Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

My observation from using Duolingo (Spanish) was similar to this. My theory was that there spaced repetition was simply based topic and then once a topic was chosen it then decided what words to test you on. This is crude, simplistic and ineffective (IMHO). Like you say, there are words you see rarely.

Also, certain topics end up reinforcing earlier topics. I lost count of the number of times that the stupid "algorithm" would make me go through the exercise of translating "no, nada". At some point, don't I just know this?

Additionally, when you have topics that aren't "gold", it simply selects the first non-gold one to repeat. This can mean that a bunch of stuff at the bottom of the tree gets rusty because you don't get to it while you end up redoing stuff you know backwards.

I made this observation in the forums but couldn't really get any traction on the issue.

At some point they also introduced the stupid heart system, which was pretty much my trigger for just abandoning the whole thing.

Also, I'm really not sure how much this format actually works. Like having completed the Spanish tree, I'm honestly not sure if I really remember anything more than a small fraction of it.

I have only used Duolingo for languages I am fluent in. There is a mode somewhere where you can take a set of exams to see where you place on the fluency spectrum in any given language they offer. I do this for pure curiosity to see how far I get up on their "track". I find it to be a super shallow and lacking system - the words encountered have little to do in the way of everyday conversation, things you see on TV, the grocery store, or even most professional settings. I don't have too many examples off the top of my head, but one that really kept coming up in the French test was "the little spider is red" - When does someone need this? Whys is this any mark of proficiency?

I always leave feeling as though this app/product is a giant waste of time.

The reason Duolingo is ineffective in my opinion is multi-faceted. First, my main language for study is Japanese, and Duolingo's Japanese course is awful - these are the specific things I noticed when trying it:

- There were several factual errors in their material and important points entirely omitted

- Japanese grammar is very flexible and their tools aren't, so they often mark you as wrong when you were correct

- Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective

These flaws make me wonder if they even had actual Japanese users working on developing the tools for learning Japanese. I can't speak to any other languages, but my experience with Japanese leads me to belive they don't have expertise in many of the languages they offer, instead trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach.

On top of that, however, is that they don't go nearly far enough. In my opinion there's no magic bullet that can teach you a language. Each student learns differently and will need to leverage a large variety of tools. Even if Duolingo's course were good, it would only make up a small facet of an effective study strategy. Vocabulary drilling with flash cards, focused grammatical study, reading genuine material in the language, writing novel material in the target language, and regular conversation practice with native speakers are all incredibly important and distinct topics of study. Duolingo tries to mix a diet version of each into an scatterbrained, ineffectual method of study.

A few years ago, as a graduate in Japanese studies, I was curious about what Duolingo offered to learn the language. My verdict: nothing usable at all. Recently I needed to learn Czech, and give it another try. Again, not something that can be used to learn the language: it just throws quizz of things I never learnt in the first place.

Years ago, I had a project for an app that proposes collaborative language learning quizzes. Sometimes, I think I shouldn't have abandoned it because existing software still doesn't exactly provide what I want.

Hmm. Those all seem like fairly basic words to know; OK, maybe "spider" isn't as common a word to need, but it is something that comes up in conversation sometimes. That particular phrase isn't one you're going to have to say very often, but I'd say it would be pretty hard to say you're fluent in a language if you don't know those words.

I've been doing Duolingo for French for the past few months, trying to dust off the couple of semesters of French I took in college and get a bit beyond that to maybe get to the point where I can get by. Yes, there is a bit skewed towards things like family relationships, clothes, the house at the beginning; things that might be important if you're living somewhere but possibly less important if you're just visiting. But they are always adding new content, and as the original article points out they just did a revamp to give access to a lot of newer content they hadn't provided access to before.

I don't know; a language generally has a huge amount of vocabulary, as well as grammar to learn, and you need to learn it in some order.

The main thing I do find lacking is that it's pretty much all translation or transcription of simple sentences, or word matching. I do find these helpful for learning vocabulary and grammar, but they aren't going to lead to fluency. The article does mention that something that they are working on is longer listening comprehension exercises, which I think would help out with that a lot.