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An opinionated critique of Duolingo

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Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#81

Post by forinti »

CrazyStat wrote: post #54
forgotusername6 wrote: post #27

I have a 2000+ day streak on Duolingo, mostly learning Russian. The app has got progressively worse since I started, for a while just giving me the same lesson every single day. I of course finished the course years ago, but I keep up with my one lesson a day to keep the bird happy. I find the UI incredibly annoying, I've disabled all the sounds and animations that I can. You might ask why don't I stop? Well I want t…

Last year they replaced all the recordings of native speakers with ML-generated recordings, in both Russian and Ukrainian (probably other languages too but those are the two I have). The ML-generated recordings are terrible, for example they can't deal with the ambiguity betweeen vse and vsyo (written identically in Russian) so they always say vsyo. They'll sometimes randomly say the names of individual letters inste…

I've noticed some weird English (in the English for Russian speakers course).

Sometimes the rhythm of the phrase is very strange and also sometimes the wrong pronunciation is used when there's a heteronym.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#82

Post by mentos »

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],…

Your parents have any impression of students that used Pimsleur?

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#83

Post by tazjin »

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],…

Personally I like Babbel. It looks a bit dated (or did the last time I used it), but its content is really good and it helped me bootstrap 3 out of the 5 languages I speak fluently.

There's no gamification like in Duolingo, you have to bring your own motivation and endure the UI, but it really does get you to the level where you can continue on your own.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#84

Post by duothrowaway99 »

foobarian wrote: post #73
duothrowaway99 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have a teen who's been using DuoLingo for French for a while but hit a ceiling with spoken language. I suggested to him to look around for voice chats with French speakers like maybe on Discord but it's a desert out there. Wonder if you have some experience with using these paid options to recommend. Would be neat if there could be something without a rigid course-like structure he could join occasionally for low-k…

Some Alliance Française outposts offer online classes, and italki has a number of great tutors. It always depends on the teacher you work with ofc, but I know someone who had great experience with both.

There are also a number of social media influencers (who probably were language tutors in a past life) that run online paid communities aka you pay to be part of their language community, and then have access to classes, zoom calls, etc.

They're harder to find / it's more difficult to immediately parse which ones will be good. But you can get a preview of "how they are" by consuming what they publish. For instance, for Canadian (Quebec) French, these are great:

https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingfrench

https://www.youtube.com/@maprofdefrancais

https://www.frenchwithfrederic.com/

I'm sure there are equivalents for French from France, and other languages. Searching "Learn {language name}" on YouTube/Instagram would be a good start.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#85

Post by bunderbunder »

mithr wrote: post #75

I agree with some aspects, and think the author perhaps misunderstood some others. > If I collect 100 XP, what does it mean for my language skills? For that matter, why do I collect extra XP when I receive a potion? Can the XP I collect be used in a way to carefully guide me towards the specific language skills I would explore next? Using XP to guide the user towards a particular path is an idea, but it's just not on…

By contrast, when I was studying Spanish using something more similar to the Assimil method, I was reading full length novels and watching Yo Soy Betty, La Fea within about six months.

It's not just me. There's been some research on this sort of thing, and it tends to find that just about the only thing that's slower than Duolingo is traditional classroom language education.

Admittedly I was doing more than 10 minutes a day. But that's because I was legitimately having heaps of fun. I wanted to spend a bunch of time with Spanish, and I didn't need any weird gamification tricks to help me sustain that level of motivation.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#86

Post by tarentel »

torm wrote: post #45

I'm currently holding a 1100 days of streak of Italian in Duolingo, so I think I am entitled to drop in my 2 cents ;) To some extent I agree with the critique. Would I be able to write an assay like the op in Italian? surely not. Is their marketing annoying? yes, very much. Is the platform perfect? far from this. However - after 3 years with Duo I am capable of having causal, simple conversations, I can navigate most…

I agree with your last point. I get the criticism of Duolingo and it is fair, but I can't agree that it is completely useless. I learned/am learning French. I can get by with non-English speakers and people won't immediately switch to English when they hear me.

It took about 5 years of on and off practice. Not sure how much actual time I put in. Duolingo was one aspect, where honestly I probably learned like 75% of my vocabulary. I also have a French wife and friends, took classes, hired teachers, watched movies, read news, etc, etc, etc. I probably could have got to where I am without Duolingo but I'll never know. Learning a language is a pain in the ass and I don't think any one thing is really going to do it. Duolingo is free and can be one aspect out of many that will help get you there.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#87

Post by mtalantikite »

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 for hours to fluency [1].

For me to put a foundation for French down it was: Assimil for about 6 months (30 min/day), 30 minutes of daily comprehensible input, and Anki & Clozemaster for vocabulary (~15-20 min/day). Mixed in there was a couple months on Yabla doing listening comprehension, some grammar study from Bescherelle books, and some tutoring on iTalki. After about maybe 9-12 months I could listen to RFI's broadcast targeted to learners [2], but even then I still needed to go to the transcription a lot at the beginning.

To mislead people into thinking that doing some vocab study for 30 min a day in Duolingo is going to get them anything beyond the most basic grasp of a language is kinda not cool.

[1] https://www.state.gov/foreign-service-institute/foreign-lang...

[2] https://francaisfacile.rfi.fr/fr/

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#88

Post by layman51 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #71
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…

>But the treadmill, used properly, is still significantly better than an extra 30 minutes sitting on the sofa, That's right. Most of the criticism directed at Duolingo seems to be about unrealistic expectations of engaging with an app for 10 minutes a day. That is not going to get you to fluency, but it does beat doom scrolling on your phone. Before I committed to study Japanese seriously I did about a year of Duolin…

Do you have any suggestions for supplements to the Japanese course on Duolingo? I feel like I'm almost ready to make the leap after having built up a good streak and slowly realizing that some of the Duolingo sentences apparently sound unnatural. For example, on review lessons, Duolingo quizzes the sentence "My name is" by using "iimasu"[0]. This older video[1] that is part of a playlist that tracks the Duolingo course claims that it incorrectly teaches you. It's not really explained why it's wrong though.

[0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E8%A8%80%E3%81%86 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FNrpMQZzJ0&t=457s

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#89

Post by bigfishrunning »

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…

I've been doing "Dreaming Spanish", which is a comprehensible input service, and using Duolingo as a self-test of sorts. Watching a lot of curated spanish-language content is very engaging, and I believe this method will work (for some definition of work), but it is nice to have duolingo as a fancy flash card system. I think duolingo by itself probably isn't very effective, but it serves as a motivator and i think it's useful as part of a more complete language learning strategy.

Re: An opinionated critique of Duolingo

#90

Post by jimbokun »

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…

That's a super helpful list from the State Department!

Good to know ahead of time what you're getting yourself into.

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