Win win really for the users. I
| think the guy that came up with captcha started it (similar
| idea).
| AndyKelley wrote:
| Anki is Free and Open Source Software and it's way more
| effective. Why waste any time on Duolingo when you could be using
| Anki instead?
| joshdavham wrote:
| The actual reason is that the vast majority of Duolingo users
| are only using the app because they like to play Duolingo. I
| don't say this to insult Duolingo users, but they're not
| actually serious language learners. They just really like
| playing Duolingo and if Duolingo stopped existing, they would
| simply stop "learning" languages all together.
| snapetom wrote:
| Sorry, maybe I'm not using it right in learning a language, but
| isn't Anki just flashcards?
| vovavili wrote:
| Duolingo is a mobile game with a language learning gimmick, not a
| serious learning tool.
| joshdavham wrote:
| From a 2019 Forbes article [0]
|
| > Duolingo has gotten bad press from writers who try the app and
| don't learn much. But Von Ahn promises only to get users to a
| level between advanced beginner and early intermediate. "A
| significant portion of our users use it because it's fun and it's
| not a complete waste of time," he says.
|
| > He's been logging 15 to 20 minutes of French every day since
| November, and when asked to describe what he did the previous
| weekend he says, "Je fais du sport. Je suis mange avec mes amis.
| Je suis boire du biere en un bar," mangling his tenses. (Rough
| translation: I play sports, I am eat with my friends. I am drink
| beer in a bar.)
|
| > Bob Meese, Duolingo's 42-year-old chief revenue officer, has
| been studying Duolingo Spanish for more than six months. In
| response to the question, "?Hablas espanol?" he freezes, then
| says, "Could you repeat that?"
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/07/16/game-
| of-t...
|
| ---
|
| Also, having worked in the language learning industry myself,
| readers may be curious to learn that Duolingo is seen as a pariah
| that no one takes seriously as a learning tool. And I'm not one
| to use the term "scam" lightly, but if that word is to mean
| anything, then it definitely applies to Duolingo!
| suriya-ganesh wrote:
| There's a lot of hate for Duolingo.
|
| My brother talked with his cab driver on Spanish. And is able to
| understand Spanish at a much better level. All from only using
| Duolingo for a year. So it seems like, it does work. At least
| with anecdata
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