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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#301

Post by skinkestek »

cardanome wrote: post #299
skinkestek wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 repeati…

Stop spreading Russian lies.

Donbas looked nicer after years of alleged Ukrainian bombing than any Ukrainian town looked after a week of Russian "liberation".

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#302

Post by teiferer »

flurdy wrote: post #222
teiferer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hack is immersion. Move to a country where the language is spoken, and have a girlfriend/boyfriend native in the language whom you move in with. That's it.

It is so often dismissed how important the second part is. Many think that just moving to a country is enough, and you will pick up the language. Maybe the basics, but not if you don't speak and think it 24/7, however uncomfortable that is at the start. You see this clearly with the people who move with their family vs the single person. The family person will speak English or whatever their native language is at hom…

A native-language workplace helps too, but that's step 2. Step 1 is getting to a level that allows you to switch from english to local language at the workplace.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#303

Post by myrmidon »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #279
myrmidon wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is facing a ton of backlash for the latest conflict too (even from countries like Germany!). But I would argue that in the Ukraine war it is much more obvious who "good guy/bad guy" is, because you have a totalitarian aggressor on one side and a somewhat democratic defender on the other. In Israel, you have a democratically controlled army vs a terrorists group (Hamas), and it is much less clear where the just…

> But I would argue that in the Ukraine war it is much more obvious who "good guy/bad guy" I'd say they both suck. Have you seen how Ukraine abducts random people from the street and sends them to war?

I don't think mandatory conscription/press-gangs are anywhere close to murder/rape of civilians (which there are well-documented cases on the Palestinian and Russian side).

Pressing young men into military service is not even on the same scale by comparison.

And its not just the rape/murder/looting thats the problem- its about how the perpetrators deal with it.

The harsh reality of war is that tragedies like that are hard to completely prevent even for a disciplined force, but if you can not even be arsed to prosecute escalations like that (and respond with obvious lies, denial and finger-pointing instead), you lose any moral high-ground.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#304

Post by xormapmap »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #178
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…

Why are you learning Ukranian?

I became interested in the language after a brief relationship with a Ukrainian.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#305

Post by agnishom »

abhaynayar wrote: post #262

Finally a good critique of Duolingo, couldn't have written it better myself. A fresh take separate from the cliche everywhere on the internet that you can't learn an entire language on Duolingo itself which I've heard a thousand times at this point. (Currently "learning" French on it, but going to quit cause have been guilty of cheat-streaking myself). Yes, the social aspect is trash. The "path" is trash. The leagues…

Yes, indeed most of the top level comments on this post seem to be repeating this cliche. They are not wrong, but this doesn't mean there aren't interesting (even if negative) things to say about Duolingo.

It feels like this: Suppose I write a detailed critique of phone cameras, and everyone says "Well, professional photographers would be using a DSLR anyway"

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#306

Post by laurieg »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #197
laurieg wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right on this one. Children have an immense amount of practice time, support and social pressure to learn a language. The only thing that seems to be different between adult and child learners is acquiring specific sounds/tones. I know many good speakers of English who cannot distinguish L/R sounds. I basically cannot hear pitch accent differences in Japanese despite having spoken it for over a decade.

> The only thing that seems to be different between adult and child learners is acquiring specific sounds/tones. It isn't actually different. It appears to be different, because people conceptualize the problem backwards, as learning to distinguish two sounds that, in the beginning, sound the same. But what actually happens is that babies are born distinguishing all linguistically relevant sounds, and learn not to di…

I appreciate the clarification, but does it provide any actionable insight on how to learn to discriminate those sounds as an adult?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#308

Post by edem »

duothrowaway99 wrote: post #285
edem wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to learn German (as an adult). What should I do then?

Already mentioned elsewhere, but take a look at https://www.goethe.de/en/spr/kur.html , search for "Goethe Institut" on Google Maps, consider working with someone from https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/german , search for "learn german" on YouTube, etc. Babbel was mentioned a few times, Pimsleur as well (they're different companies/methods), https://www.languagetransfer.org/ ... Mix and match to find what works for…

Thank you, I'll take a look at these!

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#309

Post by jamager »

huhkerrf wrote: post #189
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…

> And the State Department's FSI estimates are unfortunately pretty accurate for hours to fluency [1]. It's worth noting that the FSI estimates are hours of direct classroom instruction, and that FSI cares a lot more about input than output. For someone who is looking to be fluent across all four competencies and is self studying, you can expect a lot more time to be invested.

FSI estimates are taken from diplomatics who study full time in preparation for their job. Not a good approximation for most people.

This is a far better one: https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/1...

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#310

Post by jamager »

collinmcnulty wrote: post #148
Escapado wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this but sometimes I am not 100% sure if they are _much_ better so asking honestly: Is there any reputable quantitative analysis of this in the context of language learning? For example: I have spent the last two years in japan (I am in my 30s) and just got back to my home country. Went to a language school in the mornings there, immersed myself in the language a little but did not go all out on studyi…

My strong suspicion is that children just have no responsibilities and are socially allowed to not be able to talk while everyone will speak at their level with a great deal of patience.

Yes. Also, they don't need much vocabulary, no grammar concerns, no reading/writing.

We much overestimate how well kids learn, and how "easy" is for them. Many kids have language difficulties, and they usually know, and they don't feel too great about it.

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