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Look, as you mentioned, you just don't know what you are talking about to extrapolate what you want explained. Use Duolingo for 5 minutes like the rest of us an

Look, as you mentioned, you just don't know what you are talking about to extrapolate what you want explained. Use Duolingo for 5 minutes like the rest of us and get with the program.

yorwba 8y ago
I did that. I took the initial test for Japanese, where I answered correctly for sentences I already understood or where I was only missing a single word I could guess by elimination. Given multiple options I couldn't distinguish, I messed up as it should be. Based on the test results, I was skipped past 23 of the 40 topics I can see in the course. Considering that I've been learning for only three months, that makes the course look a bit short. When I then tried the next lesson, I did notice some questions repeating, but there was also some variety. So I don't know whether it's possible to just memorize all the sentences without learning grammar. Based on me trying Duolingo a single time now, I'd now say that the biggest problem is the small amount of topics covered in a course, which limits the vocabulary you know how to use after completing it. But that's not what the original complaint said, so maybe someone who's used Duolingo 5 minutes a day for several months is still in a better position to explain what the actual problem with Duolingo is.
- gammateam 8y ago
  They don't explain rules. They try to classically condition you without explaining why you would ever synthesize a word or phrase that way. It becomes more apparent when you realize these apps are not smart. They were novel at one point, and maybe you can pick up a phrase to catch a native speaker off guard. Duolingo is using humans to translate web content that algorithms are unsure about. This is the same founder of reCaptcha, who uses captcha's to use humans to tell robots about what the robots are unsure of. Memrise, on the other hand, just takes the "87% most used phrases" and tries to get you to memorize the. They have zero holistic approach to any of the languages they offer. You will never learn tense, language-specific concepts and rules, idioms that break all the rules, or whatever locals just say.

Look, as you mentioned, you just don't know what you are talking about to extrapolate what you want explained. Use Duolingo for 5 minutes like the rest of us and get with the program.

yorwba 8y ago

I did that. I took the initial test for Japanese, where I answered correctly for sentences I already understood or where I was only missing a single word I could guess by elimination. Given multiple options I couldn't distinguish, I messed up as it should be. Based on the test results, I was skipped past 23 of the 40 topics I can see in the course. Considering that I've been learning for only three months, that makes the course look a bit short. When I then tried the next lesson, I did notice some questions repeating, but there was also some variety. So I don't know whether it's possible to just memorize all the sentences without learning grammar. Based on me trying Duolingo a single time now, I'd now say that the biggest problem is the small amount of topics covered in a course, which limits the vocabulary you know how to use after completing it. But that's not what the original complaint said, so maybe someone who's used Duolingo 5 minutes a day for several months is still in a better position to explain what the actual problem with Duolingo is.

gammateam 8y ago
They don't explain rules. They try to classically condition you without explaining why you would ever synthesize a word or phrase that way. It becomes more apparent when you realize these apps are not smart. They were novel at one point, and maybe you can pick up a phrase to catch a native speaker off guard. Duolingo is using humans to translate web content that algorithms are unsure about. This is the same founder of reCaptcha, who uses captcha's to use humans to tell robots about what the robots are unsure of. Memrise, on the other hand, just takes the "87% most used phrases" and tries to get you to memorize the. They have zero holistic approach to any of the languages they offer. You will never learn tense, language-specific concepts and rules, idioms that break all the rules, or whatever locals just say.