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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#291

Post by kej »

agnishom wrote: post #146
kej wrote: post #53

A lot of Duolingo criticisms to me read like someone saying "I was walking on a home treadmill for 30 minutes every day but I didn't really get in shape until I started spending 5 hours each week in the gym with a professional trainer." Yes, obviously an actual class with a qualified teacher is going to teach you a language faster than Duolingo. Obviously you will learn faster if you move to a foreign country or if y…

Now you are making me feel bad about walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes. Jk, I agree with you but that doesn't mean there are no meaningful criticisms of the treadmill

Agreed; I think there are plenty of valid criticisms of Duolingo but that hey are more productive if we start with an honest appraisal of which things are realistic alternatives. (And good work on the treadmill, keep it up!)

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#292

Post by mtalantikite »

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…

I agree with you, it could have a place in a toolkit of things to acquire a language with. But I don't think that's what they're marketing themselves as. Their tag line is "The world's best way to learn a language", which, personally, I wouldn't blame a person for reading and thinking "cool, I guess I'll just do this and finally learn a second language!". They didn't say "build your foundation in a foreign language" or "first steps in your language learning journey". They said "best way to learn a language", which, I'd say, is false and misleading.

I've never used TikTok, but I actually wonder if this hypothetical teenager would learn more following a ton of users in their target language or playing games on Duolingo. I'd be interested in that study.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#293

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

> 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).

I mean... it was?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#294

Post by marssaxman »

mtalantikite wrote: post #286
marssaxman wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you can be so confident about that. A year of Duolingo got me far enough along to comfortably follow "NOS Journaal in Makkelijke Taal", seemingly the Dutch equivalent of the RFI broadcast you linked. No transcript needed, though I do pause on occasion to look up an unfamiliar word. Maybe you call that "the most basic grasp of a language", but it doesn't seem to have been less effective than the appro…

That's great! Maybe Duolingo has changed things up since the last time I tried them years ago. Being able to listen to even simplified native content and understand it would of course be beyond a basic grasp of the language. What were your study habits with it? My opinion is of course just an opinion, and it's made up from all the many people I personally know that have done Duolingo for a year (or years) and would m…

I started out doing 5-10 minutes a day, building up to 30 as motivation grew. I'm still at it, 633 days later, though I'm no longer pushing Dutch quite as hard now that I'm also learning Spanish. (I figure that exposure to Dutch through youtube, reddit, etc helps me continue to learn now, anyway.)

My goals are: maintain the daily streak; stay in the diamond league; do all the "legendary" bonus levels; get all three daily quest points. That's enough work that I'm usually pushing myself a bit, but not to the point of tedium.

I'm sure that if I actually needed to learn a language, for some practical reason, Duolingo would not be the quickest or most thorough way to do it. As something I'm doing for fun, though, using downtime I'd otherwise waste on puzzle games or pointless web scrolling, it feels like a pretty good deal.

Feeling the world of Dutch-language media starting to open up was kind of magical. I'm not there yet with Spanish, but I look forward to it. How much bigger can my world get, I wonder?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#295

Post by skinkestek »

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.

It is what it is.

I used to really want to learn Russian language. I thought of it as an investment in my career as I expected to work a lot more with Russians and Russian companies because I assumed Russia like the Baltics and Poland would become part of Europe.

I have also had some really nice and smart colleagues from Russia over the years.

Then came 2014 and 2022 and now sadly I think Russians will go through what Germans experienced from 1946 and the next few decades.

Hopefully you'll not go through what Germans suffered in 1945.

If you are working against the regime we are still friends.

And I look forward to visit Russia again in a decade or two.

But remember (and everyone should remember this): a people is responsible for the government they choose. Those who cheer when their militaries are successfully attacking peaceful neighbors and taking civilians including kids as hostages and talk about erasing their neighbors can't expect much sympathy when the war returns home.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#296

Post by skinkestek »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #293
myrmidon wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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). I mean... it was?

It absolutely wasn't.

Chechnya had a very popular president and was a stable country.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#297

Post by skinkestek »

cardanome wrote: post #258
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…

Then again Israel is annexing land and actively committing genocide and voicing any anger is seen a deeply antisemitic and completely taboo. You will see a reflexive assurance that you can not equate the people with the government and so on. My point is not Whataboutism. I don't want to relativate any war crimes done by anyone. I don't criticize people that lost relatives in Ukraine for using dehumanizing language li…

> So why is Russia and Israel seen so differently?

When did Ukrainians terror bomb Russia for decades on end?

When did Ukrainian authorities pay people to kill Russian civilians?

When did Ukrainians cross the border to massacre Russians, rape and take hundreds of hostages and take bragging videos of it to share on WhatsApp and Telegram?

Gazans have done all this and those who do it have - until recently - been universally seen as heroes in Gaza although that is finally changing. Gazas official position is still that October 7th was a fantastic day but simultaneously just a small taste of what is to come.

Even those that acknowledge that 07th of October was a mistake seems to be more concerned about what it means for them than the fact that they killed over thousand innocent civilians, documented their own extreme sexual violence and bragged openly about it and took hundreds of hostages.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#298

Post by nozzlegear »

jenadine wrote: post #207
nozzlegear wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also got a 2000+ day streak (Spanish) and keep it going for similar reasons. I can't stand the goofy animations they keep adding to Duolingo. I'm about to dump my streak and move to something that doesn't make me feel like the developer thinks I'm a child clapping at the cartoons on the screen.

I stopped playing after reaching a bit more than 2000 day streak. Towards the end I was just going through a lesson as fast a possible before going to sleep. That was no fun and I got nothing out of it.

That's exactly what I'm doing these days, sadly: just quickly sprinting through a quick lesson or two before going to sleep so I can maintain that streak. I've learned a lot from Duolingo, but none of that learning is recent.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#299

Post by cardanome »

skinkestek wrote: post #297
cardanome wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again Israel is annexing land and actively committing genocide and voicing any anger is seen a deeply antisemitic and completely taboo. You will see a reflexive assurance that you can not equate the people with the government and so on. My point is not Whataboutism. I don't want to relativate any war crimes done by anyone. I don't criticize people that lost relatives in Ukraine for using dehumanizing language li…

> So why is Russia and Israel seen so differently? When did Ukrainians terror bomb Russia for decades on end? When did Ukrainian authorities pay people to kill Russian civilians? When did Ukrainians cross the border to massacre Russians, rape and take hundreds of hostages and take bragging videos of it to share on WhatsApp and Telegram? Gazans have done all this and those who do it have - until recently - been univer…

Ukrainians did terrorize the Donbass for years. They bombed the cities, tried to ban the Russian language, committed a horrible massacre on Odessa where they murdered many trade unionists and so on.

Ukrainian use cluster ammunition that has been internationally banned because it leads to extreme civilian causalities. They have formations of "idiologically-motivated" soldiers that are literally neo-nazis.

I am repeating the Russian narrative here? Yeah, this is how you framed the Palestinian struggle.

The genocide that Israel is committing did not start as a reaction to the terror. The terror was a reaction to the goal of Israel to eradicate the Palestinian people. Gaza has been an open air prison for decades.

And no I am not defending any war crimes from anyone. But it matters who the victim and and who the aggressor is. The aggressor is Israel. Palestinians have a right to exist.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#300

Post by cardanome »

Macha wrote: post #281
cardanome wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then again Israel is annexing land and actively committing genocide and voicing any anger is seen a deeply antisemitic and completely taboo. You will see a reflexive assurance that you can not equate the people with the government and so on. My point is not Whataboutism. I don't want to relativate any war crimes done by anyone. I don't criticize people that lost relatives in Ukraine for using dehumanizing language li…

> So why is Russia and Israel seen so differently? Israel had more accumulated goodwill left to burn though. Russia was on thin ice after Abkhazia, Crimea, etc. Israel was basically seen positively beforehand. It's not infinite. A year ago it was basically only Muslim countries, some UN observers and the odd outlier like Ireland or Spain that were criticising Israel. But we've had in recent times the leaders of the U…

The goodwill was because it was and is an geo-strategic partner of the West.

Israel has never garnered any goodwill from a humanitarian perspective. Gaza has long before been described as an open air prison. Israel itself as an apartheid nation. It has illegally annexed Syrian territory. Israel was never a beacon of humanity.

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