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Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

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

#51

Post by KeitIG »

firefoxd wrote: post #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 cours…

Exactly my problem with Duolingo. It is great for Vocabulary, but in the end it's just knowing it by heart, and I was suprised there are no real courses explaining you the synthax of a phrase or some other advanced rules.

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

#52

Post by theresistor »

2bitencryption wrote: post #5

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 used it to learn basic Spanish before a trip to Spain, and do feel that it helped. However, I'm coming from a specific position in that I already speak French and studied Latin for a long time. It was absolutely sufficient for me to pick up a basic vocabulary, with my general knowledge of Latin-derived grammars helping me fill in for its weaknesses on that front.

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

#53

Post by CrystalLangUser »

_betty_ wrote: post #46
kwaldman wrote: post #2

The new version is very good for Chinese. It is giving me much more complex sentence structure.

I'm just annoyed it forces you to learn the writing system.

Right, when I’m learning mathematics I hate how they force you to learn math notation.

Learning a romanized version of a language is not learning a language. Sounds in one language don’t map neatly to English sounds, and beginner language learners who use romanization always have pronunciation issues because their headspace isn’t in the language, it’s in a romanized variant of that language.

What’s the point of learning Chinese or any other script language if you don’t learn the script?

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

#54

Post by rando444 »

firefoxd wrote: post #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 cours…

I've been on duolingo since the beginning and am sure that I've spent more time with the site and app than 95% of the userbase.

I've learned languages with duolingo.. and by that I don't mean duolingo will teach you a language.

There's two things that I feel that almost everyone misses.

#1: Using duolingo alone will get you to about an A2-B1 level in comprehension and an A1-A2 level in writing and speaking.

This is just the basics of a language.. enough to understand basic expressions. You're never going to learn a language without further practice and tools. Spending time in books, trying to form your own thoughts. Duolingo is a great start, but if you never progress beyond it, of course you're not going to learn a language.

#2: and most important. When you complete a course you're not done.

I see this all of the time, people just get to the last exercise and stop.

You're not going to learn a language this way because most people can't retain a 2000+ word vocabulary by only seeing a word a couple of times.

There's a reason why your "strength" in categories decreases as time passes.. because it's unlikely that you've actually remembered every single word you were taught.

I've participated in a large number of duolingo related discussion over the years and one thing stands out is that there is a strong correlation between people that think you can't use it to learn a language and people that go straight through the course, reach the end, and stop.

Anyway, it has its flaws, and is far from perfect, but I can't imagine having a better product that does not come with a fee.

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

#55

Post by lambda »

GuiA wrote: post #44
lambda wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Looks interesting. I think I'd have to be a lot more dedicated to that, and need some other resource for learning grammar, vocabulary, and testing complete sentences.

The nice thing about Duolingo for, say, French is that I can kind of mindlessly do it every day to keep my skills up and improve my vocabulary, and then do smaller bouts of studying using other methods to improve actual fluency.

But with Japanese, Duolingo just doesn't work very well, and just learning kanji with WaniKani would miss all of the rest of the context, so I'd need something to pair with that for learning the rest of the language. Any recommendations on good resources for learning the actual spoken language to go along with WaniKai?

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

#56

Post by lambda »

mtgx wrote: post #50
lambda wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found TinyCards to be good for some things, like drilling on kana, but I find that the extra context provided with full sentences and different types of exercises in Duolingo to be better long term. But maybe I haven't found the right card decks in TinyCards yet.

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

#57

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

zawerf wrote: post #49
ddevault wrote: post #15

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…

Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods:

- Vocabulary study with Anki

- Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop

- Grammar study via Tae Kim

- Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television

- Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel

- Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels

- Regular meetups with friends (native speakers) IRL

- Translating anime and manga from Japanese to English

Soon I'd like to start blogging in Japanese, too, but that's a lot of work. Can also recommend jisho.org as the best Japanese/English dictionary on the web, and djt's bunpou guide as a deep grammar reference resource.

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

#58

Post by CrystalLangUser »

reiichiroh wrote: post #31
jonbarker wrote: post #6

I think Duolingo is good for getting you past complete beginner but to go deeper I recommend Anki.

Why Anki?

The short version is that Anki’s spaced repetition is very good for retaining and learning vocabulary.

My background is that I’ve used it while studying Korean. I’m at about 2,000 korean words now, of which Anki has helped me a lot. Each day I review 50 words and add 20 new ones. It sucks but it works.

As you see new words in reading material, etc, you can add it to Anki. That’s supposed to be how it’s done, but there are premade decks also.

The real beauty lies in anki’s customization. You can add pictures or custom fields and style them. You can reverse the deck so you’re seeing one side or the other when reviewing.

Anki is NOT helpful with a word’s context if you don’t know it or don’t add sample sentences. Which is why people recommend building your own deck over time by reading short stories or news, etc, and adding every word you don’t know, rather than using a premade 5k word deck.

If you have any other questions feel free to ask.

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

#59

Post by rando444 »

btcindivist wrote: post #3

I still find their spaced repetition lacking. I never see some of the words again after seeing them for the first time.

Perhaps that's because they have too many words?

If you look at some of the core languages like German the course has a 'words' tab and it shows you exactly how strong it thinks you know each word and when you saw each word last.

It could be different between languages, and who knows how well it works.. but it's definitely something they seem to be working on and putting thought into.

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

#60

Post by crazygringo »

firefoxd wrote: post #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 cours…

Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn't pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just wrong. Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user comments associated, you'd see 70+ comments from people all complaining about wrong answers.

That immediately destroyed any trust with them. When you put out educational material, it has to be correct. That has to be the foundation.

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