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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#61

Post by throaway5445454 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #46
creaktive wrote: post #7

Like I always say to my friends & family who are complaining about Duolingo not really teaching anything: it beats doomscrolling, what else do you want?

I have friends and family who earnestly desire to learn a language, and ask me what to use. They often end up choosing Duolingo and make no progress toward fluency in the subsequent years. The criticism is that it subverts their goal, preventing their success by replacing learning with addictive behaviors that don't educate (like someone wanting to enter a new field and getting hooked on "educational" YouTube Shorts…

Yes and mine say things like "why pay 500 for a language course when I can do this?" Of course they ignore me when I say language meetups are free, because "im not at that level yet." It's usually anxiety.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#62

Post by duothrowaway99 »

KPGv2 wrote: post #42
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],…

> gamified learning vs "academic" learning, immersion by moving to a country, I think it's not unreasonable to point out that, at least for Americans (I'm guessing the largest user base of Duolingo), of the three options you listed, one costs tens of thousands of dollars for us (academic instruction), and the other is virtually impossible to do because we aren't part of a bloc of nations with border freedom (immersio…

There are a number of institutes/colleges dedicated to language learning in the US: Alliance Française [0], Goethe institute [1] with multiple satellite offices around the country, all offering language classes for a few hundred dollars.

There are a multitude, nay - infinite! number of online classes with teachers who will use "traditional", textbook-based approaches. [2]

Young Americans regularly go for 1-2-3 month trips to Italy, France, Germany, etc. American passports give folks a ton of latitude. You can stay in a hostel and eat cheaply - many thousands of people have done it.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I will definitely push back on the idea that it's impossible.

(and will also absolutely agree that the convenience of an app will be 10,000,000x more tempting to use than doing any of the above)

[0] https://www.afusa.org/

[1] https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/index.html

[2] https://www.italki.com/en/teachers/french

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#63

Post by projektfu »

throaway5445454 wrote: post #58
projektfu wrote: post #56

I think Duo could be a good way to get started on language learning, but it is not effective on its own. What it lacks is an obvious way to graduate from its call and response mechanic to synthesis, as in creating your own sentences and participating in conversation. Tandem was a good way for me to improve my Spanish to the point that I felt comfortable traveling. I dropped Duolingo pretty soon after starting on Tand…

See, that's my issue. If Duo is only a good way to "get started," then it isn't a good way to LEARN a language, as in learn how to actually use it to a level approaching fluency. The whole thing is false advertising, not because of the specifics, but because of the advertising which makes people think (and yes, millions believe(d) it) that you can become fluent by using Duolingo.

It's all false advertising. Rosetta Stone was the pinnacle of false language program advertising, but the rest just take their cue from that.

A part of what I was saying, which didn't come across, is that I think Duo lacks a way to get people to move on. Being "free", there is less incentive to give it up when it stops having a benefit. Eventually it becomes a daily accomplishment, like doing the Wordle, that doesn't really improve anyone. That doesn't make it bad, but it hinders progress at learning a language.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#65

Post by Anthony-G »

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],…

I’d broadly agree with this critique but I’ve had some success with Duolingo. About 10 years ago, I used it with the aim of learning enough Spanish to get by for a two-week holiday.

While learning useful language constructs (gender of nouns and pronouns, how to conjugate common verbs), I also had to learn some useless – to me – vocabulary, e.g., names of animals at the zoo. Anyhow, after a 2-3 months of using Duolingo, I had learned enough to be able to communicate with bus-drivers and shop staff. My conclusion was that Duolingo would be a useful tool to complement more structured learning.

I’m currently learning guitar and I feel the same way about Rocksmith: it’s a lot of fun and a great tool to incentivise me to pick up the guitar but it doesn’t substitute a more structured learning course and it completely neglects the theory of music.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#66

Post by dilap »

brandall10 wrote: post #34
dilap wrote: post #5

Duolingo is terrible†, but proper gamification combined w/ LLMs for real conversations could be an incredible learning tool. (I might build this if no one else does.) †It can be useful for going from absolute 0 to epsilon, just to kind of get familiar with the language, but if you're using it more than like 2 weeks, you're seriously wasting your time (vs. reading material in the target language, watching TV in target…

There's a newer app I use called Natulang, developed by a Ukranian software dev to solve this problem for themself, which is entirely speaking focused w/ AI support and aims to get a person to a B2 level over 360 lessons w/ about 15 minutes each. I'd round up to 30 minutes each for actual time commitment due to the extra SRS sessions tacked on. I'm 50 lessons in Spanish now and I definitely believe the claim. Recentl…

Playing briefly, looks pretty good! -- though I wonder if there's a way to move away from using a source language (or maybe it does this in later lessons?). You really want to try to get your head 100% inside the target language as quickly as possible, and not be translating back and forth.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#67

Post by dilap »

gs17 wrote: post #21
dilap wrote: post #5

Duolingo is terrible†, but proper gamification combined w/ LLMs for real conversations could be an incredible learning tool. (I might build this if no one else does.) †It can be useful for going from absolute 0 to epsilon, just to kind of get familiar with the language, but if you're using it more than like 2 weeks, you're seriously wasting your time (vs. reading material in the target language, watching TV in target…

I've tried learning apps with LLMs and part of the issue is that you can't have much of a conversation early on. A conversation of "how many cats do you have?" "I have two cats" "what color are your cats", etc., isn't much different than the non-AI lessons. At the point where it would be really useful, the other options you mentioned are much better choices.

I think having a world (3d maybe, or maybe just 2d) you could talk about in a really simple way might be useful here. Imagine something like "el gato quiere la pelota roja" and you have to carry the red ball to the cat to pass to the next lesson, and there's a cat, and a dog, and capibara and various shapes; something like that...

There's probably the opportunity to have simple stories and personalities come into play too, early on, to add interest. Think about e.g. the Frog and Toad books for children learning to read.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#68

Post by brandall10 »

dilap wrote: post #66
brandall10 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a newer app I use called Natulang, developed by a Ukranian software dev to solve this problem for themself, which is entirely speaking focused w/ AI support and aims to get a person to a B2 level over 360 lessons w/ about 15 minutes each. I'd round up to 30 minutes each for actual time commitment due to the extra SRS sessions tacked on. I'm 50 lessons in Spanish now and I definitely believe the claim. Recentl…

Playing briefly, looks pretty good! -- though I wonder if there's a way to move away from using a source language (or maybe it does this in later lessons?). You really want to try to get your head 100% inside the target language as quickly as possible, and not be translating back and forth.

You can do this with the "free dialog" option from the beginning. The only issue with this is you do have to reference the actual lesson material to that point, so it's more of a review piece.

That said, my impression is getting to functional in a language quickly requires referencing a source language that is fully understandable by the user to build vocab and comprehension - ie. explaining a new concept in the target language using the target language for a B1 student is going to be inefficient and not expressive enough. Otherwise you're fortifying what you already know vs. actually building more knowledge. Things like comprehensible input are great but seemingly more indirect and less efficient.

If you have an option to get from zero to B2 fairly quickly, you are functional enough in the target language to use a myriad of options to fluency, including doing nothing other than conversing with others.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#69

Post by gs17 »

dilap wrote: post #67
gs17 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried learning apps with LLMs and part of the issue is that you can't have much of a conversation early on. A conversation of "how many cats do you have?" "I have two cats" "what color are your cats", etc., isn't much different than the non-AI lessons. At the point where it would be really useful, the other options you mentioned are much better choices.

I think having a world (3d maybe, or maybe just 2d) you could talk about in a really simple way might be useful here. Imagine something like "el gato quiere la pelota roja" and you have to carry the red ball to the cat to pass to the next lesson, and there's a cat, and a dog, and capibara and various shapes; something like that... There's probably the opportunity to have simple stories and personalities come into pla…

There's two games I know of similar to that concept (I think Noun Town is more similar): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2313720/Noun_Town_Languag... https://store.steampowered.com/app/274980/Influent_Language_... I think it's interesting, but falls into the same issue Duolingo does, vocabulary is necessary but not sufficient for language learning.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#70

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"Big tech embraces blitz-scaling: the primary goal is neither financial sustainability nor the quality of materials but making the number of users grow."

In most cases, there are no materials. It's intangibles only. Duolingo, for example

There are exceptions. High quality materials are a goal for Apple

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