Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 221 posts

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#211

Post by gibba999 »

usaar333 wrote: post #148
gibba999 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the article to be BS. My experience: 1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. 2) Duolingo is okay for some things, but not for others. But discounting all apps after having tried one or two, though, is a lot like the famous Gates quote: "640k should be enough for anybody" (which he cla…

> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds radically different from my native English). From what I've seen the ability for computers to g…

> I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this?

Audio lessons vary widely in how they're designed. In the context of Pimsleur, it's an interactive back-and-forth.

Tape: "Tell her your flight is tomorrow."

[30 second pause. I say "你的航班是明天。"]

Tape: "你的航班是明天。"

[30 second pause. I correct "你的航班是明天," based on the feedback]

Tape: "你的航班是明天。"

[30 second pause. I repeat again]

And then the tape goes on.

That is feedback. It's prescriped, but it's incredibly effective. After I say something, I hear it pronounced back at me by a native speaker. That's 90% of the feedback a tutor or teacher would give you, only it's there for everything you say.

I found my pronunciation after a couple of months of Pimsleur to be dramatically better than people who've been in classes for a year or two. Indeed, when I tried stepping into a class, I left, since my pronunciation got worse.

That, combined with spaced repetition (which Pimsleur uses), combined with a half-dozen other research-based techniques, makes it ultra-effective.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#212

Post by davidzweig »

kpozin wrote: post #210
davidzweig wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the two developers, thanks for the mention. :-) We're working on YouTube support now for the extension. Something else I've been working on: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699

It would be great to crowd-source data on whether Netflix's audio track matches the subtitles for a particular film. Even when the original audio language and subtitle language match, the subtitles often paraphrase the spoken dialogue, making it difficult to follow along.

In my investigations, this isn't too common, but I guess it depends on where in the Netflix catalogue (14,000 titles) you are digging. When Original language of film === audio language === subtitle language, things generally match up, in my experience. The subtitle accuracy for some less popular or older material can vary a bit though.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#213

Post by andrepd »

benjaminjackman wrote: post #125
tdumitrescu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started learning more languages as an adult, I found that the biggest accelerator for me personally was likewise to read novels, even if they were way beyond my nominal skill level. The first 50-100 pages would be slow grinding, looking up almost everything in the dictionary, but then it would rapidly get faster and easier as I got used to common turns of phrases, idioms etc. And it was great for maintaining r…

That's a really interesting approach. I wonder if there are reading apps which have that dictionary integrated, but which still require a mouseover / tap to display it for a particular word (they are just using a translation language dictionary).

Kobo does this.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#214

Post by usaar333 »

gibba999 wrote: post #211
usaar333 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds radically different from my native English). From what I've seen the ability for computers to g…

> I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this? Audio lessons vary widely in how they're designed. In the context of Pimsleur, it's an interactive back-and-forth. Tape: "Tell her your flight is tomorrow." [30 second pause. I say "你的航班是明天。"] Tape: "你的航班是明天。" [30…

> After I say something, I hear it pronounced back at me by a native speaker.

I imagine that being sufficient is going to vary a lot by individual learning styles and ability to mimic. I'm guessing you are rather good at mimicking sounds/music/etc.

> That's 90% of the feedback a tutor or teacher would give you, only it's there for everything you say.

I'm not so great at mimicking, so without someone telling me I'm actually pronouncing the words wrong, I'm just going to converge on an incorrect pronunciation. I cannot self-assess the accuracy; I need a tutor to point out that what I mistakenly believe is correct is not correct -- that is provide feedback to me. (I've tried similar exercises to what you describe and it just results in incorrect convergence)

This is especially an issue with Chinese where my native English brain naturally ignores tonality. Since the information is being stripped away, it's borderline impossible to self-ascertain whether my tones match or not.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#215

Post by haskal »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #82

For Mandarin Chinese, I found the Chinese-specific apps HelloChinese and ChineseSkill to be much better than Duolingo. Duolingo seems to follow a one-size-fits-all approach, and it suffers when faced with a language with tones, a complex character system, a romanization system commonly used for learning (pinyin), etc. Those other two apps have been called Duolingo clones, but they were designed with Chinese specifica…

I highly recommend Du Chinese for reading practice along with HelloChinese and ChineseSkill.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#216

Post by gubbrora »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #14
cosarara wrote: post #5

The worst part of Duolingo is how boring it is to level up a skill to 5 when you already understand the topics taught. When learning German or Italian and testing out of the earlier levels, the exercise you get most of the time is just "sort these English words to translate the sentence". You can get it right all the time just by looking for a grammatically correct sentence with the most superficial of understanding.…

Repetition is the mother of learning, as the old Russian proverb states. The point is making a phrase really get memorized.

Too much repetition is inefficient.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#217

Post by janiniha »

bit_logic wrote: post #119

Learning a language requires immersion. That's why classes with other students are more effective than flashcards. VR has potential to really make a difference here. Imagine you load a VR level. It's a busy outdoor market in Taipei. In your inventory you have some cash. NPCs with AI and chat logic are around you interacting. Your goal is to buy some bread and get to the subway. You see a vendor with some bread, but d…

There is an AR translator app "Translate Now" that translates objects and text in Augmented Reality. I think it can create an immersive language learning experience for students to see translations placed in the "real world" around them. This is the appstore link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1348028646?mt=8

I do believe that language learning can improve a lot using new technologies such as AR and VR. VR experiences as you described above can really impact how students aquire new skills.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#218

Post by wallflower »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #195
wallflower wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I built a ClojureScript app that did just that. Sitting down and churning through hundreds of those allowed me to build an intuition for grammar rules that I knew on paper but would mess up when attempting to use them. If you did not use an existing rules engine, would you please consider open sourcing what you have done to help others who are considering building something similar? Or describe more in depth ho…

I had a bunch of helper functions, but my view was that there's no way to solve it in general; building exercises would always involve writing annotations via a DSL. You wouldn't be able to avoid hand crafting each sentence structure (like you were writing a textbook), but the advantage comes from being able to parameterize the generation of tests. You define where the holes are and what can go in them for a particul…

Thank you! Yes, German is very regular. I’ve also heard Russian is where you construct a cathedral of grammar so that you can begin speaking.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#219

Post by schwartzworld »

gibba999 wrote: post #140
bit_logic wrote: post #119

Learning a language requires immersion. That's why classes with other students are more effective than flashcards. VR has potential to really make a difference here. Imagine you load a VR level. It's a busy outdoor market in Taipei. In your inventory you have some cash. NPCs with AI and chat logic are around you interacting. Your goal is to buy some bread and get to the subway. You see a vendor with some bread, but d…

I found the article to be BS. My experience: 1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. 2) Duolingo is okay for some things, but not for others. But discounting all apps after having tried one or two, though, is a lot like the famous Gates quote: "640k should be enough for anybody" (which he cla…

I loved the Pimsleur method, but for Western Armenian, it stopped really early. Only 10 lessons!

The biggest problem with Pimsleur is that for a language like Armenian, you have to learn to read to continue self learning. It's not like Spanish. I really couldn't find materials to bridge the gap from Pimsleur to more advanced studies.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#220

Post by tpoblf »

bluetomcat wrote: post #88
lostphilosopher wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wrote more about the relationship between the language and the culture from a non-native perspective - I'd read it.

In my mother tongue (Bulgarian), the style of everyday communication is rather different. Ad-hominem arguments are not rare and are sometimes considered a legitimate way of reasoning, people are also expecting to receive and send "orders" when they communicate in a business environment. All of that doesn't foster any deep reasoning and leads to shallow conversations which change their direction quite sporadically. Co…

This is fascinating; thanks for sharing.
Post reply on HN