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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#171

Post by ljlolel »

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…

How can you possibly use Duolingo for 4 years without learning 2000 words ? (I did, my mother did)

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#172

Post by nikolay »

ljlolel wrote: post #171
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…

How can you possibly use Duolingo for 4 years without learning 2000 words ? (I did, my mother did)

I know some words. Duolingo says 1,500, but I know about 500, maybe, but I still must learn many basic words and formal grammar. For example, I know the extremely useful word 'giraffe,' but I can't count, and I don't know all the colors.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#173

Post by nikolay »

agnishom wrote: post #169
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

They only care about engagement, as you need to keep paying for the premium service; otherwise, you will waste most of your time with the app watching ridiculous and annoying ads. I suppose they are concerned that if you don't use the app daily, you will not renew, and the premium service won't be worth it otherwise. But then you will have no streak, and will be in the first league, and friends won't like your stupid activities!

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#174

Post by dkga »

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 language in my cell phone is Danish

- I started with Duolingo every day, but then after some 3 months or so it wasn't so fun/effective anymore.

- I read Danish news every day. Most often just the first two paragraphs is enough, but I make a point of understanding everything. Whatever is first on the webpage and is non-trivial. I know more about Danish handball than I ever thought I would.

- I found some Danish bands that I really like and I listen to them very frequently. For now I don't actively try and translate all the lyrics, since this is my "relax in Danish time", but I have noticed that I can pick up more and more - only then, I go and confirm to see if this is true or to learn what it actually is

- I read reddit posts in Danish (including on jokes) and I often try to write some responses myself. I am still ramping this last part up, but my procedure is: I first write in whatever flows: true Danish, broken Danish, a mix of Danish and German. Then before posting I ask ChatGPT to correct to C2 Danish and explain every little correction. I usually learn a lot doing this.

- I read LinkedIn posts in Danish, wikipedia in Danish when I'm searching for a new topic, and asking ChatGPT for responses in Danish when I have the time to read it through.

- I am also now increasingly exploring using Danish dictation on my computer, but this is still very much work in progress.

- Plenty of podcasts as time allows (I don't drive to work)

- Movies, first with subtitles in English and then in Danish

At this point, I feel that I can:

- understand a good enough portion of what is said in movies and songs to make me proud and motivated, although Danish pronunciation is notoriously difficult for the non-initiated and of course I am still a beginner

- understand written texts where the main difficulty is finding vocabulary rather than picking up the grammar

- I can actually understand some written Norwegian and Swedish, which is a pretty cool plus!

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#175

Post by randycupertino »

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…

I really miss the tree format in Duolingo. I enjoyed being able to choose my own activities and jump around, the variety was fun and engaging. When they got rid of the tree and forced us all to use the boring straight 1-track path I got bored and couldn't sustain my daily practice.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#176

Post by kobebrookskC3 »

AndyKelley wrote: post #121

Anki is Free and Open Source Software and it's way more effective. Why waste any time on Duolingo when you could be using Anki instead?

because setting up and using anki is a pain? using and configuring anki is not intuitive. if you're just starting, you'll probably need to find a good premade vocab deck. once that's done, you'll need to make cards. making cards manually is a pita, i would probably not make any if i didn't have a good mining setup (yomitan/ttsu reader/asbplayer). i've spent countless hours getting my mining setup just right (setting up anki and yomitan, tweaking card fields/templates). yomitan probably works well because japanese conjugation is so regular. i imagine for languages with less regular conjugation, it wouldn't be so nice.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#177

Post by ThrownOffGame »

xormapmap wrote: post #143
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.

The idea that child brains are better at learning languages is a myth. Adults struggle with languages because traditional language education is not fit for purpose. If you took a child and isolated them in such a way that they never got comprehensible input, and instead only gave them traditional language lessons (think textbooks, grammar drills) - they too would struggle. The good news is that if you take an adult a…

What about pronunciation? Many of the assertions I've heard about adults in a foreign language is about our ability to recognize, differentiate, and reproduce the different phonemes, many which do not exist in our language.

These phonemes are even more difficult to recognize when we're not conversing face-to-face and in-person! So if you're listening to "comprehensible input" if it's on audio, or video voice-over, it is much inferior to seeing/feeling/hearing a native speaker make sound-shapes with their mouth!

I made many efforts to imitate my Spanish teachers in my youth, in terms of pronounciation, mouth shapes, accent and emphasis, etc. I credit the in-person instruction with achieving a nearly fluent comprehension and ability to make myself understood.

So the argument goes: if an adult is set in their ways and knows a particular set of phonemes, (or even tones, etc.) is it more difficult than a blank-slate child who has no prejudice about hearing and learning new sounds?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#178

Post by koakuma-chan »

xormapmap wrote: post #139
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?

Comprehensible input does seem to be the most effective way. i.e. get a lot of input that is only slightly beyond your current level (i+1). I'm learning Ukrainian and there is a podcast "Ukrainian Lessons Podcast". Seasons 4-6 are not so much lessons but more just discussions about life, history, culture in 100% slow comprehensible Ukrainian. In one of the episodes Anna talks about how she spent most of her life gett…

Why are you learning Ukranian?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#179

Post by apple1417 »

2800 day streak here, primarily in Finnish. I haven't been a fan of the app for a long time, but the problem I've always had switching is the question: What else? There might be a thousand different Spanish courses, but for less popular languages there just aren't many choices, the fact that they still host one is great. Yes I haven't really learnt much, it's more maintaining what I do know, but I'd've lost it without.

Incidentally I do think Finnish is one of the cases where it could work well. The way I see it the difficulty in learning Finnish is primarily learning an entirely new vocabulary, the grammar and sentence structure isn't that hard, and Duolingo could work well to teach you thousands of new words. The problem is they have a very limited amount of exercises, to the point my phone's auto complete can solve half of them.

---

Please don't just link me stuff you've found on Google, I've tried them all. My favourite was Yle Kielikoulu, but that's been shut down.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#180

Post by kabes »

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.

You don't need to watch BBC for that. Not a lot of tv shows, even child programs are dubbed on Dutch tv. So you get accustomed to it early on. Combined with the fact the languages are closely related means the Dutch usually have a reasonable grasp of English before it's being taught in school.
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