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Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

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Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#61

Post by mardef »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #14

I've been running through the Japanese course daily for the last 2 months. I'm learning to read somewhat , but I doubt that if I was to speak I would be understood. I understand there are limitations to this format. However, what drives me nuts is the fact I can't just enable the Japanese keyboard (which I've installed) to type out answers. Instead I just select the correct predefined answer from a list. This allows…

I find Duolingo to work best when I go against its desired way and do it my own.

If it asks me to translate a sentence with the multiple choice options, I translate it first before looking at the options. I listen before reading.

Most importantly, ignore streaks, ladders, and most of the gamification. My learning was hindered just doing a quick lesson to keep a streak, or by doing lighting rounds to gain xp.

I wouldn't learn the lessons if I was just trying to further the gamification. But taking my time, doing them when I'm in a good space to learn has been my best result

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#62

Post by CubsFan1060 »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #58
hbn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that something unique to Japanese, or maybe if you're on Android? I'm learning Spanish on the iOS app. I installed the Spanish keyboard, and whenever a text field appears my keyboard is automatically set to Spanish

May well be Japanese course specific. I am on Android and checked on web also — same experience. I have an iPhone too though, so will check it out and report back. In my experience with the Japanese course, there are no text prompts at all. Well, not in the main course. You do receive prompts when learning the Japanese alphabets, but these text prompts are specifically asking for the Romanised pronunciation.

Same on iPhone. I assume they only allow typing on languages that use the same character set?

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#63

Post by ghaff »

ghusto wrote: post #39
alexawarrior3 wrote: post #16

Duolingo doesn't actually do much if anything to help you become fluent. Nor does almost all the language learning apps such as Drops, Rosetta Stone, etc. What you need to move towards fluency is a lot of "comprehensible input" like with "Dreaming Spanish". Learning about a language is different from acquiring a language, Krashen et. all has a lot of research on how people actually gain fluency. What most people are…

Agreed, no app, website, methodology or anything else is going to gain you fluency. The sole way of gaining fluency is speaking the language, and all that goes along with that (mostly it's integrating into the culture, because language is an extension of culture and if you don't get the culture, you won't get the language). You need to know very little of the language to get started. Just find someone who's willing t…

I had 4 years of high school French and could read passably, write some, but was never really conversational. Probably if I had lived in France for a summer I'd have gotten a lot better.

I was actually talking with a (French and English-speaking) friend who now lives in Serbia and they were saying they pretty much just picked Serbian up and didn't sweat all the fancy verb conjugations and so forth.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#64

Post by frankus »

AndyKelley wrote: post #10

WaniKani is great for reading Japanese.

It has a built-in spaced-repetition system with predefined, extremely silly (but effective) mnemonics to help memorize the various kanji (and their various readings) and vocabulary.

The first three levels are free, with the prerequisite of learning a bit of hiragana and how to type them on their website (I don't know how well this translates to an actual Japanese keyboard). The emphasis is on reading, and they suggest you don't put a lot of effort into understanding actual Japanese in the wild (or media) until level 10, when you have enough vocabulary to not be completely lost.

I'm only on level 5, just trying to be somewhat less functionally illiterate for an upcoming Japan trip than I was when visiting Taiwan 20 years ago. Although I can't read many kanji, I'm often able to recognize a few as well as enough of the radicals of the ones I don't know to sometimes make sense of them.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#65

Post by kebsup »

kebsup wrote: post #22

And yet again, I'm promoting my app on HN. SRS flashcards, sentences and audio generated with AI, Wiktionary, YouTube, Webbrowser integration: https://vokabeln.io (landing page is old) Only works for German right now, but I'll be adding Spanish and English in the coming months.

Also I'm looking for an investor to be able to work on it full time, so if you have money to spare... :D

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#66

Post by rareitem »

I disagree with premise of this article. I don't see how the quality of Duolingo has fallen, I keep learning more and more. For me, Duolingo made the friction of starting to learn a language (Spanish) very low. It provides with a clear path to follow. I can practice my reading, listening, speaking and writing all in one place. Of course, someone shouldn't restrict themself only to Duolingo.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#67

Post by pests »

mikepurvis wrote: post #50
tremarley wrote: post #24

I had an 1000 day streak with Duolingo. The streak is great for being consistent, but I spent almost half of the time on Duolingo at the aim of keeping my streak rather than truly learning the language. When I stopped using the app, I could read the language I learnt ok, but I wasn’t conversational, and couldn’t understand people speaking at their normal pace. Still a beginner. Someone suggested the free language lea…

I'm 250 days into the Duolingo French programme and feeling similar things— I traveled to Quebec City recently and was only very barely functional at the simplest tasks. Duolingo goes to great lengths to make you feel productive, but I think it's prioritizing the wrong things— particularly if you mostly care about spoken communication, there's just a ton of stuff around verb conjugation and gender that really doesn't…

Just break it. I don't understand how people allow apps to trap them like this.

Re: Duolingo Sucks, Now What?

#69

Post by spacecadet »

tetris11 wrote: post #52
codazoda wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My taxi driver in Mexico spoke perfect English. I figured he was either American or had lived here. He said he learned the language watching YouTube videos and had never been.

My uncle learned Russian by just watching the news in the evenings when he was a student there during the USSR

haha I had a friend in high school, his dad worked at a local store as a clerk, but spoke multiple languages in what appeared to be "fluency", but I was young... anyways, he found this book at a yard sale "Russian by pictures", a year later he is throwing around full Russian sentences...
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