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Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

reuters.com

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Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#191

Post by smallerfish »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #183
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

>The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I don't think anyone is seriously under the delusion that Duolingo alone will make you fluent in a language. It is an amazingly powerful tool to bootstrap you from "I cannot understand a single word of this language" to "I can pick up a newspaper and get a vague idea of what they're talkin…

DuoLingo is great as a first hurdle (better than e.g. Babbel, as it's friendly and eases you in gradually) - but there are diminishing returns. I found it useful to jump ship partway through the course and move to LingQ (which has a comparatively crude UX but exposes you to much more context.)

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#192

Post by pessimizer »

dubeye wrote: post #136
gambiting wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've learnt both English and German at school, for pretty much equal amounts of time - about 12 years each. And well, I can speak fluent English, but barely any German, despite usually having at least ~2 hours of lessons a week, plenty of homework, oral exercises..... For me, it has everything to do with actually using the languge in practice. English was and is everywhere - it's much easier to practice when all your…

I find it fun to learn language on Duolingo as a kind of game. But unless I have a need to regularly use the learning, I know for sure it won't stick. And I'm afraid that last 0.1% of aquisition is pretty much impossible to obtain deliberately unless you abandon your native language. Even your English, whilst technicaly good, has a couple of flags.

That's fine, because I only need 90%. I have no interest in passing for native, my intention is to communicate.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#193

Post by least »

ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #128
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

Can you talk about the resources you used to learn in the classroom? I learned German using the Foreign Service Institute handbook and I thought it was great introduction to the language. I'd love to know what's in use nowadays.

The language resources were largely designed in house as the other comment mentions, so unfortunately unless you attend DLI, you probably won't get to see them. I don't think there's much in terms of content that you can't find in civilian courses, just that it's designed specifically around being in class for 6-7 hours a day rather than the 3 hours per week you'd be attending at University.

There were audio recordings made specifically for the course and there is some deal with Transparent language to provide language software to the military like Rapid Rote, though Anki is just as capable as Rapid Rote is.

Big things are access to native speakers (most of the instructors) and non-native "military language instructors" who can help navigate difficult to understand concepts for non-natives. Also the whole spending every day doing it over and over again part.

Sorry if this isn't as helpful as you were hoping.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#194

Post by shapefrog »

Sightline wrote: post #170
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a liquidity event. Why are you surprised that people are selling? Even if the IPO didn't pop as much people would still probably be selling because their equity has likely been illiquid for years, especially if they were a founder, early investor or early employee.

He didn't say anything about being surprised.

No shock at all this is how the game works! You slap out a float, ideally small enough so that the supply and demand inbalance pushes the price up.

So 3.7mil shares were issued at $102, and opened at $140, so that is a 'cost' to the company of $140 million + underwriting fees etc (probably another $30mil + the 700k shares they have options on at issue price). Additionally insiders dumped out 1.4mil shares at the issue price.

Now execs + VC's have a 'liquid' market to sell or short against without paying the high costs for goldmans to price you up a private hedge which is the whole point of an IPO.

Its litterally writting into the offering - 'The principal purposes of this offering are to increase our capitalization and financial flexibility and to create a public market for our Class A common stock.'

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#195

Post by j45 »

I remember hearing an academic rail and rant against Duolingo at a prominent global online learning conference a few year ago.

What struck me was the negativity in the face of a simple problem being solved - people want to learn to speak a language before they learn to read and write it for many valid reasons.

Conversational fluency is a thing that has existed for a very long time.

Duolingos superpower is that it can create beginners in languages new to them, at scale, something which most systems to date can’t do as well.

It’s true a phone might not give you a full education, but we do search for plenty of things every day to learn to use knowledge.

The esteemed academic did not present any alternatives to this desire among learners to start to learn a new language.. and instead went back to the theory of learning language through reading and writing first.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#196

Post by j45 »

pessimizer wrote: post #192
dubeye wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fun to learn language on Duolingo as a kind of game. But unless I have a need to regularly use the learning, I know for sure it won't stick. And I'm afraid that last 0.1% of aquisition is pretty much impossible to obtain deliberately unless you abandon your native language. Even your English, whilst technicaly good, has a couple of flags.

That's fine, because I only need 90%. I have no interest in passing for native, my intention is to communicate.

I think a lot of people miss this point.

Conversational literacy is a huge step on its own.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#197

Post by saiya-jin »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #183
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

>The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I don't think anyone is seriously under the delusion that Duolingo alone will make you fluent in a language. It is an amazingly powerful tool to bootstrap you from "I cannot understand a single word of this language" to "I can pick up a newspaper and get a vague idea of what they're talkin…

There are definitely more effective methods, just mostly not free and more time demanding.

I have a mission to get B1 French, tried Duolingo with some basic level for cca 6 months in past year. You get into the bubble that you think you are progressing but reality is, its a very narrow and not-so-useful progress if whole language knowledge is your goal - mostly passive skills and certain type of language usage that goes along with the type of exercises in Duolingo.

If you want real language knowledge, as OP mentions speaking is the hardest part (active & rapid usage of all that you know), and Duolingo doesn't prepare you for this, at all. If your goal is purely passive reading newspapers/articles, then its helpful a bit, but I would still use at least 2-3 other methods if you are even a bit serious about it.

Try talking to people after using just Duolingo, heck try writing an official letter on whatever topic. You will not just struggle, you will fail if you don't use any external help.

I've made tremendous progress with zoom meetings with professional teacher over shorter period of time. But its because I made it a priority and dedicated my time to it. And it costs quite a bit (doesn't have to, but my case is quite specific).

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#198

Post by brushfoot »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #183
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

>The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I don't think anyone is seriously under the delusion that Duolingo alone will make you fluent in a language. It is an amazingly powerful tool to bootstrap you from "I cannot understand a single word of this language" to "I can pick up a newspaper and get a vague idea of what they're talkin…

The old FSI language courses are very effective. And free and in the public domain.

FSI combines hundreds of pages of print materials with hundreds of verbal audio drills. I used it to supplement a French course in college and my professor asked me how I advanced so quickly. The course materials were doing very little for the rest of the class because they didn't force natural language thinking. FSI grammar drills make you think on your feet in conversations with different roles and grammatical rules.

I had also tried Rosetta and Pimsleur at the time. Years later I tried Duolingo for another language. To me they all feel like fun toys, but only toys compared to FSI. If I wanted to learn another language, I'd check if it had an FSI course.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#199

Post by volta83 »

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

When learning a new language, one uses a lot of tools.

Duolingo is just another tool at your disposal.

Nobody is claiming that any single tool - much less Duolingo - will make you proficient in a language.

If Dolingo is claiming this, that would be false advertisement / scamming.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#200

Post by jamil7 »

Dma54rhs wrote: post #113
least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

Every foreign language that I've learned (4 in total) I felt it's necessary to get basic vocabulary and grammar and then just try communicating it in. Obviously living with people surrounded by the language helps, I don't even know if 'remote' is possible. For that purpose duolingo is pretty good.

This was the only way I could do it as well, formal courses didn't really help me after the basics. It's the same way I learned to program and I think some people are just wired that way.
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