Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by smsm42 » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:35 PM UTC

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…

> But after completing the entire suite, I still can't look at a japanese text and read it.

Well, if you're coming from a European language background, Japanese is one of the hardest languages to benchmark on. I mean, there's three writing systems (hiragana, katakana, kanji) for starters! And then unlike European languages, it's not alphabetical and kanji is not even really syllabic - which means, the background you need to get to be able to read texts is huge.

E.g., for Spanish, I can read the newspaper (not understand yet, but just reproduce, look for words I recognize, etc.) without even touching a language course. And if I get the basics, I can see grammatical structure, and given common Romance background, get about 20% of vocabulary for free just from knowing another European language (well, not true for all European ones, but for many it is).

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

#62

Post by slipszenko » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

I've tried with Duolingo quite a bit, but what I studied never seemed to stay in my memory. I've had much better luck with Language Transfer - https://www.languagetransfer.org

Disclaimer: the guy who runs it is a friend, but I met him through the project.

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

#63

Post by adrianN » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:36 PM UTC

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…

It takes a couple of years before you can look at a Japanese text for normal adults and read it without problems.

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

#64

Post by CrystalLangUser » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

btilly wrote: post #37

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 -…

...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. The first half of this is dead on. The second half is wrong. Duolingo's top languages are in the Indo-European family. (Their most learned language is English, next is Spanish.) Their techniques are perfectly adequate for gaining elementary vocabulary a bas…

No, languages are indeed different. Providing elementary grammar or vocabulary is next to useless in real conversation with natives. I highly doubt anyone is SOLELY learning English or Spanish through Duolingo.

It's important to look at resources that languages provide- English and Spanish also have immense amounts of media to listen to and read, and obviously a lot of people to talk with. I would say that helps far more than learning simple grammar.

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

#65

Post by Itaxpica » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

The biggest issue I have with Duolingo is that they offer "grammar notes" to explain why specific elements are the way they are... but only on desktop web. In-app, which is the main way that I (and I'd imagine most users) use Duolingo, there are no grammar notes and no way to access the grammar notes - they just seem to assume that you'll pick it up from context. Personally I've been studying Russian, a language with extremely complex grammar much of which has no analogue in English or Spanish (the two other languages I speak), and were I not supplementing Duolingo with a textbook that actually explains the grammar, I would be extremely confused.

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

#66

Post by 3pt14159 » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

rando444 wrote: post #54

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 j…

No way will Duo Lingo get you anywhere close to A2 for writing or speaking. MAYBE A1 if you try hard at it for a long long time in a language it well supports.

To get to A2 you need a real tutor and real communication experience. I used Verbling to find a tutor and I traveled to Eastern Europe over the summer to practice and only after hundreds of hours of practice was I able to communicate in Russian to any degree even approaching A1.

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

#67

Post by dna_polymerase » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #60

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 c…

Did you check if other language learning apps were wrong as well?

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

#68

Post by adrianN » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:42 PM UTC

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've learned Japanese to a level where I can read the children's news mostly without using a dictionary mainly by grinding vocabulary in Anki and reading with Yomichan. Depending on the topic I can follow spoken language decently as well.

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

#69

Post by lhorie » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

rando444 wrote: post #54

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 j…

> When you complete a course you're not done

This definitely rings true. I was using it in the hopes it would help me provide some structure to teaching my kid portuguese (and it does to some extent), but by the time the app says a lesson is "complete", my kid is still a long ways away from having memorized it (and he's 5). I tend to complement it with a boogie board and repetition over the course of several days to really nail down new vocab.

I also wish it had some feature to introduce foreign concepts (e.g. gendered articles in portuguese). It's very awkward to try to explain the difference between `the`, english `a`, and portuguese `a` (and the remaining counterparts `o`, `um`, `uma`) for example, and the word matching exercises can get quite confusing.

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

#70

Post by savanaly » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #60

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 c…

I really don't understand that-- compared to the cost of developing and marketing the app itself, surely the cost to hire someone whose only qualification is that they be bilingual is trivial, and you would only need them for long enough for them to run through all the questions to double check they are correct.