We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native speakers from close to 200 countries.
www.HelloTalk.com
Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
161–170 of 189 posts
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#162We made a language exchange social app that's the complete opposite of the Duolingo approach. You learn and exchange more than 120 languages with native speakers from close to 200 countries.
www.HelloTalk.com
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#163This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's worthwhile. All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling user data can all go…
> They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for.
Are you referring to the $20 English certification? There isn't anything else that they currently ask their users to pay for.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#164I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools I use on my phone for it. The other three are: Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to come more fluidly. Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't give me enough practice with this. Google Translate What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import t…
> I would love the ability to make a certain drill or word as Finished or Very Confident so I don't have to waste time practicing stuff I already know.
Do you know what you know, though? It's easy to spend an hour practising a bunch of words and feel as though you've learnt some of them, but come back a week or month later and actually not be able to recall them.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#165This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's worthwhile. All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling user data can all go…
> They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. Are you referring to the $20 English certification? There isn't anything else that they currently ask their users to pay for.
CMIIW Duolingo has a paid crowd-sourced translation service.
Of course, user who "only want to learn" can "always learn for free"
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#166If they could add some Asian languages, at least Korean which uses an alphabet and would probably not require as much special dev as something like Chinese (mandarin) would, that would be super sweet!
Prior to having seen Duolingo, I started a service that is similar to Duolingo, but only for Mandarin Chinese. It's only free for the first 60 words (then $5.99/mo), and I don't think the proposition is quite right yet. It's at http://fastchinese.com if you'd like to check it out.
Feedback appreciated here or via the site.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#167Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
If you ever use Rosetta Stone, they call it "Immersion Method". They says we can learn anything as we can learn them when we were a child. We don't study grammar etc when we learned our first/mother language.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. Are you referring to the $20 English certification? There isn't anything else that they currently ask their users to pay for.
CMIIW Duolingo has a paid crowd-sourced translation service. Of course, user who "only want to learn" can "always learn for free"
Per the article, the translation service has been mostly ended. CNN are still using it, but they're not taking on new customers for that side of the business.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#169Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
[deleted]
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#170Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
I'd say just pick up a theory book. Those two are doing wonderfully for me:
http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Students-German-Learni...
http://www.amazon.com/Hammers-German-Grammar-Usage-Edition/d...
But they definitively go well together. You see a few examples of case usage, then you read the theory, then after you use it again, it magically "clicks" (for me at least), and things make a lot more sense.
The 'explicit' reinforcement /'implicit' learning couple is a great way to learn I think -- you grasp it intuitively and yet if you are faced with a new or tricky example where your experience will fail you'll be able to make a principled choice by explicit reasoning ("Oh the case here is * such and such * because of * this * therefore the pronoun here must be * that one *").