21–30 of 231 posts
What are some good alternatives to Duolingo with fewer dark patterns? (And don't suggest traditional methods, I am very much not against them, I am just curious about apps and such.)
What are some good alternatives to Duolingo with fewer dark patterns? (And don't suggest traditional methods, I am very much not against them, I am just curious about apps and such.)
Forgive the digression, but this reminds me of a general gripe: I wish there were more/better introductions and tutorials and other learning materials geared toward people knowledgeable in another human or computer language, the educational equivalent of P frames in temporal video compression. Rather than feeding you examples piece by piece and making you build up the mental model tediously, brain dump the mental model on you and let you fill in the specifics as you go. Easy Arabic Grammar by Jane Wightwick or Basic Polish by Dana Bielec are decent examples of what I wish were more prevalent.
My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not savi…
Anyway, I try not to look at the points or streaks, my real motivation is to learn the language.
One thing I found odd about Duolingo is that they disabled offline lessons. It was the most powerful thing they had -- to me at least. I was able to board planes and just grind for hours, I could travel cross country and do the same. Even in normal travels I was able to use it without constant disconnects -- it was great. But they decided one day to just nuke it... for no reason as far as I could tell. My subscriptio…
There is a lot of diversity in instructor-led training. None of our classes are anything like what you would have experienced in highschool or college. Our largest classes have 4 students in them, and that's strictly a cost-cutting scheme that Gov has insisted on for maintenance training. You'll be one-on-one with your instructor. They'll be a native speaker with often decades of experience teaching language. They'll be tayloring a lot of supplemental material specific to you. We even have some of our own apps that we've developed (that's my job), nothing like Duolingo (though nothing you can just use without our curriculum or instructors).
A lot of people say "the best way to learn a language is to live in a country where it is spoken". Clearly, that is unrealistic for the vast majority of people. I would also say it presumes you are a specific kind of extremely extroverted, fearless person. Most people find themselves becoming quite introverted in situations where they can't communicate easily.
For these reasons, I think the most realistic answer for the best way to learn language is private tutoring. The OP take about having used Duolingo for almost 10 years. That seems absurd to me. I would hope they have mastered at least half a dozen languages with that kind of effort. Language training shouldn't take that long.
What are some good alternatives to Duolingo with fewer dark patterns? (And don't suggest traditional methods, I am very much not against them, I am just curious about apps and such.)
My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not savi…
This is a more general problem with gamification and external rewards: they are just as good demotivators as they are motivators, if not more so.
This is why I wanted to turn off streaks when I was using Duolingo. I knew it was just a matter of time before I had my streak broken, and I was very concerned about what would happen then.
My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not savi…