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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#161

Post by ghaff »

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…

I accept that some people are doubtless much more talented in acquiring languages than I am. But I did take 4 years of high school French and was considered "good." And, traveling with a friend in Paris, I clearly knew a lot more of the language than they did. But I'm a very very far way from being fluent.

Maybe the people who claim to spend a few weeks with Duolingo and get the language are uniquely talented. Or maybe they're BSing.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#162

Post by Barrin92 »

layman51 wrote: post #88
Barrin92 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But the treadmill, used properly, is still significantly better than an extra 30 minutes sitting on the sofa, That's right. Most of the criticism directed at Duolingo seems to be about unrealistic expectations of engaging with an app for 10 minutes a day. That is not going to get you to fluency, but it does beat doom scrolling on your phone. Before I committed to study Japanese seriously I did about a year of Duolin…

Do you have any suggestions for supplements to the Japanese course on Duolingo? I feel like I'm almost ready to make the leap after having built up a good streak and slowly realizing that some of the Duolingo sentences apparently sound unnatural. For example, on review lessons, Duolingo quizzes the sentence "My name is" by using "iimasu"[0]. This older video[1] that is part of a playlist that tracks the Duolingo cour…

>Do you have any suggestions for supplements to the Japanese course on Duolingo?

One source that I (and quite a lot of people on the internet) find fantastic is Cure Dolly's series which is more grammar oriented and you can consume either in the form of Youtube videos on the channel of the same name or in written form here: https://kellenok.github.io/cure-script/

those helped me a great deal in addition to consuming media, duolingo etc.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#163

Post by zdragnar »

luckydata wrote: post #153
collinmcnulty wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strong suspicion is that children just have no responsibilities and are socially allowed to not be able to talk while everyone will speak at their level with a great deal of patience.

speaking to a child at their level is the best way to keep them from speaking well. I never did it with my son and it didn't hold him back one bit. Everyone remarks his incredible vocabulary and language skills for his age. IMHO holding back with kids is an anti-pattern.

My aunt used baby talk with my cousin so much she accidentally invented a new language with him, and he ended up needing a bit of speech therapy to get back to a "standard" level of English for his age.

Perhaps coincidentally, he is now fluent in more languages than anyone else I personally know, and leveraged that into a consulting career.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#165

Post by laurieg »

Escapado wrote: post #135
hungryhobbit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, immersion is the only way that you have control of. If you could de-age yourself, becoming a child would also help immensely, as child brains are much better at learning languages.

I keep hearing this but sometimes I am not 100% sure if they are _much_ better so asking honestly: Is there any reputable quantitative analysis of this in the context of language learning? For example: I have spent the last two years in japan (I am in my 30s) and just got back to my home country. Went to a language school in the mornings there, immersed myself in the language a little but did not go all out on studyi…

I think you're right on this one. Children have an immense amount of practice time, support and social pressure to learn a language.

The only thing that seems to be different between adult and child learners is acquiring specific sounds/tones. I know many good speakers of English who cannot distinguish L/R sounds. I basically cannot hear pitch accent differences in Japanese despite having spoken it for over a decade.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#166

Post by nikolay »

Duolingo is gamification gone wrong, with most of the development effort spent on childish animations! I've been trying to learn Greek for four years using it daily, and most of the time, I'm just trying not to drop out of leagues or ruin my streak, and not so much trying to learn as the gamification incentive is to waste time, not to learn and increase my chance of dropping. What a joke! If I put all this effort into real language learning, I would have been a fluent speaker already. And I'm literally nowhere!

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#168

Post by imathew »

The removal of the forums that the author mentions was what finally ended my 1000ish day streak. It was the most important part of the app for me, the way each question would link to a forum topic and users would discuss the various subtleties.

My assumption, despite plausible claims of moderation issues, is that they removed it so that their expensive AI addon provided more value. But it was the last straw for me.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#169

Post by agnishom »

nikolay wrote: post #166

Duolingo is gamification gone wrong, with most of the development effort spent on childish animations! I've been trying to learn Greek for four years using it daily, and most of the time, I'm just trying not to drop out of leagues or ruin my streak, and not so much trying to learn as the gamification incentive is to waste time, not to learn and increase my chance of dropping. What a joke! If I put all this effort int…

Viewed another way, the gamification is a sign that they don't trust the actual content to be good enough that the user would want to return to it

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#170

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #70

"Big tech embraces blitz-scaling: the primary goal is neither financial sustainability nor the quality of materials but making the number of users grow." In most cases, there are no materials. It's intangibles only. Duolingo, for example There are exceptions. High quality materials are a goal for Apple

In other cases, "materials" could refer to course content, for example
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