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Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

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Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#111

Post by Markoff »

knorker wrote: post #9

Betteridge's law of headlines be damned, the answer is "yes". I've basically only used Duolingo for learning a particular new language. I started from nothing, and just did a little every day during the pandemic. Then I travelled to the country in question, and was able to tell stories in the language. Not easily, and with bad grammar and my vocabulary sucked, but this is more than being able to order at a restaurant…

>But surprisingly many people will not make any adjustments at all when you say "Please, if you speak more slowly I can understand", and instead will go maybe even faster.

by my experience when these people see you don't understand, they think speaking louder will make you understand

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#112

Post by chrchr »

noduerme wrote: post #46
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

I've had the best success with Pimsleur, which is almost completely audio-based, and just rotates through vocabulary and situations at increasingly lengthy intervals. Somehow the constant back and forth talking to the tape just works better for me than looking at something in writing. As a result, I can't write anything in French and have no clue how most things are spelled, but I've been told my pronunciation is pre…

Yep. I’ve been learning Spanish off-and-on since high school. The biggest step I took toward some amount of mastery and ability to speak rudimentary Spanish in conversation was with doing Pimsluer tapes. Repeating “un vaso de leche. Un gran vaso” and things like that over and over again just made it sink in.

I’m doing Duolingo Spanish now, every day for over a year and a half. It’s a reasonably entertaining way to practice and pick up vocab, but I don’t know how much proficiency I’m achieving.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#113

Post by godelski »

remarkEon wrote: post #78
lake-view wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. I get your point, but with the pace of AI, there's a good chance this statement is not true in 5 years!

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

Here's an idea, but it is going to be really difficult to implement. You have lessons but at a certain point you get a chat "buddy" that only uses slightly more vocab than you know to naturally expand your knowledge. This replicates the teacher student in person discussions. You can then analyze the voice and ensure that someone has the right accent and pronunciation. Then use optimization to determine your faults and what you need to practice, optimizing memory. It isn't much different from what a human teacher would do. But I'm not aware of any of these subsystems being relatively close to human level but also not aware of much research in any of these directions. I've seen a few people try and they are just terrible.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#114

Post by barrell »

remarkEon wrote: post #78
lake-view wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. I get your point, but with the pace of AI, there's a good chance this statement is not true in 5 years!

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

> Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t.

I’d push back on this idea, and instead say that some people learn really well from the current tools, and some people can’t.

99.99% of the population picked up their mother tongue just like everybody else. Naturally there are differences in the population, but I would posit that if you learned a language once (or twice or three times - I know trilingual people who insist they can’t learn a foreign language because they failed Duolingo Spanish) you can learn a language again.

My bias is that I’m working on an alternative language learning tool now - one aimed at ‘language acquisition’ over ‘language learning’, or basically how can you learn a language by just talking/listening to native speakers. Aimed at those who have finished traditional courses and want to master a language, or those who have tried traditional courses and find it didn’t mentally agree with them.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#115

Post by jakear »

I’m currently residing in Mexico after years of HS and Rosetta refresher, my main critique: Rosetta didn’t teach big numbers well enough. At 20 pesos to the dollar, learning 100-1000+ is pretty much mandatory but I didn’t see it, especially not in the form of the rapid fire audio you’ll encounter in the wild (with a line of annoyed people behind you perhaps…).

Don’t try to get natives to tell you the english either - it’s much more confusing than you probably realize!^ Instead, if you aren’t sure you can repeat back the number you think you heard digit by digit and people will generally get what you’re going for (or “lo siento no entiendo, puedes decir cada digito por favor?”). Writing it out is a decent last resort, helps that there’s dirt everywhere.

^ “three fifty” is 2 numbers, 2 orders of magnitude apart. “thirty five” is one number, in between them. “three hundred fifty” is the same as the second “three fifty”. “thirty five hundred” is a totally different number entirely, but the same as “three thousand five hundred”. etc.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#116

Post by doingtheiroming »

truth777 wrote: post #41

Best way to learn a language is to watch tv and movies.

I do 30 mins to an hour of a language every day. After I’m done in Duolingo I work my way through a news story on a local news aggregator (I.e. dumbed down) website using Google Translate to figure out things I don’t understand by picking out words. I find trying to identify phrases in the articles useful as it’s starting to give me a sense of basic idiom.

Feels like a good way to consolidate and push forward. It also gives me a bit of culture since news articles are revealing of the way people think.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#117

Post by barrell »

pkulak wrote: post #108
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

I agree. I’m trying to learn German now and I keep failing lessons because I screw up gender and conjugation stuff. I wish there was a way to tell the app that I don’t give a shit. Even if I learn all the genders perfectly, I’m still going to be fumbling over words in an American accent. A few incorrect “der”s are not going to make me unable to be understood. And I can correct that later.

A lot of the language learning methods out there really are built to be graded/measured. Books, courses, duolingo, anki - they all kind of seek to answer this question ‘how can we measure your language and make sure you’re progressing through it’.

There are a few applications out there that are far superior for me, that don’t focus on this two way feedback. Language transfer is amazing, glossika used to be amazing (still is, but they have a lot of grading by default now), pimsleur and Michel Thomas are also good products.

I’m also working on a product that explicitly tries to avoid this problem as well, but is a little meatier than the audio only products like I mentioned above. Won’t be ready for public use for a few months though but you can DM me for details if you’d like

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#118

Post by jakear »

jakear wrote: post #115

I’m currently residing in Mexico after years of HS and Rosetta refresher, my main critique: Rosetta didn’t teach big numbers well enough. At 20 pesos to the dollar, learning 100-1000+ is pretty much mandatory but I didn’t see it, especially not in the form of the rapid fire audio you’ll encounter in the wild (with a line of annoyed people behind you perhaps…). Don’t try to get natives to tell you the english either -…

Oh, and the tenses. When the Military stops you to ask what you did in the past and what you’re going to do in the future, Rosetta’s passion por present tense won’t help.

That said, having shit tier spanish at the checkpoints can “naïveté” you out of some sticky situations. A cute dog helps too (when they ask, and they will, “ella no muerde”).

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#119

Post by barrell »

dwighttk wrote: post #38
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

spelling too... like the 10th thing I care about is how to spell in a new language...

And no typos allowed or you start from zero!

Because as everyone nows, real native speakers never make typos

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#120

Post by barrell »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #60

Has anyone tried "Language Transfer" to learn a foreign language? I've done a few of the lessons and it's so incredibly intuitive. They use concepts and patterns in the listener's native language to learn concepts in the target language. Surprisingly, It's completely free (please donate if you can) https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish

I have, and it’s fantastic to learn. I think there’s a focus on ambiguity that is incredibly important for language learners (combine some gestures with your hands and ‘it’ ‘this’ ‘that’ ‘there’ ‘he’ ‘she’ can get you really far).

However, it’s really not great for review. I’ve tried to go back even after a couple years and listen to the Italian course again, but couldn’t do it.

So it’s a great (amazing (fantastic)) ‘boost’ but I wouldn’t rely on it entirely

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