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I found the article to be BS. My experience: 1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinfo

I found the article to be BS. My experience: 1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. 2) Duolingo is okay for some things, but not for others. But discounting all apps after having tried one or two, though, is a lot like the famous Gates quote: "640k should be enough for anybody" (which he claims to have never said), or the nineties articles as to why no one would shop online. 3) Pimsleur is brilliant for developing basic conversational ability. It works really, really well. 4) The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency, but it stops at a half-year of lessons for the most developed languages (and 2 weeks for some of the less developed ones). Developing four years of lessons at this level of quality is hard and expensive. 5) BUT: Moving on beyond Pimsleur, there is a range of tools which are passable. Things like Duolingo, Memrise, Supermemo, etc. can help build vocabulary. There are apps for watching movies for language learning (which adds subtitles, dictionaries, etc.) which can help build comprehension. Etc. Picking-and-choosing, you can get something which, while not as good as going there, is much better than classes. 6) This field is progressing super-quickly on the whole. What we have today is much better than five years ago, and we'll have much better things five years from now. I'd be surprised if apps weren't the best way to learn a language in not too long.

coldtea 7y ago
>1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. And yet, hundreds of millions of people have learned a foreign language that way. In this corner of Europe it's de rigueur for everyone to study 2 or more foreign languages during middle and high school, and (some very rich kids with private tutors aside) everybody does it at foreign language schools with classes of 10-15 other people. It still works just fine.
usaar333 7y ago
> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds radically different from my native English). From what I've seen the ability for computers to give feedback on what you are doing wrong is far away from a trained human's. > The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency, I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this?
- laGrenouille 7y ago
  >> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. > Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. In my experience, a private tutor really is not any more expensive than an classroom environment when you factor in the reduced number of hours needed. I have been taking language lessons online with 1-on-1 tutors (via Skype) through italki. You can easily find good native speakers with teaching qualifications for under $15 / hour. I find that I get more out of a dedicated hour with a tutor than half-day course in a classroom.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    My brother and sister get individual Japanese lessons from a UCSC professor for 60 minutes a week. They apparently progress faster than the actual Japanese class. (I believe a normal UCSC class has 3-4 hours / week of classroom time.)
  - trixie_ 7y ago
    +1 for italki, being able to talk with a native speaker on demand for a low price is so awesome.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin One of the points made in The Language Instinct is that children pick up their languages without using any explicit feedback. That is, people in the child's life who can already speak are liable to ignore errors in the child's speech, and when they do point out errors, the child will essentially always ignore the feedback. But I wouldn't say children don't get feedback at all. They get a lot of important feedback, such as whether the thing they wanted to happen when they spoke did happen, or whether the person they were talking to appeared to understand them. However, this kind of feedback is generally not the kind provided by a "teacher"; everyone automatically provides it.
  - usaar333 7y ago
faitswulff 7y ago
I think the problem with Pimsleur is that the number of topics that you could become "fluent" in explodes once you get past a certain level of proficiency. I doubt that it could take you to fluency except in a very narrow range of topics due to the degree of repetition required.
reactspa 7y ago
> There are apps for watching movies for language learning (which adds subtitles, dictionaries, etc.) I've been searching for such apps (for watching movies/audio-visual content). Got any names to share? Thanks.
- YankY 7y ago
  I recently discovered https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ You get a nice overview of movies in a certain language available in your country. I don't use their Chrome extension though, so I can't say anything about that
  - davidzweig 7y ago
    I'm one of the two developers, thanks for the mention. :-) We're working on YouTube support now for the extension. Something else I've been working on: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699 https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699
    - kpozin 7y ago
      It would be great to crowd-source data on whether Netflix's audio track matches the subtitles for a particular film. Even when the original audio language and subtitle language match, the subtitles often paraphrase the spoken dialogue, making it difficult to follow along.
      - davidzweig 7y ago
        In my investigations, this isn't too common, but I guess it depends on where in the Netflix catalogue (14,000 titles) you are digging. When Original language of film === audio language === subtitle language, things generally match up, in my experience. The subtitle accuracy for some less popular or older material can vary a bit though.
- juliango 7y ago
  I'm the author of jijimaku, a free app to add dictionary definitions to subtitles if that helps.
Barrin92 7y ago
>1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. In almost all cases the primary reason for learning another language is conversation. The richness of interaction trumps the fact of picking up an accent or grammar errors. I learned French by living in France for half a year, and was relatively decent at it at the end of my stay. Over the last few years I've tried to learn several languages by book or through apps, and progress is significantly slower, maybe as much as ten times slower. There's so much richness in real world interaction, including visuals, sounds, connecting words and phrases to specific tasks, it's impossible to replace with an app.
schwartzworld 7y ago
I loved the Pimsleur method, but for Western Armenian, it stopped really early. Only 10 lessons! The biggest problem with Pimsleur is that for a language like Armenian, you have to learn to read to continue self learning. It's not like Spanish. I really couldn't find materials to bridge the gap from Pimsleur to more advanced studies.

coldtea 7y ago

>1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. And yet, hundreds of millions of people have learned a foreign language that way. In this corner of Europe it's de rigueur for everyone to study 2 or more foreign languages during middle and high school, and (some very rich kids with private tutors aside) everybody does it at foreign language schools with classes of 10-15 other people. It still works just fine.

usaar333 7y ago

> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds radically different from my native English). From what I've seen the ability for computers to give feedback on what you are doing wrong is far away from a trained human's. > The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency, I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this?

laGrenouille 7y ago
>> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. > Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive. In my experience, a private tutor really is not any more expensive than an classroom environment when you factor in the reduced number of hours needed. I have been taking language lessons online with 1-on-1 tutors (via Skype) through italki. You can easily find good native speakers with teaching qualifications for under $15 / hour. I find that I get more out of a dedicated hour with a tutor than half-day course in a classroom.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  My brother and sister get individual Japanese lessons from a UCSC professor for 60 minutes a week. They apparently progress faster than the actual Japanese class. (I believe a normal UCSC class has 3-4 hours / week of classroom time.)
- trixie_ 7y ago
  +1 for italki, being able to talk with a native speaker on demand for a low price is so awesome.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I could have learned elementary Mandarin One of the points made in The Language Instinct is that children pick up their languages without using any explicit feedback. That is, people in the child's life who can already speak are liable to ignore errors in the child's speech, and when they do point out errors, the child will essentially always ignore the feedback. But I wouldn't say children don't get feedback at all. They get a lot of important feedback, such as whether the thing they wanted to happen when they spoke did happen, or whether the person they were talking to appeared to understand them. However, this kind of feedback is generally not the kind provided by a "teacher"; everyone automatically provides it.
- usaar333 7y ago

faitswulff 7y ago

I think the problem with Pimsleur is that the number of topics that you could become "fluent" in explodes once you get past a certain level of proficiency. I doubt that it could take you to fluency except in a very narrow range of topics due to the degree of repetition required.

reactspa 7y ago

> There are apps for watching movies for language learning (which adds subtitles, dictionaries, etc.) I've been searching for such apps (for watching movies/audio-visual content). Got any names to share? Thanks.

YankY 7y ago
I recently discovered https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ You get a nice overview of movies in a certain language available in your country. I don't use their Chrome extension though, so I can't say anything about that
- davidzweig 7y ago
  I'm one of the two developers, thanks for the mention. :-) We're working on YouTube support now for the extension. Something else I've been working on: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699 https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?t=8699
  - kpozin 7y ago
    It would be great to crowd-source data on whether Netflix's audio track matches the subtitles for a particular film. Even when the original audio language and subtitle language match, the subtitles often paraphrase the spoken dialogue, making it difficult to follow along.
    - davidzweig 7y ago
      In my investigations, this isn't too common, but I guess it depends on where in the Netflix catalogue (14,000 titles) you are digging. When Original language of film === audio language === subtitle language, things generally match up, in my experience. The subtitle accuracy for some less popular or older material can vary a bit though.
juliango 7y ago
I'm the author of jijimaku, a free app to add dictionary definitions to subtitles if that helps.

Barrin92 7y ago

>1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc. In almost all cases the primary reason for learning another language is conversation. The richness of interaction trumps the fact of picking up an accent or grammar errors. I learned French by living in France for half a year, and was relatively decent at it at the end of my stay. Over the last few years I've tried to learn several languages by book or through apps, and progress is significantly slower, maybe as much as ten times slower. There's so much richness in real world interaction, including visuals, sounds, connecting words and phrases to specific tasks, it's impossible to replace with an app.

schwartzworld 7y ago

I loved the Pimsleur method, but for Western Armenian, it stopped really early. Only 10 lessons! The biggest problem with Pimsleur is that for a language like Armenian, you have to learn to read to continue self learning. It's not like Spanish. I really couldn't find materials to bridge the gap from Pimsleur to more advanced studies.