[HN Gopher] How much can Duolingo teach us?
___________________________________________________________________
How much can Duolingo teach us?
Author : herbertl
Score : 54 points
Date : 2023-04-22 01:03 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| hsdropout wrote:
| https://archive.is/8X5GR
| 121789 wrote:
| I really don't understand the criticism of duolingo. No one who
| uses it thinks of it as teaching fluency but the criticisms
| always seems to frame it that way. It's an enjoyable app to help
| you get the basics of a new language. I've seen it work with my
| partner. We don't have to compare it to full immersion to think
| of it as useful
| chpatrick wrote:
| I agree, as a passive thing it's definitely better than
| nothing.
| bluGill wrote:
| Duolingo doesn't force people to move on soon enough. If your
| goal is learn the language instead of playing a game it just
| isn't a good system.
| firefoxd wrote:
| I'm the pro Duolingo user. I used to pick up new languages just
| for fun. It did help me a bit when conversing with uber drivers
| in Spanish, but I was stumped when i completed the Japanese
| course.
|
| I could quickly, and effectively go through the course with no
| hurdles. But then my sister asked me to count to ten in Japanese.
| I know the words, I can complete a challenge that include
| numbers, but I could not count to ten in the real world in
| Japanese. Duolingo banked on the gamification, and that works
| really well. However, learning a language is only incidental.
|
| I wrote an article about it and received threats to take it down.
| From time to time, i get a hoard of emails calling me toxic and
| threatening to sue. It's still up if you can find it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| There's also the other side of the coin. I can count to 10 (or
| 10000) in Japanese, but I couldn't bring myself to finish the
| Japanese course of Duolingo.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| I have a developer friend who failed tried to start an
| app/service to really teach you a foreign language as he was so
| frustrated with Duolingo and similar which are almost more like
| a "Wordle" type game for fun than actual language learning.
| alexjplant wrote:
| I'm re-learning Spanish after having been vaguely conversant
| from taking four years of it in high school. Duolingo is only
| half of the puzzle; talking to friends/ChatGPT and watching
| Seinfeld in Spanish has been helping to close the gap.
| dmurray wrote:
| This was the most insightful snippet in the article for me:
|
| > Like all the teachers I spoke to, Zimotti sees Duolingo as
| supplemental to the kind of deep immersion that language learning
| requires. But, in his opinion, the time most people spend on
| Duolingo is time they would otherwise spend on TikTok or watching
| television, not learning a second language in some more optimal
| way.
|
| Unfortunately, Duolingo doesn't market itself that way,
| preferring nonsense like "fifteen minutes a day can teach you a
| language". Of course there are many more customers who can spend
| fifteen minutes a day on it than hours at a time in an immersive
| context, topped up with fifteen minutes of Duolingo.
| eterevsky wrote:
| I think it's perfectly adequate to learn A1 level of a new
| language. I actually did it with German and started in-person
| classes from level A2.
| routerl wrote:
| Agreed. Duolingo is great for first exposure. I learned how
| to read pinyin, ask short questions (e.g. where's the
| bathroom), make simple purchases, etc.
|
| Beyond that, I find it almost useless for learning grammar
| and vocabulary. But this is still an important niche, and
| Duolingo owns it completely.
| rcarr wrote:
| Fifteen minutes a day can teach you a language. In another
| comment on here, I mention that the FSI estimate that a group
| one language takes 480 hours to learn. If you study for fifteen
| minutes a day, that means you will need to study for 5 and 1/4
| years to master your language. Duolingo's marketing is not the
| issue - the issue is the majority have unrealistic expectations
| regarding the effort and time involved, get frustrated and then
| give up.
| Macha wrote:
| This assumes there's no economy of scale to study time, and
| I'm just not sure that's true. It's not indefinite, because
| people tire out, but I'm pretty sure an hour long study
| session is more than 4x as effective as a 15 minute session.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Does anyone know a good prompt to turn chatGPT into a practice
| partner?
| lumiukko wrote:
| Not particularly, but I have used chat GPT to explain
| grammatical concepts to me that baffled me before, or that
| baffled someone else and I, as a native speaker, was unable to
| explain. Works like a charm - provided a suitable prompt. Only
| tested with GPT4, can't say much about 3.5.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| go on a dating site where the majority of users speak the
| language you want to learn. use google translate to get by and
| you'll slowly get better at reading and writing spanish in
| conversation. I unintentionally learned spanish this way.
| piffey wrote:
| What I learned in a year on Duolingo I picked up in a month of
| in-person non-native tutor sessions. What I learned in a year of
| non-native tutor sessions I picked up in a month of conversations
| with natives through apps like preply/italki. I wish I would've
| just started with preply/italki and been thrown to the wolves.
| Likely would've been speaking (not fluently) the languages I've
| learned in months instead of years.
| Swizec wrote:
| Question: would you have learned from a non-native tutor as
| fast without Duolingo? Would you have been able to even get
| started with preply/italki without a baseline?
|
| All evidence I've seen says it is incredibly difficult to pick
| up a language from scratch. Anthropologists have entire
| protocols developed for learning languages from native speakers
| with no shared language and it takes years. Sounds grueling
| too.
|
| Meanwhile farting around with Duolingo got me to the point of
| mostly understanding the general conversation when visiting my
| girlfriend's French family. Enough of a baseline that I'd
| probably become conversant with a few months of immersion.
|
| But I don't think a few months of immersion would get me far
| with zero baseline. Just lots of frustration.
| Aeolun wrote:
| For a lot of latin languages, since the grammar is mostly the
| same, that would probably be enough.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > got me to the point of mostly understanding the general
| conversation when visiting my girlfriend's French family.
| Enough of a baseline that I'd probably become conversant with
| a few months of immersion.
|
| Keep in mind about a third of the English language comes from
| Latin (the precursor to French) and another third from French
| itself (thanks to the Normans). See Anglish [0]
|
| [0] https://anglish.org/wiki/Anglish
| curiousllama wrote:
| One thing to consider is that it's a lot easier to assemble
| things once you have the basics. It takes children months/years
| to learn counting and addition, but it takes college students
| minutes to learn the operations to calculate graham's number.
|
| It might be the case that you pick things up quicker in
| tutoring because you have wide exposure from duolingo
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I took a two-week half day Spanish course followed by about a
| month of Anki cards.
|
| I switched to Duolingo because Anki cars just don't cut it for
| speaking a language.
|
| Can I speak Spanish now? No. But I feel that if I were to go back
| to a Spanish class I would be much better prepared than if I had
| done nothing...
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I did the opposite and switched from duolingo to flash cards.
| However it was for improving a language I already know
| somewhat, and it seems duolingo is useful mostly when you don't
| know the language at all, but not once you already know it a
| bit.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Flashcards don't teach language, they remind you of things
| you've already learned. Having that first exposure to something
| be on a flashcard isn't the greatest context for learning,
| especially since the impulse with flashcards is to move
| quickly. Don't _switch_ to Duolingo, do them both.
| suddenclarity wrote:
| Flashcards can be customised in any way though. I used to
| segment movies into sentences. On the front you had the audio
| and a screenshot. On the back, you had the transcription and
| a translation. I learned all the words in multiple movies and
| TV series this way.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Making your own flashcards is the definitive way of
| learning something _elsewhere,_ then putting it into Anki
| for long-term retention. What I 'm saying is that Anki
| should almost _always_ be supplemental to other stuff.
|
| I've got exceptions, though; I do algorithmically generated
| clozes every day that I got from here:
| https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/
|
| They're good for me because you have to give yourself a
| looser standard for grading i.e. "I used a different word
| but does it make sense? Did I conjugate it correctly? Then
| _Good_. You also have to actively suspend bad cards. It can
| break you of the gamification habit that Anki stats can get
| you into. For example, no need to cry over leeches that get
| suspended; you 'll get that word again on another card.
| Weird idiom? Stop doing flashcards and go look it up.
| jonplackett wrote:
| If you want to learn a language please give Michel Thomas a try.
| He is amazing. I would not speak a word of Spanish without his
| help.
|
| Unlike any other way I've found, his method teaches you to form
| sentences and grammar from the first lesson. If you line to
| figure out 'how things work' which I would guess would be a lot
| of you guys, it might fit into your way of thinking nicely.
|
| I tried so many language learning apps and audio - and was really
| bad at languages at school but found his lessons just perfect.
|
| Bonus 1: the BBC made a documentary about him where he teaches
| the worst pupils at a school French in 2 weeks.
|
| Bonus 2: he was a Nazi hunter in the French resistance.
|
| Bonus 3: he taught Doris day Spanish (Que Sera, sera)
|
| Bonus 4: despite the lessons seeming like they've been planned
| out, he recorded them in one take towards the end of his life. He
| refused to let anyone know his 'method' before that, having too
| many trust issues post WW2
|
| BBC doc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O0w_uYPAQic
|
| On Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Thomas
|
| Note - just like duolingo or anything else, this is just a foot
| in the door (but a really BIG foot). You'll have to go speak to
| people in Spanish if you want to be able to speak for real.
| chadlavi wrote:
| > occupation: nazi hunter, linguist
|
| Nice
| pessimizer wrote:
| Mihalis from Language Transfer teaches in a similar style (but
| with a Greek accent rather than a Polish one.) He's free (takes
| donations) and the courses are extensive. The selection is
| limited, but he's a one man band.
|
| https://www.languagetransfer.org/
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I've been using Language Transfer and it's an excellent
| resource. I wonder if the method can be truly expanded to
| more languages, such as Mandarin Chinese.
| rcarr wrote:
| Everyone slags off Duolingo on here but I highly doubt many have
| put in the time necessary for a fair evaluation. A quick google
| search will show you that the US Foreign Service Institute (e.g
| overseas diplomats who probably know a thing or two about this)
| say it takes 480 hours to learn a group 1 language which are the
| easiest languages for English speakers to learn. To put that in
| context, doing three lessons of Duolingo a day for a week will
| put you somewhere in the 60 - 80 minute region. Let's say it's
| the former because you had a few days where you only did one or
| two lessons. That means it will take you 9.2 years to become
| proficient in your chosen language.
|
| Duolingo is good, but it is not a fucking miracle worker. If
| you're going in expecting to put in two or three lessons a day
| and then are disappointed that after a year you don't speak
| Spanish, you're completely fucking deluded and it is not
| Duolingo's fault. It takes a lot of fucking effort to learn a
| language and you get what you put into it. I have been using
| Duolingo for two years to learn Spanish now, and the results have
| been wonderful. I can read a lot of Spanish texts, I can pick up
| on a lot of dialogue in tv and movies and I can express quite a
| few thoughts in Spanish. Am I completely proficient? Probably not
| - but if I lived in a Spanish speaking country for a few months I
| think I'd get pretty competent pretty quickly. And the learning I
| got has cost me a grand total of about PS140. I can guarantee
| that as far as value for money goes, I have gotten way more
| learning for the money through Duolingo than if I'd have spent
| the equivalent on human one to one lessons (how many would I have
| been able to get realistically for the same amount of money -
| between five to ten 1 hour lessons?) and definitely better value
| for money than what I would get through my local college.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I wish this was the top comment. I got
| so frustrated with the HN language-learning gatekeeping on
| another Duolingo thread that my comment got flagged and I
| received a nice message from dang (luckily no ban because I'm
| normally not a lunatic).
|
| Duolingo is awesome. It's made language learning _possible_ for
| me where it used to be impossible. I wanted to pick another
| language up so casually that I wasn't willing to put in the
| effort that other tools require, and Duolingo gives me a way to
| pick up the basics. I'm confident that in a couple of years
| I'll be able to progress to more serious methods for developing
| conversational skills.
|
| And it would never have been possible if I wasn't able to use
| Duolingo to slowly but surely learn a new alphabet and basic
| present tense grammar.
|
| I think the issue is the target audience. HN has a lot of
| educated global folk that have _had_ to learn other languages.
| Duolingo is not the ticket when you _need_ to learn a new
| language. It shines specifically when the language learning is
| not a requirement.
| j45 wrote:
| Agreed, and more solutions should try solving a problem shots
| way.
|
| It's a pretty simple formula.
|
| They work to understand something and then experience it
| repeatedly by reviewing it to move it long term memory.
|
| Maybe this approach lays bare and trivializes some plain truths
| about learning which some academia would prefer to keep as a
| mystery of butts in seats for hours to measure competency.
|
| Skills based and competency based learning is not always a
| strength of many of the naysayers I'm against Duolingo type
| tools (mobile learning apps).
|
| The proof is in the pudding when it comes to usage. An app
| doesn't have to be the best or most efficient or most
| effective. But if it meets the more in their hand than anything
| else, it can trend to a large advantage over time. Asking if
| people can pick something up, keep it up long enough on average
| to make it stick be a threat to the building of physical
| campuses.
|
| Self-directed learning is also different to learning the theory
| of language learning vs the practical learning to swim by
| learning not to drown, then float, then move.
| rcarr wrote:
| > Agreed, and more solutions should try solving a problem
| shots way. It's a pretty simple formula. They work to
| understand something and then experience it repeatedly by
| reviewing it to move it long term memory.
|
| Coincidentally, this is also a major reason why Duolingo
| switched to "the path" (something else that gets flak on
| here). Spaced repetition is now built in by default. With the
| old layout a lot of users would complete a level and move on
| in an effort to complete the tree, rather than levelling up
| each level in a section before moving on.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The problem is that's how Duolingo sells itself: "learn a
| language in 15 min"
|
| With Duolingo I can do half an hour in transit, but the
| remembrance is not great.
|
| I do think there are more effective ways of learning a
| language. Probably the most effective and not so well known is
| Pimsleur.
|
| Half an hour of Pimsleur asks so much focus of me, and im tired
| after, but I learn quickly.
|
| It's an audio class that has a very smart way of repeating and
| reproducing conversations. The repetition is done in a way that
| it advances the conversation and slightly alters the repetition
| so it forces you to use your active focus & memory.
|
| (no affiliation)
| rcarr wrote:
| 15 minutes a day gets you your 480 hours in 5.2 years. The
| problem is not the marketing line, the problem is people
| expecting to learn a language in 1 year with only 15 minutes
| a day practice. There is a reason why a full time university
| course in a foreign language is typically 3 to 4 years long
| including one year spent abroad.
|
| In your defence, the 480 hours is also only for group 1
| languages. If you are learning a harder language it may take
| many more hours than this. Category 5 languages take 2200
| hours. 15 minutes a day is totally reasonable for a category
| 1 language. For a category 5 language, not so much as it's
| going to take you about 20 years. But I strongly suspect that
| the main problem is not the "15 minutes a day" but the fact
| that people are not expecting (or willing) to do it for
| years.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| The marketing line speaks of learning a language with
| little effort. So it's setting an expectation.
| comfypotato wrote:
| And it meets expectations! That's the point of the person
| you're arguing with.
|
| The "low effort" is made possible by Duolingo segmenting
| lessons into tiny chunks.
|
| It doesn't lower the total hours necessary because that
| would be witchcraft.
| aix1 wrote:
| > doing three lessons of Duolingo a day for a week will put you
| somewhere in the 60 - 80 minute region [...] That means it will
| take you 9.2 years to become proficient in your chosen
| language.
|
| This makes several assumptions, namely:
|
| 1. That Duolingo has the ability to teach a language to the US
| Foreign Service Institute standard. I have reasons to doubt
| that. Several years ago I completed the entire French tree in
| Duolingo and I am in no way proficient: I can understand a bit
| but I can't really formulate a sentence beyond the absolute
| basics.
|
| 2. That an hour of Duolingo is equivalent to an hour of US
| Foreign Service Institute tuition. I don't have first-hand
| experience of the FSI. However, I have recent experience of
| learning a language (German) outside Duolingo. After watching
| ~40 short grammar videos and taking 65 hours of 1:1 tuition, my
| command of the language is WAY further along than that entire
| Duolingo French tree from a while back, which took many more
| hours.
|
| Now, there's clearly a significant cost difference between the
| two approaches. My point is that an hour of study isn't really
| a good metric when it comes to comparing methods of study.
| [deleted]
| znpy wrote:
| Not much in my opinion/experience (attempted learning german).
|
| You learn words but without grammar you can't do very much.
| pflenker wrote:
| Clicked the link to find out how much Duolingo can teach us, but
| hoo boy is this information hard to find in the article.
| medstrom wrote:
| Like most internet articles. Just imagine the title prepended
| with "Long mutterings on the topic of...".
| nanidin wrote:
| This applies to all articles from New Yorker in my
| experience.
| norgie wrote:
| Tangentially, this response is pretty interesting to me in
| the context of new LLMs replacing traditional search.
|
| I couldn't understand why people thought LLMs would replace
| search entirely, since I search mostly to find content
| created by people. I want to read the article or watch the
| video, not just find some particular fact. But maybe I'm the
| unusual one in this case?
| dyno12345 wrote:
| I went back to it recently and now I find it so spammed up with
| gamification and ads and asking for IAP that it quickly gets
| frustrating. I get that they need to make money off of all of
| this but after every lesson you have to storm through like six
| more screens for ads and subscriptions and more gamification
| points that I don't even understand. It makes me want to close
| the app and find something simpler.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| You do have the option to pay a very low monthly fee if you
| don't want ads.
| godelski wrote:
| The answer is not much. And I'm confused why this is the case.
|
| Duolingo treats humans like supervised large language models and
| only does the babbler stage. That is: they show you a bunch of
| data and labels and then do a loss function on that.
|
| The problem is that humans aren't machine learning algorithms.
| Because of this, we need more. If you're an Latin based speaker,
| try Chinese, Japanese, or even Korean (especially Korean). If you
| haven't grown up around these characters you're going to really
| struggle with the introductory lessons. How do you resolve this?
| You get a book. One that teaches you the characters, how they're
| formed, and how to write them (something Duolingo doesn't
| do).(see edit) The same is for grammar and even words.
|
| It's amazing to me that in all this time Duolingo hasn't added a
| "supplementary materials" section. This is included in almost
| every single other app that's directed at these languages. I know
| they want to upset the market and do things differently, but that
| doesn't mean to throw the baby out too.
|
| Duolingo is great for practicing and keeping motivated. It has
| successfully gamifyed language learning, getting users to
| practice frequently. I just wish they would put more focus on
| language learning, because it's common knowledge that Duolingo
| can't get you to even a conversational level. A years worth of
| studying shouldn't have that poor of a result.
|
| Edit: it was wrong to claim that there isn't a letter learning
| lesson. There is a different tab for it and I made this claim off
| of prior experience. But the app drops you right into words
| without even knowing how words are constructed, and I think this
| is a grave mistake (I'm sure they have data that could test this:
| if there is a higher rate of struggling/dropouts when a new
| character system is introduced). I do not think this changes my
| thesis, but I want to call out my mistake. I'll have a followup
| comment in the replies.
| chongli wrote:
| Yeah. If you want to learn a language with a different
| character set than the one you grew up with then you need to
| practice writing the characters. I studied Chinese for a year
| on Duolingo and now I can barely recognize a few characters.
| Without practice writing the characters by hand you'll have a
| really hard time remembering them!
| itronitron wrote:
| >> The problem is that humans aren't machine learning
| algorithms.
|
| Agreed, and I'd also add that unfortunately many, if not all,
| in-person language courses also focus on the babbler stage. My
| personal preference would be to learn _all of_ the grammar
| rules with some common vocabulary first.
| bluGill wrote:
| Research says that grammar should come later. Grammar is easy
| to teach and grade though, while more effective learning
| methods don't show any results as fast, but in the long run
| do better.
|
| Comprehensible input is key to learning a language. Grammar
| is helpful only after you are getting to where you could
| almost guess those rules.
| gwd wrote:
| > Duolingo is great for practicing and keeping motivated. It
| has successfully gamifyed language learning, getting users to
| practice frequently.
|
| I used it for 8 months or so, and came to the conclusion that
| the gamification was completely counter-productive.
|
| One of the big things in raising kids these days is "external
| rewards" vs "intrinsic motivation". There have been studies
| that show that kids who already enjoyed drawing, when given a
| reward for doing drawing, found drawing by itself less
| enjoyable afterwards.
|
| Duolingo is all about external rewards: And the reward isn't
| for _learning the language_ , but for _completing lessons_. I
| found myself always trying to race through as many lessons as
| possible; stopping to investigate a word or phrase, which
| _should_ be rewarded, was actually discouraged by their system.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| > It's amazing to me that in all this time Duolingo hasn't
| added a "supplementary materials" section.
|
| They have(had?) one on the web version, but I think they cut
| it.
| rcarr wrote:
| On the mobile apps at least (but I also believe they exist on
| the web app as well) there is a supplementary materials
| button on most lessons. They are also lessons for learning
| the individual characters of languages in non-latin
| alphabets. The comment is wrong about both of these things.
| godelski wrote:
| I just checked, I wouldn't equate the end of lesson
| material with what I'm asking for. I checked both Korean
| and Spanish. Spanish had more. Both had a few example
| sentences. Spanish has a few "tips" like "you also use esta
| when you're talking about something that's only temporarily
| true." This gets slightly better for Spanish as near the
| end it includes some conjugation (part of what I'm asking
| for) but Korean never has more than a few examples.
|
| I'll admit that I was a bit too critical on the Korean
| about letters. There is an existence of a specification of
| learning characters. It did explain the consonant-vowel
| relationship, but once through I don't see how to access
| these slide again. Humans are far from one-shot learners.
| It is good practice, but it seems like a weird way to
| start, especially given that Hangul can be picked up pretty
| quickly (part of why it is interesting linguistically).
| This makes Duolingo a good side app, but I still maintain
| the position that it is poor for learning and that there
| are clear additions that could greatly improve its utility.
| That's my main argument: Duolingo could do more and a small
| amount of effort would greatly increase the utility.
| rcarr wrote:
| I agree that the fact it only asks you to draw the
| character once isn't great. At the same time, I do wonder
| how much drawing with your finger is going to translate
| into remembering how to do the same thing when you're
| holding a pen (although I suppose you could do the same
| thing using a pen if you were on iPad or an Android
| device).
|
| As for the learning notes, they are more thorough on
| French and Spanish and they could definitely be better. I
| believe the other languages are still using the original
| crowdsourced content and that is a major limitation to
| the app that I have a tendency to forget about (I'm
| leaning Spanish). I wouldn't recommend the app for more
| than the very basics if you're learning something other
| than French, Spanish or German.
|
| My hunch from reading the blog posts they put out is that
| they're using Spanish and French to try things out and
| perfect the course structure and content and once they've
| got something locked in they will then replicate that
| across the other less popular languages. They've moved
| the French and Spanish courses so that they're now in
| line with the official EU educational framework
| guidelines and I reckon their long term strategy will be
| to offer an official certification on completing a course
| which holds equal value to one acquired a traditional
| college or university. They've already taken steps in
| this direction in that non English speakers can take the
| Duolingo English test and use it as an official
| qualification to study at English language universities.
| cogogo wrote:
| I don't believe there is silver bullet to learning a language for
| anyone - especially your average human. Duolingo, Rosetta Stone,
| whatever are great for some foundational exposure and I
| appreciate that service but they aren't going to get anyone
| fluent.
|
| I am a native English speaker and learned to fluently speak
| Spanish starting at 25. I don't think I have any natural talent
| for languages but I was committed. Multiple intensive full-time
| immersion courses, immersion in Spanish speaking countries with
| an effort to assimilate and a lot of watching TV and reading for
| me to master. My weirdo catalan-ish accent still has serious
| issues (applicable to anlmost any accent in the Spanish speaking
| world) and I still make mistakes I know are mistakes the second I
| make them - 15+ years later.
|
| IMO Exposure (which in my janky definition includes at least some
| of what I described above and required usage to manage some
| regular task or communication) is the only way to really learn a
| language. And the thing that separates the real polyglots and
| everyone else is some combination of intrinsic aptitude and
| accelerated learning as they pick up more languages that
| drastically reduces the amount of exposure required.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Je n'apprendre pas le francais vite avec Duolingo, mais je
| apprendre il. J'adore Duolingo. Je l'utilise avec Apple Translate
| et Google Translate et j'ai changement ma langue dans macOS et
| iOS en francais pour apprendre en immersion. Ma Spotify Discover
| Weekly est plein avec francais musique aussi, qui aide me
| apprendre plus mots.
|
| Est-ce que mon francais bon? Non, sure. Mais, j'essaie et je
| pence que c'est amusant !
|
| Mais, il faut vouloir l'apprendre en general.
|
| Edit : Ah ! De plus, il y a Reddit francais sur reddit.fr qui est
| plutot cool.
| ptidhomme wrote:
| Not so bad, but it shows you are sometimes translating english
| constructs to french words literally.
|
| FWIW I've recently used Michel Thomas method to learn a
| language starting from zero, and found I got comfortable
| building my own phrases very fast. It's audio only, you just
| have to respond to questions in the target language before the
| answer is spoken, almost painless. (this is not an ad, I have
| no relation to Michel Thomas method). It's not perfect either
| but I feel it's the best introduction to the mecanisms of a
| forein language, after which you can start adding up
| vocabulary.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Oui, je ne connais pas beaucoup d'expressions francaises,
| alors j'essaie de les construire avec des phrases anglaises.
|
| Mais ce n'est pas vraiment apprendre une autre langue quand
| tu faites cela.
| davidgerard wrote:
| There are probably much better courses than Duolingo, but
| Duolingo has the important advantage that I actually do it. Just
| racked up a one-year streak in Spanish.
|
| I love the gamification. Duolingo uses every scurvy trick of
| mobile game gamification - and it's all in the cause of getting
| you to _do your practice_. I _must_ do my morning and evening
| sessions so I can rack up the double XP!!
|
| I can _almost_ read Salvadoran Twitter! Thankfully, shitposting
| turns out to be the universal human language and translates near-
| perfectly.
|
| Infuriated to find out just a couple of weeks ago - after nearly
| a year - that Duolingo Spanish from English just leaves out "vos"
| entirely. (As well as "vosotros".) And von Ahn's from Guatemala!
| aqme28 wrote:
| When I was planning a move abroad I tried Duolingo, as well as
| every other language learning app I could find recommended online
|
| Of the 8 or so apps I tried, Duolingo was by far the worst. It
| doesn't feel like it teaches me the language whatsoever, but is
| instead very good at teaching me the gamification.
| comfypotato wrote:
| I think this is an issue with Duolingo's target audience. Its
| niche is definitely not people who need to learn a language
| because they are moving abroad.
|
| The gamification is a perfect example of how Duolingo is
| optimized for people whose motivation is low. It's specifically
| for people who just casually want to learn a new language. It's
| successful not because it carries people to fluency but because
| it provides a _fun_ way to learn the basics. Those basics are
| an unmanageable hurdle for people who don't actually _need_ to
| learn a language.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Even if that's your metric, I really do think _all_ the other
| language learning apps are better for this purpose.
| comfypotato wrote:
| Yet none of them have worked for me, and I've tried many.
| The plan is to return to Pimsleur once I've spent a couple
| years with Duolingo. Sure, Duolingo won't give me fluency,
| but I'm having fun getting to the point I can use an app
| that can. I don't have the motivation for anything more
| intense. Language learning is very difficult, and Duolingo
| breaks it into painlessly small chunks.
|
| I almost got banned over a comment I made on another
| Duolingo post because I got so frustrated with the
| gatekeeping here. The attitude on HN is disgusting. It's
| blatant gatekeeping. "Your way is wrong. If you can't do it
| the right way you don't deserve to learn a language."
|
| I regret commenting here. I'd delete my comment if I still
| could, but instead I'm stuck arguing with another language
| learning snob because I don't have the self control not to.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| I completely agree. I don't say this because it's crass,
| but DuoLingo is my goto "toilet app". I know it isn't as
| good as app or service X.
|
| But I can do it when I drop it on a daily basis to do the
| deed. Same with the other apps but they aren't as much
| fun, and that's what it's about while pooping.
|
| DuoLingo while pooping is just one plank in my program,
| the others are Netflix and HBO in Spanish, as well as
| multiple travels per year to Spanish speaking countries.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > "Your way is wrong. If you can't do it the right way
| you don't deserve to learn a language".
|
| I never said anything like that. I said that I found
| Duolingo worse than everything else I've tried. I'm glad
| Duolingo works well for you, but I posted my own personal
| review framed as my own experience.
|
| A review that you disagree with isn't gatekeeping!
| comfypotato wrote:
| Well you seem nice so I'm sorry for the aggression. You
| weren't aware that I've tried everything else that's
| popular.
|
| From my position, someone telling me that the only thing
| that I can even use is "the worst" feels like an attack
| with the purpose of gatekeeping.
|
| My use case is expressly where Duolingo is nice. I simply
| don't care enough to invest the effort that Babel or
| others require. Tutoring isn't even in the cards
| considering the time and money.
|
| From here, other folks in similar conversations have
| continued to say that I won't learn anything with
| Duolingo. This is blatantly false; I've already learned
| to read a new alphabet, and I'm slowly learning
| vocabulary and basic grammar. I'm perfectly aware that
| Duolingo will never make me fluent, and even that I might
| have some bad habits when I transition to something else.
| The point is that it gets me to the point that I even
| _can_ transition to something else. And research shows
| that the only bad habits that cause real problems in
| language learning are with pronunciation (something
| Duolingo is actually particularly good about).
|
| Sorry you caught backlash from my frustration.
| Tepix wrote:
| DuoLingo is a nice addition to other things such as Tandem or a
| good grammar book. It will slowly build your vocabulary.
| nologic01 wrote:
| There are no real shortcuts to learning a language. Immersion,
| constant practice, high quality feedback from native speakers are
| essential elements and they dont come cheap, especially the last
| part.
|
| Having said that, it does feel that scalable, cheap software
| solutions that give you to a tangible boost should be possible.
| Duolingo isnt that boost though. It is a very preliminary step,
| so simplistic that its not even clear its in the right direction.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I'm 280 days into their French course. Have I learned French? no.
| Have I learned how to game a bunch of XP? yes. Those two are not
| the same.
| medstrom wrote:
| I learn better when I pay less attention to XP and approach it
| like this e.g. on Duolingo's most common exercise where you
| have to assemble words into a sentence, I avoid looking at the
| words and formulate a sentence in my head first.
| codyb wrote:
| Duolingo's definitely gotten better in the last few years at
| least.
|
| I try to do it on a self enforced "hard mode" where I close my
| eyes and listen before each exercise, and cover the answers. I
| also type all the exercises instead of the word bubbles which
| helps with learning the accent placement.
|
| But it's only a supplement to a more rigorous routine which
| includes a Pimsleur speaking/listening lesson, and two Anki
| (spaced repetition flashcards) decks, one for conjugation and
| one for vocabulary.
|
| And then chatting with friends.
|
| Finally, I listen to radio stations from Spanish speaking
| countries while working.
|
| I suspect if I keep it up I'll be pretty decent by the end of
| the year.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| I'm about the same in, and I can now read (or get the gist of)
| most French signs and posters, and generally understand simple
| written and basic clearly spoken French.
|
| It's what you make of it. That said, I've clearly hit a wall of
| usefulness, and I'm looking elsewhere to continue learning. I'm
| going to be starting a French course next month - in person -
| because a huge aspect of what's missing is immersion,
| conversation, and thinking about the language in a way that's
| more than just repeating things.
| ghaff wrote:
| Some people seem to have a real talent for languages. Others
| less so.
|
| I had 4 years of high school French many years ago and was a
| pretty good student overall.
|
| But I never really used it much afterwards. I've forgotten a
| lot and was never really any good at understanding spoken
| French. Mostly I could get a sense for a French newspaper.
|
| On the other hand, I travelled to Paris with a friend a few
| years backwho had _zero_ exposure to French and the amount I
| know was actually at least somewhat helpful.
|
| If I were looking to spend some extended time in France at
| some point, I'd look to do a refresher with some of the
| modern language study courses.
| parker_mountain wrote:
| When I say basic I mean like if someone clearly and not too
| quickly told me "le magasin est a deux pates de maisons", i
| would be able to understand it. But if someone said
| something more complicated like "the store is, well, you
| must go two blocks past the red statue and then turn left
| onto the diagonal road", I would probably get lost. And I
| think that's where DuoLingo tops out at, at least for me.
| It's a great language intro but what it's lacking is a
| funnel into more immersive and challenging courses.
|
| Also, I cannot speak the language at all. Or, barely at
| least. That is why I'm moving on from DL
|
| (sorry, hard to write diacritics on this).
| Vinnl wrote:
| I'm at about that level for both French and Spanish. The
| French I learned in high school, the Spanish on Duolingo.
| And honestly, the methodology for both was similar too,
| except Duolingo is more fun.
|
| It's useful enough. I can read the signs to not get lost
| and navigate the supermarket, and it's a good base for if
| I ever wanted to properly learn the language with an
| actual course and immersion.
| ghaff wrote:
| Oh, I don't disagree. Although at this point, I doubt I
| could realistically parse normal spoken French at all
| although I can get the gist of simple written.
|
| I do think that, for most people, a relatively low effort
| introduction to a language may be useful to set a minimal
| foundation. But you probably need serious immersion to
| get anything even close to fluent.
| culopatin wrote:
| I really don't get duolingo. Why does it want to teach me how to
| say the bear is vegetarian before I can say anything useful is
| beyond me.
| urubu wrote:
| The Finnish course is especially bad in this regard. You learn
| the words for 'lynx' (ilves) and 'wolverine' (ahma), but not
| for 'left' and 'right'.
| lumiukko wrote:
| Sorry, but this is an incredibly ignorant comment. If you can
| say "the bear is vegetarian", you are most likely able to say
| "I am vegetarian", too. Everyone of those silly sentences
| contains words you may or may not need and grammar that you may
| or may not need. To dismiss those sentences as useless is
| short-sighted.
| culopatin wrote:
| I don't think you've used duolingo much. I do not know how to
| say anything other than the phrase it throws at me in that
| moment. So no, I do not know that. The progression in not
| linear, jumps around a lot, and doesn't help you understand
| how the conjugations work, or how to extrapolate
| he/she/they/I because all I know is the bear, or apple ,
| milk, motor and radio before I can understand that someone is
| saying hello to me and how to answer.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Duolingo has more to teach in terms of sales/marketing than
| language. Study them for the details, but the essence is this:
| sell people what they want to hear, what they want to believe,
| not what actually is, not what actually might help them, they
| seldom buy truth anyway.
| vanillax wrote:
| Everyone seems to dislike Duolingo. So what are your app
| alternatives?
| bluGill wrote:
| Does Pimsluer have an app?
|
| Anki is a good app, but only if you create your own cards. The
| act of creating cards is more important than the study.
|
| The more I learn about learning languages the less I think an
| app is good. There are useful things they can do, but the
| problem is it is a lot of work to create great content and it
| is hard to get someone to pay
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| This is an advertisement
|
| Their CEO has gone on Reddit a few times and came off extremely,
| probably insultingly poorly. I dropped the app like hot lead
| after they changed formatting late last year and his behaviour
| was the last nail in that coffin.
|
| It's gotten progressively worse and more gamified which doesn't
| equate to learning.
|
| There are some FOSS alternatives beginning to plant seeds. I
| cannot wait to see what they bring.
| aio2 wrote:
| What are some FOSS alternatives?
| ZunarJ5 wrote:
| https://github.com/LibreLingo/LibreLingo :)
| ak_111 wrote:
| can you give some examples on how he came off poorly?
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I have the firm opinion that Duolingo is not only worthless for
| learning a second language, but has negative benefit value. If
| language learning is measured on a positive scale from 0 (know
| nothing of it) to n, with Duolingo it is possible to dip into the
| negative numbers.
|
| I've seen this in my own children. My daughter wants to use it
| occasionally, because it's like a video game. "Papa, look how
| long I've had the streak going!" but as that number of days climb
| into the high double digits, she knows less than what someone
| would know after their first week of a public school class. And I
| have no flattering opinions of public school, either.
|
| It's Greek lessons are bizarre. I once saw a multiple choice quiz
| where it asked what the alpha character (the font made it
| obvious, just the single glyph) was... and the four possible
| answers were "alpha", "a", "Aay", and (phrase) "the ah sound in
| caught" (might be misremembering this, but definitely a phrase).
|
| What sort of nonsense is that meant to be? How is that not _more
| confusing_?
|
| What it never did was ever show or teach the Greek alphabet. You
| never learn the counting numbers. You never learn to conjugate
| verbs.
|
| Other languages are no better, best I can see. If I had to guess,
| I would think the app is some sort of CIA-inspired conspiracy to
| prevent Americans from ever learning a language other than
| English. It pathologically horrible, impossible to describe
| without sounding melodramatic.
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