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The reason Duolingo is ineffective in my opinion is multi-faceted. First, my main language for study is Japanese, and Duolingo's Japanese course is awful - thes

The reason Duolingo is ineffective in my opinion is multi-faceted. First, my main language for study is Japanese, and Duolingo's Japanese course is awful - these are the specific things I noticed when trying it: - There were several factual errors in their material and important points entirely omitted - Japanese grammar is very flexible and their tools aren't, so they often mark you as wrong when you were correct - Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective These flaws make me wonder if they even had actual Japanese users working on developing the tools for learning Japanese. I can't speak to any other languages, but my experience with Japanese leads me to belive they don't have expertise in many of the languages they offer, instead trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach. On top of that, however, is that they don't go nearly far enough. In my opinion there's no magic bullet that can teach you a language. Each student learns differently and will need to leverage a large variety of tools. Even if Duolingo's course were good, it would only make up a small facet of an effective study strategy. Vocabulary drilling with flash cards, focused grammatical study, reading genuine material in the language, writing novel material in the target language, and regular conversation practice with native speakers are all incredibly important and distinct topics of study. Duolingo tries to mix a diet version of each into an scatterbrained, ineffectual method of study.

lambda 9y ago
The Japanese lessons are listed as being in beta. But yeah, I think they're going to have to do a pretty complete revamp of the Japanese course, and possibly add some more features like handwriting recognition for learning the characters. I did a little of that on my own, putting together a flash card deck that I could type in Japanese in, and used Android's Japanese handwriting input method to enter characters, and found that pretty good for learning kana, but I didn't feel like putting all of the work in for building such decks for the kanji I was learning as well. I find Duolingo much better for the lessons that are more well developed, and which the software was originally written for, like French. I think that they could eventually get to the point where the Japanese lessons are useful, but now is not that point; they will need both some software updates that make Japanese learning work better, and a revamp of the curriculum.
btilly 9y ago
...trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach. The first half of this is dead on. The second half is wrong. Duolingo's top languages are in the Indo-European family. (Their most learned language is English, next is Spanish.) Their techniques are perfectly adequate for gaining elementary vocabulary a basic grounding in the grammar of those languages. The most common languages in that language family are positional. You really do need to learn to say "black shirt" in English versus "camisa negra" in Spanish. Saying it in the other order is wrong. Their tools don't work well for other language families. However they do work for lots of languages that people want to learn.
- CrystalLangUser 9y ago
  No, languages are indeed different. Providing elementary grammar or vocabulary is next to useless in real conversation with natives. I highly doubt anyone is SOLELY learning English or Spanish through Duolingo. It's important to look at resources that languages provide- English and Spanish also have immense amounts of media to listen to and read, and obviously a lot of people to talk with. I would say that helps far more than learning simple grammar.
  - btilly 9y ago
    I'm not sure what point you think you are responding to. My point is that a particular approach tends to work similarly well across many languages within a language family. Duolingo's method is effective at providing elementary grammar and vocabulary within Indo-European languages. I agree that it does not get you a sufficient vocabulary to read, or the verbal reflexes for speech. But it is an effective approach for an absolute beginner. Everything that I've heard about it says that it is basically useless for various Asian languages. Even for absolute beginners. For example my wife used Duolingo with languages like Polish and Spanish. She was quite happy with the results, even though she outgrew what the app can do. However despite these good experiences it took her less than a week to decide that it was useless for Japanese, and move on to a random flashcard program instead. As an interesting aside, we have objective evidence of these linguistic differences from machine learning. Google Translate originally worked by a form of statistical pattern matching across large numbers of original and translated documents. This worked brilliantly for Indo-European languages, but did badly for various Asian languages. To my understanding for much the same fundamental reasons that Duolingo does.
zawerf 9y ago
Once you have the basics down, I like anki or memrise better for picking up vocab. You can do decks based on JLPT levels or do Core 2k/6k. Here's the memrise course series I am using (6000 words broken up into chunks of 500, frequency optimized): https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-1/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-voc... (first of 500 of 6000) https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-2/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-voc... (next 500 words) https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-3/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-voc... https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-4/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-voc... The "SGJL" series also does grammar but it was easier to just reread tae kim every so often: https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide-for-japanese-literacy-sgjl-course-series/1100 https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide...
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods: - Vocabulary study with Anki - Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop - Grammar study via Tae Kim - Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television - Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel - Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels - Regular meetups with friends (native speakers) IRL - Translating anime and manga from Japanese to English Soon I'd like to start blogging in Japanese, too, but that's a lot of work. Can also recommend jisho.org as the best Japanese/English dictionary on the web, and djt's bunpou guide as a deep grammar reference resource.
  - jwong_ 9y ago
    Can you share how you're showing the vocab on the desktop? That would be a neat study tool.
    - stevep98 9y ago
      Try the rikaikun chrome extension?
stordoff 9y ago
> - Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective It's not only useless for learning the kanji, it's useless for learning the rest of the language is well. Long strings of kana are harder to read/parse (even when you don't recognise the kanji, you can parse to something like <noun><grammar><verb><grammar etc. just based on the structure and see where the parts you don't understand are, which is much harder to do with just the kana form), and there are multiple times where after learning the kanji I've thought "Oh, _now_ that thing in Duolingo makes sense. It's also easier to remember when building off the other kanji, and lets you build understanding. Say you know that 姉 is "older sister" and 妹 is "younger sister" -- you can make a pretty good guess that 姉妹 just means "sisters", even if you can't actually pronounce it. You can't really do that when all Duolingo has taught you is "older sister" is ane/あね and "younger sister" is imouto/いもうと and not the kanji form, and you certainly won't see how they are connected when "sisters" is introduced as shimai/しまい. Learning the kanji steepens the learning curve for sure (which is why I suppose Duolingo introduce very few), but it gives you a _much_ better understanding and I felt more comfortable manipulating the language.

lambda 9y ago

The Japanese lessons are listed as being in beta. But yeah, I think they're going to have to do a pretty complete revamp of the Japanese course, and possibly add some more features like handwriting recognition for learning the characters. I did a little of that on my own, putting together a flash card deck that I could type in Japanese in, and used Android's Japanese handwriting input method to enter characters, and found that pretty good for learning kana, but I didn't feel like putting all of the work in for building such decks for the kanji I was learning as well. I find Duolingo much better for the lessons that are more well developed, and which the software was originally written for, like French. I think that they could eventually get to the point where the Japanese lessons are useful, but now is not that point; they will need both some software updates that make Japanese learning work better, and a revamp of the curriculum.

btilly 9y ago

...trying to cram their prepackaged square-shaped tools into a variety of circle-shaped holes. All languages are different and each requires a different approach. The first half of this is dead on. The second half is wrong. Duolingo's top languages are in the Indo-European family. (Their most learned language is English, next is Spanish.) Their techniques are perfectly adequate for gaining elementary vocabulary a basic grounding in the grammar of those languages. The most common languages in that language family are positional. You really do need to learn to say "black shirt" in English versus "camisa negra" in Spanish. Saying it in the other order is wrong. Their tools don't work well for other language families. However they do work for lots of languages that people want to learn.

CrystalLangUser 9y ago
No, languages are indeed different. Providing elementary grammar or vocabulary is next to useless in real conversation with natives. I highly doubt anyone is SOLELY learning English or Spanish through Duolingo. It's important to look at resources that languages provide- English and Spanish also have immense amounts of media to listen to and read, and obviously a lot of people to talk with. I would say that helps far more than learning simple grammar.
- btilly 9y ago
  I'm not sure what point you think you are responding to. My point is that a particular approach tends to work similarly well across many languages within a language family. Duolingo's method is effective at providing elementary grammar and vocabulary within Indo-European languages. I agree that it does not get you a sufficient vocabulary to read, or the verbal reflexes for speech. But it is an effective approach for an absolute beginner. Everything that I've heard about it says that it is basically useless for various Asian languages. Even for absolute beginners. For example my wife used Duolingo with languages like Polish and Spanish. She was quite happy with the results, even though she outgrew what the app can do. However despite these good experiences it took her less than a week to decide that it was useless for Japanese, and move on to a random flashcard program instead. As an interesting aside, we have objective evidence of these linguistic differences from machine learning. Google Translate originally worked by a form of statistical pattern matching across large numbers of original and translated documents. This worked brilliantly for Indo-European languages, but did badly for various Asian languages. To my understanding for much the same fundamental reasons that Duolingo does.

zawerf 9y ago

Once you have the basics down, I like anki or memrise better for picking up vocab. You can do decks based on JLPT levels or do Core 2k/6k. Here's the memrise course series I am using (6000 words broken up into chunks of 500, frequency optimized): https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-1/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1091685/sgjl-05-core-2k6k-voc... (first of 500 of 6000) https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-2/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125407/sgjl-07-core-2k6k-voc... (next 500 words) https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-3/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125874/sgjl-10-core-2k6k-voc... https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-vocabulary-optimized-pt-4/ https://www.memrise.com/course/1125879/sgjl-12-core-2k6k-voc... The "SGJL" series also does grammar but it was easier to just reread tae kim every so often: https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide-for-japanese-literacy-sgjl-course-series/1100 https://community.memrise.com/t/course-forum-suggested-guide...

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods: - Vocabulary study with Anki - Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop - Grammar study via Tae Kim - Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television - Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel - Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels - Regular meetups with friends (native speakers) IRL - Translating anime and manga from Japanese to English Soon I'd like to start blogging in Japanese, too, but that's a lot of work. Can also recommend jisho.org as the best Japanese/English dictionary on the web, and djt's bunpou guide as a deep grammar reference resource.
- jwong_ 9y ago
  Can you share how you're showing the vocab on the desktop? That would be a neat study tool.
  - stevep98 9y ago
    Try the rikaikun chrome extension?

stordoff 9y ago

> - Their approach to learning Kanji (borrowed Chinese characters) is completely ineffective It's not only useless for learning the kanji, it's useless for learning the rest of the language is well. Long strings of kana are harder to read/parse (even when you don't recognise the kanji, you can parse to something like <noun><grammar><verb><grammar etc. just based on the structure and see where the parts you don't understand are, which is much harder to do with just the kana form), and there are multiple times where after learning the kanji I've thought "Oh, _now_ that thing in Duolingo makes sense. It's also easier to remember when building off the other kanji, and lets you build understanding. Say you know that 姉 is "older sister" and 妹 is "younger sister" -- you can make a pretty good guess that 姉妹 just means "sisters", even if you can't actually pronounce it. You can't really do that when all Duolingo has taught you is "older sister" is ane/あね and "younger sister" is imouto/いもうと and not the kanji form, and you certainly won't see how they are connected when "sisters" is introduced as shimai/しまい. Learning the kanji steepens the learning curve for sure (which is why I suppose Duolingo introduce very few), but it gives you a _much_ better understanding and I felt more comfortable manipulating the language.