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Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

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31–40 of 138 posts

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#31
post #17

Has Duolingo ever worked for actual language learning? It has always seemed more like pseudo-productivity to me.

DuoLingo is just step 1, to build the vocab. Step 2 once you finish a DuoLingo track is to watch shows in a foreign language with subtitles in that language (NOT ENGLISH SUBTITLES, very important). Step 3 is finding a conversation buddy.

This is it. DL is flashcards. They don't even put on a pretense of being anything more than that anymore. Flashcards are still useful.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#32
Doulingo is in the interesting position of having such a big userbase with a locked in reward system that they could change their learning strategy overnight and completely revolutionize languge learning forever.

If course they won't do it, it's simpler to just space-repeat vocabulary and spend the money on people with green bird costumes making tiktoks

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#33

Duolingo doesn't actually do much if anything to help you become fluent. Nor does almost all the language learning apps such as Drops, Rosetta Stone, etc. What you need to move towards fluency is a lot of "comprehensible input" like with "Dreaming Spanish". Learning about a language is different from acquiring a language, Krashen et. all has a lot of research on how people actually gain fluency. What most people are…

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Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#35

Duolingo doesn't actually do much if anything to help you become fluent. Nor does almost all the language learning apps such as Drops, Rosetta Stone, etc. What you need to move towards fluency is a lot of "comprehensible input" like with "Dreaming Spanish". Learning about a language is different from acquiring a language, Krashen et. all has a lot of research on how people actually gain fluency. What most people are…

I'd love to read this - but can't log into UQ. Can you repost or provide more detail please?

I don't know what the research is, but the best way I know to learn a language is to acquire a lot of data at the edge of your comprehension.

Basically, keep just listen to/read things in the target language, that you barely understand. Don't bother with grammar and rules, that's not how anyone thinks or speaks a language.

I'd love to see what's in OP's link, though.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#36
+1 for Mango Languages (available free with my Library Card)

It's very well designed. The spaced repetition is effective. The lesson order is sensible. The Romanian lessons have a real speaker narrating the pronunciation, compared to Duolingo's AI narrator, which was terrible for learning.

I tried Duolingo briefly but the over-gamification wasn't for me. Everything was about gems and lives, major turnoff.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#37

Duolingo doesn't actually do much if anything to help you become fluent. Nor does almost all the language learning apps such as Drops, Rosetta Stone, etc. What you need to move towards fluency is a lot of "comprehensible input" like with "Dreaming Spanish". Learning about a language is different from acquiring a language, Krashen et. all has a lot of research on how people actually gain fluency. What most people are…

My taxi driver in Mexico spoke perfect English. I figured he was either American or had lived here. He said he learned the language watching YouTube videos and had never been.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#38
post #5

One of the main disappointments with Duolingo's recent path for me has been the removal of the forum. It was so useful whenever I was confused by a certain phrase or new concept to just hop directly into the discussion forum page for that exercise and see others asking the same questions and getting well-written intuitive answers to them. Just boosted my understanding so much plus added a sense of community, that we'…

Those forums were mainly a band-aid for DL's complete refusal to actually explain any of the grammar.

There's an overview for each unit section that has some pretty important explanations, and nothing really directs you towards it.

Still, in terms of forums, a lot of the time Googling will lead you to various subreddits that have some good conversations and explanations.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#39

Duolingo doesn't actually do much if anything to help you become fluent. Nor does almost all the language learning apps such as Drops, Rosetta Stone, etc. What you need to move towards fluency is a lot of "comprehensible input" like with "Dreaming Spanish". Learning about a language is different from acquiring a language, Krashen et. all has a lot of research on how people actually gain fluency. What most people are…

Agreed, no app, website, methodology or anything else is going to gain you fluency. The sole way of gaining fluency is speaking the language, and all that goes along with that (mostly it's integrating into the culture, because language is an extension of culture and if you don't get the culture, you won't get the language).

You need to know very little of the language to get started. Just find someone who's willing to talk to you in said language, and you'll fill in the gaps as you go.

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