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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#241

Post by myrmidon »

distances wrote: post #239
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.

This is how it goes after any major war of aggression. Happened to Germany, Japan and USSR after the WW2. Germany and Japan are both generally seen in a favourable light now. It seems that the reputation takes about two generations to recover once the hostilities are over and the country has started to reform. Russia never really attempted a real reform in the first place, so for it the outcome was different. Russia…

You could argue that Russia successfully managed to sidestep reputational damage despite neo-imperialism/warmongering in the past, specifically with the Chechen wars.

I personally think this only worked out because it was easier to sell this as a civi-war-like internal conflict (and the situation was less obvious to other western nations than now). On the other hand, had the Ukraine invasion gone according to plan, I'm pretty confident that Russia could have managed at least a puppet government and lots of regional control at a manageable cost (in international reputation).

But it was very interesting to see how quickly the Ukraine war turned Russias image (at least in Europe) from "slightly crazy, badass" into overt contempt.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#242

Post by palata »

I feel like people overestimate Duolingo, and end up disappointed.

I am convinced that doing some Duolingo while in the bus is a lot better than swiping stupid videos on TikTok.

Will it effortlessly teach you a language? No. There is no such thing, and Duolingo does not pretend there is. But it will regularly expose you to sentences in the language you are trying to learn, which is most definitely better than nothing.

Now if you are motivated enough to spend 1h per day learning, of course there are better ways. But I thought it was obvious that the "I want to sit back and enjoy" attitude won't teach you a language.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#243

Post by alexey-salmin »

vachina wrote: post #232
alexey-salmin wrote: post #227

Duolingo is surely flawed, but realistically I don't see any other way how I could have progressed in French by spending exactly 3 minutes per day with near-zero mental effort. I do it on auto pilot before going to bed, usually being dead tired after work. After 1000 days (so like 50 hours) I can have simple conversations, I can read and I have a rather big vocabulary. Of course learning in other ways could have give…

It took you 3 years to be A1 level. Duolingo is not a language class, it's more like traditional brute force ML.

It's A2, and yes I think it's a very good return on the time and effort I invested: around 50 hours, no homework, no memorization of words or grammar rules.

Realistically in my situation it's either this or nothing. I work 55 hours a week, the rest goes into my family and running, I hardly can do anything else.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#244

Post by ileonichwiesz »

summarity wrote: post #115
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?

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

Transferring patterns only really works when the language you’re learning is similar to ones you already know. I’m learning Chinese, and to my Western mind it feels like an alien language.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#245

Post by logicziller »

Having no prior exposure to any European languages, I tried using it for learning a bit of German, just to be able to sing along with some songs while also understanding what the words mean. I learned about 1500 words, but about a year later I watched a language training video and it became obvious to me that I have been pronouncing S, Z, and ß all wrong this whole time and made the wrong pronunciation a habit that I'm having difficult breaking. It taught me nothing about the alphabets and how the combination of certain letters or their position in a word can change the sound. Clicking through the words and advancing to the next level probably made me go too fast without giving me enough time to really absorb it. If I repeat a test, it's the same questions being repeated so it kind of feels like rote-learning than actually giving me an opportunity to reflect on the mistakes.

It also allows you to skip through the audio and speech tests, so these shortcuts make you chase XPs rather than actually learn the language you originally set out to learn. My biggest pet peeve about this app is that I have absolutely no idea if I'm pronouncing words correctly. Even if I intentionally pronounce a word wrong, it'll tell me it's correct.

I wouldn't say I learned nothing from it. After all, there is nobody I can speak with, so Duolingo made something impossible, possible for me, but it hasn't made me conversational at all. If I watch a German movie or a TV show, I can understand a little bit by looking at the subtitles, but the audio seems to go way too fast for me that I pick up just 1 or 2 words from a sentence. I'd imagine if someone asks me a basic question really slowly, I might be able to answer it, but if I'm in a group or something, words will just fly by too quickly for me to be able to comprehend anything.

One thing it did is make me motivated. After learning so many words, it made me pursue training courses by professional language teachers, and eventually I will join an actual classroom. I don't think I'd have gone all the way if I hadn't got my first start with this app. After all, my original motivation to learn was just cultural / music, and not because I want to move there or that it'll help professionally, but after having coming this far, it made me think I should pursue learning more seriously and become fluent.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#246

Post by ix101 »

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…

https://www.languagereactor.com is something similar to Yabla I think... But you can use it indefinitely and subscribe if you need the premium features.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#247

Post by distances »

myrmidon wrote: post #241
distances wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it goes after any major war of aggression. Happened to Germany, Japan and USSR after the WW2. Germany and Japan are both generally seen in a favourable light now. It seems that the reputation takes about two generations to recover once the hostilities are over and the country has started to reform. Russia never really attempted a real reform in the first place, so for it the outcome was different. Russia…

You could argue that Russia successfully managed to sidestep reputational damage despite neo-imperialism/warmongering in the past, specifically with the Chechen wars. I personally think this only worked out because it was easier to sell this as a civi-war-like internal conflict (and the situation was less obvious to other western nations than now). On the other hand, had the Ukraine invasion gone according to plan, I…

Totally agree. Even the 2014 invasion of Crimea didn't cause widespread anger in Europe towards Russia. And the Chechen wars were definitely seen as an internal event.

This war is different. My generation and the one growing up now will hostile to Russia for our lifetimes. No Russian culture will be willingly ingested, no Russian products will be willingly purchased. I do hope that Ukraine manages to take that cultural spot though, including but not limited to changing all existing multilingual signs from Russian to Ukrainian.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#248

Post by tpm »

myrmidon wrote: post #241
distances wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it goes after any major war of aggression. Happened to Germany, Japan and USSR after the WW2. Germany and Japan are both generally seen in a favourable light now. It seems that the reputation takes about two generations to recover once the hostilities are over and the country has started to reform. Russia never really attempted a real reform in the first place, so for it the outcome was different. Russia…

You could argue that Russia successfully managed to sidestep reputational damage despite neo-imperialism/warmongering in the past, specifically with the Chechen wars. I personally think this only worked out because it was easier to sell this as a civi-war-like internal conflict (and the situation was less obvious to other western nations than now). On the other hand, had the Ukraine invasion gone according to plan, I…

> But it was very interesting to see how quickly the Ukraine war turned Russias image (at least in Europe) from "slightly crazy, badass" into overt contempt.

I think this is because while much of the Europe was willing to 'turn the page' from 90s onwards, that changed during the 2008 war in Georgia. Since then there was enough attention in the media to the 'frozen conflicts' (Abkhazia, Transdnistria), then since 2014 we have the situation in Ukraine including MH17. Also how Russia dealt with its own political opposition. So in 2022 while the war itself was surprising, it did not require a total change of worldview to change the image of Russia.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#249

Post by bluGill »

vintermann wrote: post #216
dustincoates wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Videos are expensive to make and expensive to host. Hard for an app to make money off them.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#250

Post by louismerlin »

logicziller wrote: post #245

Having no prior exposure to any European languages, I tried using it for learning a bit of German, just to be able to sing along with some songs while also understanding what the words mean. I learned about 1500 words, but about a year later I watched a language training video and it became obvious to me that I have been pronouncing S, Z, and ß all wrong this whole time and made the wrong pronunciation a habit that I…

> Having no prior exposure to any European languages

I'd classify English as a European language. It is even classified as a Germanic language.

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