Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An opinionated critique of Duolingo

isomorphism.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 320 posts

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#261

Post by csa »

elil17 wrote: post #160
jmkni wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the hack? I'm guessing there isn't one? Asking as it's "hacker news" after all, I remember reading how North Korean agents would watch shows like Friends for hours on end to become familiar with English, is that a hack?

I'm urgently trying to learn a language and I've done a lot of research on this. There's no one hack, but here are my top three: - Anki - Focus on producing speech over everything else, it's the hardest part 90% of the time. Practice production enough and everything else will follow. - Work on your accent much earlier than you think you should. If your accent is better than it should be, native speakers will naturall…

> Focus on producing speech over everything else

That’s a great way to gimp your language learning curve.

Receptive skills develop before productive skills. This is just a truism about language.

I could buy into dedicating time to speaking, as many folks don’t put enough time into that skill, but I’m not sure I would ever recommend prioritizing it over receptive skills.

> it's the hardest part 90% of the time.

While this is true, it doesn’t mean that production should be one’s “primary focus”.

> There's not really strong evidence to support "comprehensible input,"

I assume you are basing this on second hand information, or “really strong evidence” is doing a lot of work here, but volumes have been written about the efficacy of comprehensible input in foreign language learning.

To be charitable, I think many people do “comprehensible input” incorrectly (content too difficult, overly scaffolded with translations/subtitles, etc.), but the folks who reach higher levels of proficient (B2 or higher to be somewhat arbitrary) almost always have had massive amounts of (comprehensible) input at some point in their language learning journey.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#262

Post by abhaynayar »

Finally a good critique of Duolingo, couldn't have written it better myself. A fresh take separate from the cliche everywhere on the internet that you can't learn an entire language on Duolingo itself which I've heard a thousand times at this point. (Currently "learning" French on it, but going to quit cause have been guilty of cheat-streaking myself).

Yes, the social aspect is trash. The "path" is trash. The leagues/incentives don't make sense. It's just a bad app. This blog made me realize that it could possibly be better in concrete terms. And without even going against their bottom-line. Like, it could still be gamified and what-not, but BETTER. But it isn't. It is just a poor design. YES, language-learning takes effort and many different sources, and YES Duolingo-like apps can only hope to be like a SNACK, but they could still be much better, ugh.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#263

Post by edem »

duothrowaway99 wrote: post #25

Both of my parents are teachers of a European language. They both have phd's in linguistics, and rate very highly with students (who basically adore them). All of this context to say that not once has anyone using Duolingo been able to "test out" of the first ("101") class that they teach. Duolingo self-learners come in with a very unequal mix of vocabulary and... not much else. Unable to use declension properly [0],…

I want to learn German (as an adult). What should I do then?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#264

Post by GrumpyGoblin »

dkga wrote: post #174

I was happy to read some comments here reinforcing the experience I had - that immersion is absolutely necessary. For the sake of anyone who might ever be interested, and because today marks literally one year since I began doggedly learning Danish, here is how I get immersion while being thousands of kilometers away from a community of speakers (currently live in Brazil, before that Switzerland). - The system langua…

This is really helpful. Every comment is about immersion, I get it people, but how do you achieve that in the real world. Most of those comments seem to ignore that fact that many people can't move to another country for a couple years and leaving their significant other to get a new one that natively speaks the desired language isn't a great suggestion. I understand those are the best ways to learn, but let me run that by my wife and kids and we'll see how that goes.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#265

Post by scarface_74 »

I used DuoLingo two or three years ago to try to learn Spanish. I knew a little of the basic grammar from high school and some words. By the time I got to lesson 20, I was completely loss. I also got sick of the gamification and just the grind of it. I just stopped.

That and I realized the continuous click buttons got tiresome.

Then, earlier this year my wife and I decided that we wanted to start spending at least a couple of months every year in Costa Rica starting next year and maybe alternate between there and other Spanish speaking countries in us time zones.

This time, I had ChatGPT and a Trello board I put together of concepts and categories of words I wanted to learn based on the CEFR level A1 list. I would create various drills, ask ChatGPT to explain concepts, etc. I became more focused on production - mostly writing. ChatGPT is a good teacher to get through the list of topics of my known gaps.

I even asked it to summarize the most important current event at an A1 level and ask me questions.

As far as speaking, I used Apple’s voice to text and not the better one built into ChatGPT. It’s pretty good with my English native southern twang so I figured any mistranscription in Spanish was caused by my bad pronunciation. The one built into ChatGPT is better. But that’s actually a bad thing when trying to pronuncie words correctly.

After a few months of ChatGPT, I did recently go vac to DuoLingo. I do the first exercise in a unit, then see if I can skip the rest (which it does let you do). If I don’t know vocabulary or a concept, I go back to ChatGPT for drills.

Being able to listen in Spanish in real time at an A1 level is the next step. I can use ChatGPT for that first and then watching kids tv shows in Spanish

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#266

Post by ileonichwiesz »

midtake wrote: post #123
Uehreka wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an app that constantly nags you to use it, to the point that its mascot is so widely known as annoying that they play it for laughs in their ads. All that to say: you and Duolingo’s owners may disagree about what “the point of Duolingo is”. I don’t think they care if users are achieving fluency, they want users to keep coming back to the app so they can be served ads. And yeah, that doesn’t mean users can’t t…

Most apps are nagware, that is not a Duolingo issue. The ads are for converting users to paid subscribers, not just "ads." I don't see your point at all.

A lot of apps are nagware, but I’ve never seen any as blatant and forceful as Duolingo.

They diligently A/B test their notifications, constantly looking for the variations that’ll show a higher click rate. They’ll hit you with “[Your friend’s name] will hate you forever if you don’t do Duolingo right now!” if you start slipping.

I’ve dropped it after a year or so when I realized that I wasn’t really learning any Turkish, but I was caught in some sort of corporate-designed psychological trap.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#267

Post by kevmo314 »

qingcharles wrote: post #106
mtalantikite wrote: post #87

I think the thing I dislike about Duolingo is it sort of catches the casual person into a trap by misleading them into thinking that by using this app they'll learn another language. It's not that it's a bad app, it's just that that's not going to happen. There's no one resource that will get you to even an intermediate level in a language. And the State Department's FSI estimates are unfortunately pretty accurate fo…

Lord have mercy. All the languages I'm learning are: > Category IV Languages – “Super-hard languages” – Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers.

Given that four of the five are Asian languages, there's a lot of transferability. Not a crazy amount but enough to give you a boost. Knowing Chinese made learning Japanese feel a notch easier, and learning Korean afterwards felt yet another step easier.

The 2200 hours represents learning from scratch.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#268

Post by GrumpyGoblin »

I like the realistic idea of Duolingo. I know I'm not going to get fluent with it and I'm not trying to, but I do want a good app to expand vocabulary and basic structures that I can do in 30 minutes a day. And I'm a sucker for streaks, but not all the other gamification. I don't need gems or XP or potions, just a streak to form habits, which I am bad at and need that positive affirmation.

Does anyone know any alternative apps that achieve the same goals with less of the fluff?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#269

Post by barrenko »

qingcharles wrote: post #103
jmkni wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the hack? I'm guessing there isn't one? Asking as it's "hacker news" after all, I remember reading how North Korean agents would watch shows like Friends for hours on end to become familiar with English, is that a hack?

I have Dutch friends who swear they learned all their English simply by watching Friends on BBC in the Netherlands.

For me in Croatia it was The Simpsons.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#270

Post by myrmidon »

cardanome wrote: post #258
distances wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it goes after any major war of aggression. Happened to Germany, Japan and USSR after the WW2. Germany and Japan are both generally seen in a favourable light now. It seems that the reputation takes about two generations to recover once the hostilities are over and the country has started to reform. Russia never really attempted a real reform in the first place, so for it the outcome was different. Russia…

Then again Israel is annexing land and actively committing genocide and voicing any anger is seen a deeply antisemitic and completely taboo. You will see a reflexive assurance that you can not equate the people with the government and so on. My point is not Whataboutism. I don't want to relativate any war crimes done by anyone. I don't criticize people that lost relatives in Ukraine for using dehumanizing language li…

Israel is facing a ton of backlash for the latest conflict too (even from countries like Germany!).

But I would argue that in the Ukraine war it is much more obvious who "good guy/bad guy" is, because you have a totalitarian aggressor on one side and a somewhat democratic defender on the other.

In Israel, you have a democratically controlled army vs a terrorists group (Hamas), and it is much less clear where the justifiable limit for collateral damage is or whom to blame primarily for the current level of escalation.

Post reply on HN