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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#181

Post by entropie »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #178
xormapmap wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why is it important?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#183

Post by vintermann »

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…

Sitcoms are a tried and true language promotion tactic. I remember when I was young there was a French teenage-sitcom, "Helene", which my mother would watch because her students watched it religiously (she was a language teacher). It was outrageously soapy, but even I noticed the relatively accessible language. My mother told me the show was a subsidized export of France's language evangelization program. Apparently teaching French was a lot easier when that show was popular.

Friends wasn't that, but close enough. I think I recall Simone Giertz saying that she learned English from it, and I can't be the only one who has noticed that there's something uncannily Lisa Kudrow-like about her stage persona.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#185

Post by moi2388 »

Personally, I found I cannot learn languages through apps like Duolingo, nor through regular education.

What works for me:

- associate words with their meaning. This means not trying to translate words into their counterpart in a different language. So no flash cards with words on both sides, but with pictures.

- listen to music. This helps me develop a feeling for the language, where I understand the beginning and end of words, and intonations.

- watch simple shows in the foreign language. Kids shows, cooking shows. Stuff where the context is obvious, so once again I am not secretly “translating”.

- going on holidays or booking a conversation with a language coach. Because understanding and production are two different brain areas (wernicke vs broca), so there are languages which I can understand, but not speak.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#186

Post by matwood »

torm wrote: post #45

I'm currently holding a 1100 days of streak of Italian in Duolingo, so I think I am entitled to drop in my 2 cents ;) To some extent I agree with the critique. Would I be able to write an assay like the op in Italian? surely not. Is their marketing annoying? yes, very much. Is the platform perfect? far from this. However - after 3 years with Duo I am capable of having causal, simple conversations, I can navigate most…

I do feel like many of the Duo critiques are strawmen. Of course no single method will lead to new language fluency. Even full immersion requires practice and often classes.

I use Duo, Pimsluer, live in Italy, and will start classes in a month or so. Duo is a fun game that also helps with my language journey.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#187

Post by vintermann »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #124
summarity wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immersion and transferring patterns you already know from other languages. Language Transfer is a good completely free resource: https://www.languagetransfer.org

Language Transfer is great. On the topic of immersion, I made https://nuenki.app in my gap year. It estimates the difficulty of sentences in webpages and translates the ones at your knowledge level into the language you're learning.

The danger here is that you're not learning German - you're learning machine German. Even if the app makers have structured the machine translation so that it's smart about taking context into account, it will be at best subtly different from actual German, and at worst you'll pick up nonsense and think it's good German.

The safe way to use this would be in reverse. You shouldn't be browsing English pages and get 1 in 10 translated into German. You should be browsing German pages and get 9/10 translated into English. You'll still get machine translation artifacts, but they're much less likely to interfere with your learning, and you'll be much better equipped to spot them.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#188

Post by skinkestek »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #178
xormapmap wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For me it was because I dabbled in Russian before, but recent events have led me to avoid anything that could be seen as supporting Russia in any way, including culturally.

I also learned that a number of things I thought was Russian was in fact Ukrainian.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#189

Post by huhkerrf »

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…

> And the State Department's FSI estimates are unfortunately pretty accurate for hours to fluency [1].

It's worth noting that the FSI estimates are hours of direct classroom instruction, and that FSI cares a lot more about input than output. For someone who is looking to be fluent across all four competencies and is self studying, you can expect a lot more time to be invested.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#190

Post by teiferer »

Depends what you compare it with.

Having a Spanish-speaking language buddy or actually living in Spain or Mexico is much better than Duolingo for learning Spanish. (xx)

Watching hours of brainrot youtube doomscroll is much worse than something like Duolingo.

The niche for Duolingo is the latter. Obviously it can't compete with the former. You don't need an opinionated blog post to realize that.

(xx) unless perhaps it's spanish youtube.

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