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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

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Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#11

Post by watwut »

navigate8310 wrote: post #7
devrandoom wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the modern methods and what's to back up they're better?

Anki cards comes to my mind, diploma from local university, preparing for TOEFL/IELTS equivalent. Also some languages have better alternatives than jack of all trade, Duolingo.

That is absurd suggestion when OPs complaint was about translation. A person new to language doing Anki always end up only translating words in always the same sentences.

That is actually much less of a problem in Duolingo where those sentences warry and that has you do variety of exercises.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#13

Post by cyborgx7 »

darkstar_16 wrote: post #8
daniel_iversen wrote: post #2

For the curious, here's an article from the developer on why they built LibreLingo https://dev.to/kantord/why-i-built-librelingo-280o

who are these people who have 30 minutes in the morning to make a smoothie and learn a foreign language ... :D

The people who prioritize learning a foreign language over some of the things that you prioritize.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#14

Post by est »

been using Duolingo in the 10s and last year, I gave up because the course seems very repetitive. Even if I got the answer right 10 out of 10 times, the same question kept coming. It almost looks like the app is trying very hard to make me stay as long as possible, instead of study as effecient as possible.

So for a good alternative app, is there a dynamic course pace I can adapt to?

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#15

Post by wodenokoto »

devrandoom wrote: post #5
Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

What are the modern methods and what's to back up they're better?

Military translator bootcamps and Mormon mission preparations are the most consistently successful methods in broad use for getting people good at a new language.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#16

Post by Hamcha »

mobtrain wrote: post #6
Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

This comment would be 60 times more helpful if in addition to your strong opinion on the failures of learning with Duolingo it’d supply some of the good alternatives.

As someone learning Japanese I'm really appreciating tools built for JP specifically: Renshuu and Wanikani. Both use SRS (same as duolingo) but spend a considerable amount of time actually teaching the grammar and nuances, they both avoid starting from everyday phrases like "I would like sushi" to instead build a foundation first, and many other little things that make it a much nicer experience than Duolingo who's trying to use a very generic approach that maximises small term satisfaction in exchange for painful long term learning.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#17

Post by watwut »

sudahtigabulan wrote: post #10
mobtrain wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment would be 60 times more helpful if in addition to your strong opinion on the failures of learning with Duolingo it’d supply some of the good alternatives.

I think the pre-internet ways are just fine - textbooks, phrasebooks, other kinds of books geared towards self-learners. With them, one must be just a little bit more proactive, though. You can also sign up to in-person classes.

Pre-internet ways failed to teach language super often. Very frequent issue when learning from book was that you could not not understand anything people say, because you imagined the language to sound much differently then it does for months and months while learning. That was the most common result of language learning attempts - not much.

Language learning is one of the things that were genuinely made much more effective by the internet and streaming services. The input based learning methods were basically impossible pre-internet for most people. And these are very effective.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#18

Post by chrisco255 »

Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

Duolingo is a multimodal learning tool. There's some translation but there's also fill in the blank, describe from prompt, oral story interpretation, spoken descriptions, and even AI chat bot interactions in recent version.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#19

Post by damnitbuilds »

devrandoom wrote: post #5
Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

What are the modern methods and what's to back up they're better?

I have lived in a foreign country for 25 years and have started picking up the local language. There might be faster methods.
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