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500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

nytimes.com

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Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#71

Post by adminu »

MichailP wrote: post #66

I think there is no substitute for old style learning, teacher, classroom and stress of memorizing about 20 words for the next class. Did anyone use those small format notebooks with two columns so you can effectively examine yourself? One column for foreign word and second for mother tongue word?

Thats how we learned English in school and for me I can say I never learned the vocabulary and I was not great in English examens either. The reason I am a C2 English speaker by now is that school gave me a good foundation (but did not bring me to fluency) and then mostly by using the language on the web due to my interests and the availability of information. I learned a lot just of English as a side product of some other productive or recreational activity.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#72

Post by moorhosj »

Lerner_Adams wrote: post #31
moorhosj wrote: post #28

I’ve found no better technique than a language exchange partner. If you are learning Spanish, find a Spanish speaker trying to learn English. Meet up for an hour speaking English for 30 minutes and Spanish for 30 minutes. For me, this was the only way to put lessons into practice without the stress.

But it doesn't apply when it comes to unpopular(frankly speaking I am a Chinese and several years ago I tried my best to find a partner for English but failed) languages like Chinese.

I would think Chinese is a pretty popular language for people to learn. Did you try the local university?

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#73

Post by dkarras »

Mirioron wrote: post #41
yorwba wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets easier to maintain habits the longer you've been doing them. Most people can manage a 500-day streak of brushing their teeth easily. So the trick is to integrate studying into your daily routine the same way, such that it will feel just wrong to skip.

It sounds pretty impossible to me. I don't think I've had a 500 day streak of anything that isn't a biological function in my life. In the last 2 years I've not even maintained a streak of eating food every day.

How do you not eat food for a full day if you are not purposefully avoiding it?

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#74

Post by adminu »

microcolonel wrote: post #59
ben_w wrote: post #46

I agree with the criticisms in this article. I currently have a 1.012 day streak on Duolingo, which I’m using to learn German, Esperanto, and Greek. I’ve “completed” the German course several times as the course was expanded, and even with the help of Clozemaster and Memrise I’m still only a B1 on an online CEFR test. It’s fine for the basics, but there’s no way it’ll make you good enough to, say, start working for a…

> 1.012 day streak You are even using the German typographic conventions for numbers in the wrong language, I'm sure you're well on your way! > It’s fine for the basics, but there’s no way it’ll make you good enough to, say, start working for a German-language software development company. Sed cxu vi povas lerni suficxe da Esperanto, ke vi povus labori cxe Esperanta programaro kompanio?

According to [1] there are at least 8 more countries with that kind of a thousend seperator

[1] http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world-s...

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#75

Post by wallflower »

dominotw wrote: post #63
wallflower wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How serious are you about learning Spanish? One of the first things you will learn is the futility of “I am going to learn it in X months.” Try not to assign an unrealistic deadline (you don’t know what you don’t know), enjoy the long hike. Think of Duolingo as, at best, riding a scooter or tricycle, if your goal is to ride a bicycle for a century (competency). Check out iTalki. You can find hundreds of teachers for…

hey helps that my wife is Mexican :D but I've been lazy learning spanish all these years. I just need a full immersion where i can enjoy the full payoff.

I know you are qualifying your efforts with the weasel word “lazy”, and I hate to break it to you but there is no magic bullet to learning a language after early childhood.

(Invested time x Motivation) ÷ Inhibition = Result

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kató_Lomb

As the Spanish saying goes: los idiomas se aprenden en la cuna o en la cama ("languages are learned either in the cradle or in bed")

One of my acquaintances who is married to an Argentinian now does one day a week (Tuesday) in which they will only speak Spanish to each other the entire day and watch TV in Spanish. She is getting better. You might consider something similar.

You definitely have an advantage there. I hope you use it.

You don’t need full immersion. You just have to start vomiting words out.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#76

Post by criddell »

microcolonel wrote: post #64
criddell wrote: post #62

Even though I've only ever lived in Canada and the US, I feel like I could benefit from learning more English. I realized this when I watched my kids diagramming sentences and thought back to how I was never able to master anything beyond basic noun, verb, pronoun, adverb stuff. I'm talking about things like participles and perfect tenses and articles.

I'm not really sure what you could gain from that. Language is not the stuffy study of hard and fast rules, but a constant negotiation between what the listener is capable of understanding, and what the speaker will compose. In the same way that unexamined Ebonics is not just crappy English, unexamined Standard American English is not just crappy English. Whether you're aware of the underlying rules or not, you're fo…

> I'm not really sure what you could gain from that.

Are you saying that as someone that has a good understanding of English grammar?

I was thinking that in the same way have a better knowledge of basic physics or chemistry can help me cook or fix my car, better knowledge of my language could help me understand and be understood.

For example, in one of my previous jobs I received a critique saying I should stop using the passive voice when I write. It's a habit I haven't been able to break and my first draft of anything I write is still very passive. Frankly, I don't have a good idea of what makes something passive on paper.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#77

Post by bluetomcat »

As a non-native speaker in a non-English speaking country, spending time reading and writing comments on HN has, I think, greatly improved my English skills. I am always intrigued to discover new sentence structures and phrasal verbs put in real use. I have also found that the particular usage of English, that is, the writing style, the vocabulary, the bias, are to a large extent a reflection of the culture in English-speaking countries.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#78

Post by david-s »

StavrosK wrote: post #60
david-s wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence is important. It's not about the abstract idea of "interesting items of culture" existing. IME they have to be already interesting to the learner to be a motivating factor. Some people likely find any items of culture interesting. I'm not one of those people, and I suspect most around me aren't either, or we'd all know a lot more languages.

Personally, I like Spanish as a language and am learning it, and as a result I find that I have access to more Spanish movies/shows/books because I understand it better. It wasn't my goal, but it's a welcome perk, and my comment was mostly about the fact that even if you don't learn a language for it's culture, there's always a culture there for you to enjoy once you do.

That's fair. I suppose I treat learning a language as more utilitarian. I need the external motivating factor to stick with it.

Languages often have neat features, but that isn't enough for me to prioritize learning one above other things.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#79

Post by Fnoord »

Mirioron wrote: post #2

I envy the author's persistence. 500 days of working on a task without skipping a day is impressive.

It only takes ~5 minutes per day. My girlfriend has well over 1000 days. I got ill at some point, forgot my streak freeze, and had to give up at around 500 or so. Then I lost interest... I did miss the whole update where they started with advertisements to pay for the application (which are akin to spam because apparently 'no' does not mean 'no'). I'd have quit over that regardless. Though perhaps a webbrowser or PWA would do the trick (I use the Android version).

That being said, I did learn quite some Spanish and I'm happy I did but I am not sure Duolingo (or Memrise for that matter which I also tried) works better than high school spaced repetition, Anki, or Pimsleur.

Re: 500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app

#80

Post by MichailP »

wan23 wrote: post #70
MichailP wrote: post #66

I think there is no substitute for old style learning, teacher, classroom and stress of memorizing about 20 words for the next class. Did anyone use those small format notebooks with two columns so you can effectively examine yourself? One column for foreign word and second for mother tongue word?

That's interesting. I have been under the impression for years that no one has ever learned a language successfully this way.

I think it is great for vocabulary. But vocabulary is only a part of knowing a language. Apps mostly aim at vocabulary, and while approach is similar I think it is much better to stare at a paper notebook then your smartphone screen.
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