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Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

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41–50 of 274 posts

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#41
The biggest problem I had with Duolingo was knowing what to do next. I much prefer a simple "next lesson" button, which both introduces new material and reviews stuff you've covered previously. But with Duolingo there's a set of available lessons you can choose, and you can either work on going down the list and opening up new lessons, or re-doing ones you've already done and leveling up those particular ones. Then there's also a "barbell" which you can press and takes you into some lesson, but I never quite figured out what it did. But I spent quite a while getting a bunch of "crowns" on the first few lessons (essentially, doing them over and over) before realizing I should be doing some forward progress as well.

My wife is a fan of the app and recently paid for premium, but I'm personally a little happier (at least for my use case of Spanish) with Babbel, which I pay for. It has a single way forward, so you never have to choose what to work on next, and that single way will bring back earlier stuff just to refresh your memory for you. It also has little grammar asides, which I found very helpful, and which Duolingo lacks.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#42

has anyone had success with any of these language-learning apps, even as supplemental material to a more traditional education? I've tried to use Duolingo for Japanese, with very little success on its own. Paired with my own studying, it was only a bit more helpful, but not more helpful than flashcards. Another app, LingoDeer, was better, because it had a curriculum and more unified lessons, and I could swap between…

I use the Living Language series in conjunction with college courses when I want to learn a new language. Then try to read online newspapers and comments to get a more well rounded vocabulary. Then I try TV/Movies once I've roughed my way through the language listening stuff I've got.

I tried Dulingo for a bit but found it mostly annoying as I prefer the structured way I've been taught and learned in the past. Maybe it's just how I enjoy learning though.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#43
I particularly like the audio courses from Language Transfer. They create rules that help you transfer words from English into a destination language.

For example, words ending in ation in English, will end in ación in Spanish. Further, these words are also 'ar' verbs.

Conversation -> Conversación -> Conversar

I've found it quite helpful, especially in conjunction with Duolingo. At some point, I realized what I learned via Language Transfer was applying more as I progressed in Duolingo.

https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#44
post #24

has anyone had success with any of these language-learning apps, even as supplemental material to a more traditional education? I've tried to use Duolingo for Japanese, with very little success on its own. Paired with my own studying, it was only a bit more helpful, but not more helpful than flashcards. Another app, LingoDeer, was better, because it had a curriculum and more unified lessons, and I could swap between…

I had taken some Japanese in high school, and French in college, and later done some Duolingo to try to brush up my French, but then abandoned it. I recently picked it back up again (couple of months ago), and tried doing both Japanese and French. I find the French one much more helpful. The Japanese module is still in beta, and it shows; tapping on one word to look them up if you don't remember them doesn't work wel…

I’ve found WaniKani to be amazing for SRS for kanji. If you are diligent about it you can go through the jouyou set in 18 months or so.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#45
I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row.

Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that.

French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta course just to see. It was very awkward. The correct answers are always cringe worthy. Some of them even wrong.

Japanese: This is very different from the languages I speak. But after completing the entire suite, I still can't look at a japanese text and read it. I can't form a sentence on my own because it never teaches you how. I can't count to ten because it only gives you numbers randomly. I know a few colors. I know words, but those words make no sense on their own. I also had to follow youtube lessons to make any sense of what I learned.

Duolingo is cool at making it look fun to learn. I don't think you'll learn to speak any languages with it.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#47

I speak Irish pretty well and Duolingo I think is a fantastic tool to get better and learn some new words that I didn't no. (Neither my dad nor I knew portán meant crab). The issue is that pronunciation in Irish is kinda varied but the lady who does it for Duolingo is on some extreme. The majority of Irish speakers would not pronounce things that way in the slightest and it would be misleading for someone who learned…

This is a good point. Especially for minority languages like Irish, they can end up being completely dominated in mass-media by a specific group. Duolingo and TG4 (main Irish-language tv channel) mostly speak Gaeilge Cúige Connacht (the western dialect) meaning the northern and southern pronunciation and style are neglected.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#48

[Meta] So far in this thread, there are several comments that could be the grounds for substantive discussion, but don't bother offering the substance. For example: Why does jonbarker recommend Anki for going deeper than "complete beginner"? What does zealsham mean by Duolingo lacking a "structural syllabus" and why is that problematic? The conversations can be a very valuable part of HN, but not if most comments are…

Instead of making a "meta" post complaining, you could reply to those folks with your questions. That might help develop the discussions you would like to see more so than this tactic.

I don't want to repeat myself[0] too much, but: Of course, and to the extent that I want answers to those specific questions I'm happy to ask.

Asking individual questions, though, doesn't encourage a different mindset in the way that I hope my meta-comment will.

Also, I take a bit of issue with calling this "complaining". If you think I could have been even more constructive, please point out how. But I'm not just posting a lamentation, here.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16823827

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#49

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 -…

Once you have the basics down, I like anki or memrise better for picking up vocab. You can do decks based on JLPT levels or do Core 2k/6k. Here's the memrise course series I am using (6000 words broken up into chunks of 500, frequency optimized):

https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-voc... (first of 500 of 6000)

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-voc... (next 500 words)

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-voc...

https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-voc...

The "SGJL" series also does grammar but it was easier to just reread tae kim every so often: https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide...

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#50
post #24

has anyone had success with any of these language-learning apps, even as supplemental material to a more traditional education? I've tried to use Duolingo for Japanese, with very little success on its own. Paired with my own studying, it was only a bit more helpful, but not more helpful than flashcards. Another app, LingoDeer, was better, because it had a curriculum and more unified lessons, and I could swap between…

I had taken some Japanese in high school, and French in college, and later done some Duolingo to try to brush up my French, but then abandoned it. I recently picked it back up again (couple of months ago), and tried doing both Japanese and French. I find the French one much more helpful. The Japanese module is still in beta, and it shows; tapping on one word to look them up if you don't remember them doesn't work wel…

Even though it seems to have a bit different purpose as it offers more structured learning, I find Tiny Cards to be significantly more enjoyable to use than the main Duolingo app. The gamification does play some role in that, but I think it's mainly how the learning is organized.
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