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Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

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Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#51

Post by _aavaa_ »

appstorelottery wrote: post #26
alexawarrior3 wrote: post #16

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 can't access the thesis either, but I believe it's "‘Picking Up’ a Second Language from Television: an autoethnographic L2 simulation of L1 French learning".

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/189928232.pdf

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#52

Post by tetris11 »

codazoda wrote: post #37
alexawarrior3 wrote: post #16

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.

My uncle learned Russian by just watching the news in the evenings when he was a student there during the USSR

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#54

Post by groggo »

amilios wrote: 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'…

I've found ChatGPT great for this. It's way better than a translator at giving you context for grammar and phrases.

My stack is Duolingo + Podcasts + Instagram + ChatGPT:

Duolingo - daily consistency, grammar

Podcasts - "comprehensible input" from intermediate french podcasts (InnerFrench, French with Panache)

Instagram - Just follow a ton of french accounts. They often have subtitles. Listen to native speakers talk at a normal pace about stuff you're interested in.

ChatGPT - answer basic questions about grammar or phrases. I've even started using this for conversation practice too.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#55

Post by hbn »

tylerFowler wrote: post #13
rrr_oh_man wrote: post #4

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

I'm actually a bit surprised to see this, I've been an ardent Duolingo user for years and it works fantastically for me. Do you need to pair it with learning formal grammar rules on the side? Yeah, if you want to go deeper, absolutely, and when I have paired grammar rule learning with Duolingo it like 5x'd my learning & comprehension speed.

I'm a fairly recent starter, but I've mostly appreciated Duolingo for giving me some kind of structured course for learning. I keep mindful of concepts I'm not understanding, and Google around for discussions on Reddit and Quora with better explanations than what Duolingo offers, tricks for remembering words (e.g. shared etymology). When it wants me to translate stuff, I don't look at the word bank until i've translated the sentence myself in my head. etc

I probably wouldn't find it super useful on its own, but it keeps me moving through lessons and topics better than if I was just trying to learn with no direction. And you need to keep in mind whether you're actually LEARNING or just completing the lesson. Duolingo wants to give you dopamine hits by having you pass lessons, which is not necessarily compatible with learning. Learning requires struggle, which is not a good way to keep users around.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#56

Post by can3p »

Can't recommend anki flash cards enough. One thing that I found important is that you need to build the deck yourself and you'll miss out a lot by using prebaked decks of any kind. Reasons:

- Context is the king. Most of the words have multiple meanings and it's easier to remember them if you just added them from a text you've read. Moreover, this approach gives you an opportunity to see the words being used in the wild which gives confidence on when to use the word/idiom - Words with no context are just harder to learn - 3rd party decks will give you loads of words you don't care about

For learning French I've found kwiziq much more useful. Very little gamifications and lots and lots of training and exercises with examples that actually make sense

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#57

Post by wishinghand »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

The formatting on this web site kind of sucks too. I measured 9 inches of horizontal whitespace border on each side of the strip of content that measures 4.5 inches wide. So a full 4/5 of my browser window is unused empty space.

Do you enjoy reading a line of text 13.5 inches long?

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#58

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

hbn wrote: post #44
Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #14

I've been running through the Japanese course daily for the last 2 months. I'm learning to read somewhat , but I doubt that if I was to speak I would be understood. I understand there are limitations to this format. However, what drives me nuts is the fact I can't just enable the Japanese keyboard (which I've installed) to type out answers. Instead I just select the correct predefined answer from a list. This allows…

Is that something unique to Japanese, or maybe if you're on Android? I'm learning Spanish on the iOS app. I installed the Spanish keyboard, and whenever a text field appears my keyboard is automatically set to Spanish

May well be Japanese course specific. I am on Android and checked on web also — same experience. I have an iPhone too though, so will check it out and report back.

In my experience with the Japanese course, there are no text prompts at all. Well, not in the main course. You do receive prompts when learning the Japanese alphabets, but these text prompts are specifically asking for the Romanised pronunciation.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#59

Post by jmyeet »

I did Duolingo every day for a year. I don't remember any of it.

Add that to the constant trend of adding features to make you a paying customer, like the hated hearts system, and I honestly don't see the point. Whatever the solution to language learning is, this isn't it.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#60

Post by readthenotes1 »

can3p wrote: post #56

Can't recommend anki flash cards enough. One thing that I found important is that you need to build the deck yourself and you'll miss out a lot by using prebaked decks of any kind. Reasons: - Context is the king. Most of the words have multiple meanings and it's easier to remember them if you just added them from a text you've read. Moreover, this approach gives you an opportunity to see the words being used in the w…

I took a in person Spanish class for 2 weeks and then tried to continue with Anki and I found it painful since it did not do anything for my pronunciation...

Of course, using it during the class was invaluable

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