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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#211

Post by dustincoates »

vintermann wrote: post #183
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…

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…

You can find a lot (all?) of the Hélène et les Garçons episodes on YouTube, too.

Another good "sitcom-like" that you can find on YouTube is extr@. It's cheesy, but it's entertaining enough for what it is, and they have it for French, German, and Spanish (and English). Interestingly, it's the same main actor for French, German, and Spanish, a Dutch actor playing an American, while the rest of the cast changes around him.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#212

Post by superultra »

epistasis wrote: post #79
duothrowaway99 wrote: post #25

Both of my parents are teachers of a European language. They both have phd's in linguistics, and rate very highly with students (who basically adore them). All of this context to say that not once has anyone using Duolingo been able to "test out" of the first ("101") class that they teach. Duolingo self-learners come in with a very unequal mix of vocabulary and... not much else. Unable to use declension properly [0],…

The biggest problem with Duo are the extremely limited exercises and educational materials. Gamification is great. But you're not going to learn declension and cases from repeating the same few stilted examples that don't even exhibit enough variety to pick up the underlying rules, especially as an adult. Duolingo is trying to do implicit language learning but the language input is far too narrow. I used Duolingo to…

> Gamification is great.

Is it?

I think the gamification is at the core of why Duolingo has persisted even though it doesn’t work.

At any point in real learning, or in acquiring any kind of skill in anything, one hits a plateau and the thing becomes boring or dull or hard. Internal drive to learn the thing must overcome the drudgery of repetition until you exceed that plateau. And then eventually there’s another one down the road.

What’s more is that the more we learn the more we get rewarded for confronting and pushing through the boring or hard. It’s a real reward that dopamine is evolutionarily designed to encourage. In a way, learning is already as “gamified” as it needs to be.

Gamification on the other hand convinces us that we’re making progress but it’s completely artificial. It manipulates dopamine in ways that don’t encourage actual and more learning. Instead gamification rewards gamification.

We need less gamification in our world and more internalification.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#213

Post by laurentlb »

Each time I read this kind of feedback, I wonder if there should be a free, community driven, alternative to Duolingo.

- Content may be provided by contributors (like Duolingo did for many years)

- It could be supported by donations (I believe the costs can be kept low)

My feeling is that lots of problems with Duolingo are caused by monetization (and many things were better in Duolingo a few years ago).

I'm still not sure of how it should be designed and what we need exactly. One of the problems is also to get enough contributors. I'd be interested in hearing more thoughts on this.

As a hobby, I started building an alternative to the Duolingo Stories feature (https://lingostories.org), but it's still fairly limited.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#214

Post by GoatOfAplomb »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #202

I went down this road with their Japanese.. in summary, their focussing on "words" vs "phrasing/talking" from day one like Pimsleur was, wat killed it for me. On that note Pimsleur was/is EXCELLENT for me: 1. Focusing on phrases vs words 2. Talking from Day 1 3. Lesson oriented.

Pimsleur is the best thing I've found for my first ~30 hours of learning a language (Courses 1 and 2, basically). It gets to the (IMO) most important words/phrases/interactions first, and the spaced repetition works well for me. It almost feels like magic is happening in my brain. In find going past 1 and 2 is still worth my time, but I usually start to sense diminishing returns, and at that point I start to look around for other options to supplement it.

Pimsleur's implicit way of teaching grammar works well for me for the most basic stuff, but as it gets into more nuanced grammar, it gets a bit less helpful for me. It also feels less magical to me once it gets past the first couple hundred words.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#215

Post by tpm »

usrnm wrote: post #205
skinkestek wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just sad to hear for me as a Russian. Russia and the Russian culture are a lot older than the current war and will still be around long after the war, but a lot of people just cannot draw a line between the two.

Some also don't really want to draw a line, because the current war is not an exception, it's fully in character with the past 200 or so years of Russian behavior. In the 90s and later some thought it's going to be better, but I think most people can see now nothing has changed for the better and Russian culture does not reflect any sort of guilt and shame like the Germans did.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#216

Post by vintermann »

dustincoates wrote: post #211
vintermann wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You can find a lot (all?) of the Hélène et les Garçons episodes on YouTube, too. Another good "sitcom-like" that you can find on YouTube is extr@. It's cheesy, but it's entertaining enough for what it is, and they have it for French, German, and Spanish (and English). Interestingly, it's the same main actor for French, German, and Spanish, a Dutch actor playing an American, while the rest of the cast changes around h…

There's something charming about old language learning shows, both overt and "covert" ones like Hélène et les Garçons. I remember Muzzy in Gondoland, BBC's English language teaching cartoon from the 80s.

I wonder why language learning apps aren't more into making entertainment in the language they're proselytizing these days.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#217

Post by lm28469 »

midtake wrote: post #113
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 hate this take. Duolingo users understand fully, once they clear their language's Section 3 or higher, that they have a long road ahead. The point of Duolingo is to be a hook into language learning, not a complete replacement. It should be coupled with Pimsleur and other traditional study methods if one is truly serious about learning a language. Would you rather have teens shitposting on TikTok or learning Duoling…

When I see my friend getting their smartphones out at 23:58 to complete a lesson and not lose their streak because they paid for the app I can confidently say that the point of duolingo is to make money by appealing to your monkey brain through gamification

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#218

Post by lm28469 »

Antibabelic wrote: post #194
jimbokun wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> spend time in a country where the language is spoken and force themselves into situations where they "have" to speak, etc. In the end this is the only one that matters. You can do things before going to that country that will help. But you'll never be close to fluent without taking that final step.

I've never been to an English-speaking country and yet I'm pretty close to fluent. How come?

English is relatively easy and the default "culture" (games, music, movies, shows, internet, &c.) language for like half of the planet, plus it's mandatory in schools in most of the west.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#219

Post by usrnm »

tpm wrote: post #215
usrnm wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just sad to hear for me as a Russian. Russia and the Russian culture are a lot older than the current war and will still be around long after the war, but a lot of people just cannot draw a line between the two.

Some also don't really want to draw a line, because the current war is not an exception, it's fully in character with the past 200 or so years of Russian behavior. In the 90s and later some thought it's going to be better, but I think most people can see now nothing has changed for the better and Russian culture does not reflect any sort of guilt and shame like the Germans did.

And yet we're both discussing it on an American site in English, so you clearly have no problem with either imperialism or wars ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#220

Post by adrian_b »

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…

For me, the best way to learn a foreign language was (besides also studying the grammar separately) to read some books in whose content I was interested and to watch carefully some untranslated movies spoken in that language, until I became able to understand perfectly the books and the movies.

Now, with the free resources available on the Internet, both reading books and watching movies in foreign languages has become much easier.

So I have not used learning books, just grammars and dictionaries, together with exposure to large amounts of written and spoken language expressing a content in which I was interested.

Once you have learned one or two foreign languages, learning more becomes much easier, especially when they belong to the same language family as one of the languages that you already know.

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