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They have users... but the tool(app), other than being really cute and well made, is super basic... You can't expect to be fluent enough in a language JUST with

They have users... but the tool(app), other than being really cute and well made, is super basic... You can't expect to be fluent enough in a language JUST with Duolingo, at most you will be able to read a few sentences and spit out a few basic sentences and words. Is that enough? Definitely not. Not for me at least. They basically give you the 'hello world' of a language. I speak 5 languages (learned through school and life choices) but when I tried to learn a 6th on Duolingo I felt like the experience was not good enough for me. A tutor or a class would probably be mandatory and using Duolingo just for re-affirming some basic concepts would be a nice to have, like a companion app..but they have to be able to let teachers create their own lessons.

henrikschroder 7y ago
I've tried duolingo, but it's not for me. It just teaches you phrases and words, without teaching you the structure. I need grammar rules and lists of prepositions and verb endings. I need ten examples in a row where you change out a single word, to teach you how it changes the rest of the sentence. Duolingo is just random flashcards, claiming to be grouped into lessons. I can absolutely see it as a companion tool to a proper language course, but it's not sufficient in itself, at least not for me.
trilliumbaker 7y ago
I worked as a language teacher for a while. You see products like Duolingo come along all the time. They're always accompanied by hype in how they will help you become fluent. It's simply not the case. The products are not necessarily useless, but they only help some people make some progress some of the time. They never live up to the hype around them. Language acquisition is a multifaceted endeavor which takes time and effort. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or lying. (There are some outliers who can learn/acquire languages with great speed, but they're very rare.)
- charlesism 7y ago
  > Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or lying. Duolingo's "Goal" settings: > Basic 1XP | Casual 10XP | Regular 20XP | Serious 30XP | Insane 50XP per day 50XP requires no more than 25 minutes of work. So, according to Duolingo, it is "Insane" to devote 25 minutes per day on learning a language. To learn a language typically requires 50,000 minutes. And that's just to reach a basic level. I wonder if Duolingo's "Casual" learners realize that that setting implies a 30 year commitment.
tasogare 7y ago
Same opinion. Too bad my profs don’t let me apply my idea in a more "product" way and on the languages I care about because I have a few ideas to improve the situation (one being the one I research for my PhD). So, I’m doing it on my spare time but it takes longer than I want.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
guptaneil 7y ago
I agree that Duolingo is not sufficient to become fluent in a language, but I’d argue that no app could be. Immersion is generally the only way to become fluent. Having said that, I’ve found the learning experience on Duolingo varies wildly depending on the language. French, for example, has an excellent curriculum with stories and live conversations with bots. Dutch or Hindi on the other hand are extremely lacking.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  Considering the amount of funding and market share they have, I am surprised they don't have anything more for users who want to really really learn a new language. Not even a meetup strategy (for example, I am thinking of various usergroups for diff tech stacks around the world that are mostly on meetupdotcom) or so..
  - wlkr 7y ago
    There are 'official' meetups [0] but whenever I've looked there's been nothing local to me. It seems to be very dependent on where you live, although that's to be expected. [0]: https://events.duolingo.com/ https://events.duolingo.com/
    - orliesaurus 7y ago
      I feel you and also hear you but...at the same time there are Python/Java/Php meetups in every medium and large cities
  - TaylorGood 7y ago
    Is AI good for this space? Human-like conversation without overhead of human hours.
    - blotter_paper 7y ago
      I had this same thought, but my fear would be that it could be confusing/misleading. GPT-2 is really impressive but sometimes it produces phrases that look like a natural language at first glance but don't make any sense when you really try to parse them, or statements that do make sense on their own but are directly contradicted by the next statement it makes. I'd hate to be learning a language and pick up nonsensical language use from an AI. My guess is that we're not quite there, and an attempt at this would end up being really confusing/misleading for the learner, but I fundamentally agree that an app could give you fluency via AI conversations and I suspect it will be done in the nearish future.
twiceaday 7y ago
Teaching a billion people ten words makes a lot more money than teaching 100k people 100k words. The stated goal is to teach _you_ a language but the actual goal is to be lightly used by as many people as possible.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  10 words...yeah not that good then.
  - gbear605 7y ago
    10 words is an understatement, but the more reasonable estimate of probably around 1000 isn’t fluency either
    - yoz-y 7y ago
      But 1000 is more than enough to get around.
      - gbear605 7y ago
        Yeah, Duolingo is definitely enough of a tool if you want to start to use the language in the foreign country, but it’ll be very obvious that you’re a beginner. I’d say that’s probably the best way to learn, but you have to be prepared to be very confused.
        yoz-y 7y ago
        In the end I think that the only way to really learn a language is immersion and/or daily usage. Any class, tutor, book or app can only get you so far. Get some basics and then practice by reading, watching stuff and most importantly: talking with other people. Duolingo is pretty good to get you to the start line.
- echelon 7y ago
  I don't know. If we could figure out a way to instantly impart someone with full fluency in a language for $100k, there would be so many takers.
tomlu 7y ago
Is there a better option to reach beginner-intermediate level? I am going to have to learn French from scratch in about a month and I'm finding the prospect daunting.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > I am going to have to learn French from scratch in about a month and I'm finding the prospect daunting. I'm intrigued by the fact that you can see this requirement coming up. What's imposing it on you? What defines "success" in learning French? If you're interested in the experimental views of a random person on the internet, babies learn language in the following sequence: 1. Listen to the language with no understanding or context. By the time you're born, you will be able to tell the difference between your language(s), and a foreign language. 2. Practice producing sounds that could be part of the target language. If you're learning French, then at this stage you're pronouncing nonsense syllables, but at least they're nonsense French syllables. 3. Be exposed to many example sentences for which you already know the meaning. (This is actually an ongoing process which never terminates -- seeing an unfamiliar word used in a sentence for which you know the meaning is how you learn new words.) 4. Learn some single words. ("Mom". "Moon". "Jump".) 5. Use your words to communicate with the people around you. Look how they smile! 6. With your growing understanding of sentence structure, move on to sentences. --- As an adult learner, you can collapse the phases (as do babies, really) and take advantage of formal instruction to learn things much faster than a baby can. I strongly recommend using formal instruction to go from "nothing" to "beginner" level. But stages 2, 3, and 6 remain crucially important for pronunciation, understanding, and production, and you should probably focus some time on each of them. You may not need certain abilities. Foreign learners frequently never achieve native-like pronunciation, because strange pronunciation is only a minor barrier to communication. And many people learn a language to the point that they can understand it but can't really produce it themselves. And a word of warning from personal experience -- I can converse well enough over text messages in Chinese for Chinese speakers to feel basically comfortable. All of my practice is in text -- in person, I still can't speak at all. You'll only develop skills that you use.
  - matwood 7y ago
kerakaali 7y ago
I think it's too hopeful to learn the ins and outs of a language through an app alone. As you mentioned, Duolingo is a tool and very rarely does one tool fit all use cases. I see Duolingo as more of an interactive digital textbook, but as always there is a gap between completing exercises and applying your knowledge to the real world.
guelo 7y ago
There are a lot more people that have the idea of learning a language than there are people that actually go through with learning a language.
cheez 7y ago
Just an anecdote. My son was taking an extra language at school and wasn't doing too well. Duolingo every day for 6 months with one rest day and he went from a C to an A. I believe it gives people basic, basic competency like you would get if you were a Chinese person who never learned English formally but watched English movies all the time.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  > My son was taking an extra language at school and wasn't doing too well. Duolingo every day for 6 months with one rest day and he went from a C to an A. School language classes are notorious for leaving their students unable to function in the language that was supposedly "taught". I don't think that's the fault of the school or the classes, but I also don't think an improved grade in such a class is evidence of much additional competency. > I believe it gives people basic, basic competency like you would get if you were a Chinese person who never learned English formally but watched English movies all the time. Without some instruction at some point, the level of English competency you'll get by watching English movies all the time is zero, exactly the same as if you never watch anything.
  - cheez 7y ago
    Yes, school is terrible and we should all not go.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      Well, what's your goal in going to school? If it's to learn a foreign language, this is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint.
- tooMuchCensor 7y ago
  For a class, I can see it helping. For speaking it seems useless. Memorizing nouns is what Duolingo does best
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
felipemnoa 7y ago
>>Is that enough? Definitely not. Not for me at least. They basically give you the 'hello world' of a language. Maybe try something like this: https://www.conversifi.com https://www.conversifi.com It allows you to practice with a native speaker in your target language. Disclaimer: I'm friends with one of the founders
simonswords82 7y ago
I dare you to come up with something better that has more traction. It's far too easy on HN to put other's work down - they've done fantastically well and made the world a slightly better place IMO.
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  Oh here we go again...typical HN comment. I ain't putting them down, I am saying they have a lot of headspace to improve now that they proved their worth and valuation. Sharing ideas and feedback on startups is still the focal point of HN last time I checked.
  - droithomme 7y ago
    Sounds like an excellent opportunity for you to beat them with your own superior ideas. I look forward to your upcoming "Show HN". Good luck.
- muzani 7y ago
  That's really the point of the comment. It hasn't really solved a problem, and yet it has a lot of 'traction'. It does worse than say, just picking up a kids book and a dictionary. If anything, I think it makes the world a slightly worse place. It means that someone committed to learning a language spends a lot of time on Duolingo and not something that works. They feel like they've made progress, but after weeks and months, they still can't read a label in the language. I'm saying this as someone who has been using Duolingo heavily this week and was getting frustrated at how inefficient it is.
jaredhansen 7y ago
>I speak 5 languages (learned through school and life choices) but when I tried to learn a 6th on Duolingo I felt like the experience was not good enough for me. Well of course it isn't, but that's like saying "I'm a fighter pilot (trained in the air force), but when I try to use Flight Simulator X, it feels like the experience isn't good enough for me." The DL experience isn't really for you at all. It's for people would a little bit like to learn a new language. Not people who want to do it so badly that they'll invest substantial time in school and "life choices" to make it happen.
- krustyburger 7y ago
  They aren’t promising the equivalent of a flight simulator, they’re claiming you’ll actually learn these languages. So I think the parent comment’s is a valid critique.
- dhdjdhd 7y ago
  My wife is using to learn Spanish, and she doing pretty good. First she’s really dedicated to it. And then she also has a lot of exposure to it. My kid goes to Spanish school, my parents speak Spanish, and she already understand a third latin language. So I see duolinguo as a way to systematically increase vocabulary so that you can better understand the language your exposed to.
- dx87 7y ago
  My parents are a good example of their target audience. They live in Alaska and planned a weeklong vacation in Panama, so they used Duolingo for 4-5 months before they left in order to learn enough spanish that they could ask and answer basic questions during their trip, but they have no desire to spend the time required to be fluent enough to have a full conversation.
  - mkl 7y ago
    How did they go? Was it sufficient?
    - 7y ago
claudeganon 7y ago
Duolingo is just a language learning simulator, gameified to make people feel like they’re accomplishing something they’re actually not. It’s ultimately a disservice to foreign language learning overall because there are legitimate self-study courses that can teach people to read various languages (speaking requires practice, back-and-forth with someone else, or lots of hours of videos).
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Nonsense. One of the most important parts of learning a language is daily exposure to it. Duolingo is a great tool in that toolbox. I learned all sorts of vocab and conjugations from Duolingo at a time in my casual learning where I certainly couldn't be fucked to open a grammar book. That didn't come until years into being able to read books in Spanish. To me, it's like telling people that jumping into a programming project does a disservice to you vs studying programming books and source code. Instead you need to realize that the most important thing is to be doing anything. There is no magic roadmap to learning something. Do whatever you can to practice daily even if it's just in the form of Duolingo exercises. You'll outgrow them eventually, but most people don't even reach that point. Most people dabbling in a language don't even know if it's something they want to do for the 5+ years it takes to really learn it. Duolingo excels here. Giving someone some long term serious roadmap does not. They will probably just lose interest and give up.
Rebelgecko 7y ago
When I tried it before, the app felt like flash cards but their actual website included grammar lessons that explained what was going on. Things like the boring old table of verb conjugations that you'd expect in a textbook, which the app tries to teach you more organically.
newguy1234 7y ago
This is the big problem in edtech. If you want to gain tons of users in edtech then you just need to make a bunch of very basic type materials which allows users to not get frustrated (and leave) and allows the platform to create lots of easy to develop content. For anyone serious about edtech, this is a problem because only having a basic understanding of a subject is pretty much useless. At a certain point, you need high-quality (college-level equivalent) type content. For edtech companies, that content is both harder to make and thus more expensive. At the same time, the userbase interested in that level of material declines rapidly.
- Roritharr 7y ago
  This is interesting, looking from the outside I've always assumed that edtech had the problem of their content becoming less valuable too fast and figured they should invest more in better presentation and delivery of user-generated/curated content than on content itself.
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  I concur. I'd phrase like this... at some point you transition from offering the course highlights to simply offering the course. And the highlights seeker is probably a different customer to the more ambitious student.
ben_w 7y ago
Duolingo got me up to about B1 German; I’ve been continuing with it (for practice), Clozemaster (for vocabulary and a much broader range of example sentences), and German language news podcasts specifically aimed at language learners (to get a broader range of voices with easy content). I’m also using Duolingo for Esperanto and Greek, and I don’t feel like it’s teaching me either of those languages to the same standard it taught me German. Nevertheless, it’s good enough for me to subscribe.
- ArmandGrillet 7y ago
  I didn't know about Clozemaster, seems really useful to learn complex sentences! Would you mind sharing the podcasts you're listening to? I'm watching "Arte journal" in German but it sometimes goes too fast and news for kids like "ZDFtivi logo!" do not teach you a lot of vocabulary after a while.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Sure: News: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/langsam-gesprochene-nachrichten-deutsch-lernen-deutsche/id282930329 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/langsam-gesprochene-na... Interviews with videos: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/video-thema-deutsch-lernen-deutsche-welle/id322542709 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/video-thema-deutsch-le... More general German language learning podcasts: * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coffee-break-german/id595399272 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coffee-break-german/id... * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/slow-german/id1085828103 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/slow-german/id10858281...
- tasubotadas 7y ago
  I basically had the same journey. Did you find any tech-related or business-related podcasts in German that would be interesting to listen to?
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Not at my skill level. The closest I’ve encountered are occasional German language YouTube adverts that sometimes run before tech videos — but I wouldn’t call those interesting.
netcan 7y ago
>>You can't expect to be fluent enough in a language JUST with Duolingo This is true, but I don't think it's damming. It's also true of exercise books, flash cards and such that they replace. Duolingo teaches a basic vocab grammar, "spoken" in one-liners. Within that scope, it is, imo, a nice app. The core theme is "no pain," and it is enjoyable. "Not good as a tutor" is a high bar. Not sure it's fair. OTOH, "as good as a tutor" is the right bar. It would be awesome if they (or anyone) had software that teaches through to working fluency. In any case, I think we should avoid thinking of good outcomes in tech monolith/monopoly terms. We don't need Duolingo to "eat the world" of language learning. Say we have 20 or 30 duolingos^ that add up to online language learning.
netwanderer3 7y ago
Grammar is one specific area I found Duolingo is lacking. Their method mainly focuses on vocabulary learning while completely ignoring grammar, at least that is the case in Spanish language. Grammar is so fundamental as it is the spinal core of any language. Without comprehension of grammar, we effectively cannot construct full sentences that make sense. We would be limited to just knowing random words and phrases. There are many different ways to express the same idea in Spanish and so without understanding why a sentence was written in such a specific order, it is almost impossible to formulate a long-term pattern for that sentence structure in our brain. This is why grammar acts as a spinal core that holds all vocabulary together. For Duolingo to improve its effectiveness beyond its current capability, its development team needs to add additional modules/lessons that focus more into this area.
jbj 7y ago
From my experience, there is a notable difference between using the app and the website. on the website, I would have a little written blob of theory, which I found missing from the app. other than that I had a much smoother user experience on the website, faster and fewer ads. also typing on a keyboard is a personal preference over a thumb on a touch screen in my hand. that said, I found it to be a reasonable basic intro to a few new languages.
- Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
  They do have theory but in the app as well. At least, on Android: https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f16a0abdf3f7ff84d/D33jaYxW/Screenshot_20191207-160050.png https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f...
billfruit 7y ago
May be, how about effectiveness of software like Rosetta Stone in learning new language?
progval 7y ago
I had German courses in middle and high school, but forgot most of it to the point I could barely understand simple sentences. I started re-learning it on Duolingo a year ago, and rapidly caught up at the level I had in high school (which was very low, but still), and now I'm making some progress. eg. I can read a newspaper article and have a rough idea of what it's about. I can't say whether or not I could learn a new language from scratch with Duolingo, but at least in my case it was helpful.

henrikschroder 7y ago

I've tried duolingo, but it's not for me. It just teaches you phrases and words, without teaching you the structure. I need grammar rules and lists of prepositions and verb endings. I need ten examples in a row where you change out a single word, to teach you how it changes the rest of the sentence. Duolingo is just random flashcards, claiming to be grouped into lessons. I can absolutely see it as a companion tool to a proper language course, but it's not sufficient in itself, at least not for me.

trilliumbaker 7y ago

I worked as a language teacher for a while. You see products like Duolingo come along all the time. They're always accompanied by hype in how they will help you become fluent. It's simply not the case. The products are not necessarily useless, but they only help some people make some progress some of the time. They never live up to the hype around them. Language acquisition is a multifaceted endeavor which takes time and effort. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or lying. (There are some outliers who can learn/acquire languages with great speed, but they're very rare.)

charlesism 7y ago
> Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or lying. Duolingo's "Goal" settings: > Basic 1XP | Casual 10XP | Regular 20XP | Serious 30XP | Insane 50XP per day 50XP requires no more than 25 minutes of work. So, according to Duolingo, it is "Insane" to devote 25 minutes per day on learning a language. To learn a language typically requires 50,000 minutes. And that's just to reach a basic level. I wonder if Duolingo's "Casual" learners realize that that setting implies a 30 year commitment.

tasogare 7y ago

Same opinion. Too bad my profs don’t let me apply my idea in a more "product" way and on the languages I care about because I have a few ideas to improve the situation (one being the one I research for my PhD). So, I’m doing it on my spare time but it takes longer than I want.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

guptaneil 7y ago

I agree that Duolingo is not sufficient to become fluent in a language, but I’d argue that no app could be. Immersion is generally the only way to become fluent. Having said that, I’ve found the learning experience on Duolingo varies wildly depending on the language. French, for example, has an excellent curriculum with stories and live conversations with bots. Dutch or Hindi on the other hand are extremely lacking.

orliesaurus 7y ago
Considering the amount of funding and market share they have, I am surprised they don't have anything more for users who want to really really learn a new language. Not even a meetup strategy (for example, I am thinking of various usergroups for diff tech stacks around the world that are mostly on meetupdotcom) or so..
- wlkr 7y ago
  There are 'official' meetups [0] but whenever I've looked there's been nothing local to me. It seems to be very dependent on where you live, although that's to be expected. [0]: https://events.duolingo.com/ https://events.duolingo.com/
  - orliesaurus 7y ago
    I feel you and also hear you but...at the same time there are Python/Java/Php meetups in every medium and large cities
- TaylorGood 7y ago
  Is AI good for this space? Human-like conversation without overhead of human hours.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    I had this same thought, but my fear would be that it could be confusing/misleading. GPT-2 is really impressive but sometimes it produces phrases that look like a natural language at first glance but don't make any sense when you really try to parse them, or statements that do make sense on their own but are directly contradicted by the next statement it makes. I'd hate to be learning a language and pick up nonsensical language use from an AI. My guess is that we're not quite there, and an attempt at this would end up being really confusing/misleading for the learner, but I fundamentally agree that an app could give you fluency via AI conversations and I suspect it will be done in the nearish future.

twiceaday 7y ago

Teaching a billion people ten words makes a lot more money than teaching 100k people 100k words. The stated goal is to teach _you_ a language but the actual goal is to be lightly used by as many people as possible.

orliesaurus 7y ago
10 words...yeah not that good then.
- gbear605 7y ago
  10 words is an understatement, but the more reasonable estimate of probably around 1000 isn’t fluency either
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    But 1000 is more than enough to get around.
    - gbear605 7y ago
      Yeah, Duolingo is definitely enough of a tool if you want to start to use the language in the foreign country, but it’ll be very obvious that you’re a beginner. I’d say that’s probably the best way to learn, but you have to be prepared to be very confused.
      - yoz-y 7y ago
        In the end I think that the only way to really learn a language is immersion and/or daily usage. Any class, tutor, book or app can only get you so far. Get some basics and then practice by reading, watching stuff and most importantly: talking with other people. Duolingo is pretty good to get you to the start line.
echelon 7y ago
I don't know. If we could figure out a way to instantly impart someone with full fluency in a language for $100k, there would be so many takers.

tomlu 7y ago

Is there a better option to reach beginner-intermediate level? I am going to have to learn French from scratch in about a month and I'm finding the prospect daunting.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> I am going to have to learn French from scratch in about a month and I'm finding the prospect daunting. I'm intrigued by the fact that you can see this requirement coming up. What's imposing it on you? What defines "success" in learning French? If you're interested in the experimental views of a random person on the internet, babies learn language in the following sequence: 1. Listen to the language with no understanding or context. By the time you're born, you will be able to tell the difference between your language(s), and a foreign language. 2. Practice producing sounds that could be part of the target language. If you're learning French, then at this stage you're pronouncing nonsense syllables, but at least they're nonsense French syllables. 3. Be exposed to many example sentences for which you already know the meaning. (This is actually an ongoing process which never terminates -- seeing an unfamiliar word used in a sentence for which you know the meaning is how you learn new words.) 4. Learn some single words. ("Mom". "Moon". "Jump".) 5. Use your words to communicate with the people around you. Look how they smile! 6. With your growing understanding of sentence structure, move on to sentences. --- As an adult learner, you can collapse the phases (as do babies, really) and take advantage of formal instruction to learn things much faster than a baby can. I strongly recommend using formal instruction to go from "nothing" to "beginner" level. But stages 2, 3, and 6 remain crucially important for pronunciation, understanding, and production, and you should probably focus some time on each of them. You may not need certain abilities. Foreign learners frequently never achieve native-like pronunciation, because strange pronunciation is only a minor barrier to communication. And many people learn a language to the point that they can understand it but can't really produce it themselves. And a word of warning from personal experience -- I can converse well enough over text messages in Chinese for Chinese speakers to feel basically comfortable. All of my practice is in text -- in person, I still can't speak at all. You'll only develop skills that you use.
- matwood 7y ago

kerakaali 7y ago

I think it's too hopeful to learn the ins and outs of a language through an app alone. As you mentioned, Duolingo is a tool and very rarely does one tool fit all use cases. I see Duolingo as more of an interactive digital textbook, but as always there is a gap between completing exercises and applying your knowledge to the real world.

guelo 7y ago

There are a lot more people that have the idea of learning a language than there are people that actually go through with learning a language.

cheez 7y ago

Just an anecdote. My son was taking an extra language at school and wasn't doing too well. Duolingo every day for 6 months with one rest day and he went from a C to an A. I believe it gives people basic, basic competency like you would get if you were a Chinese person who never learned English formally but watched English movies all the time.

thaumasiotes 7y ago
> My son was taking an extra language at school and wasn't doing too well. Duolingo every day for 6 months with one rest day and he went from a C to an A. School language classes are notorious for leaving their students unable to function in the language that was supposedly "taught". I don't think that's the fault of the school or the classes, but I also don't think an improved grade in such a class is evidence of much additional competency. > I believe it gives people basic, basic competency like you would get if you were a Chinese person who never learned English formally but watched English movies all the time. Without some instruction at some point, the level of English competency you'll get by watching English movies all the time is zero, exactly the same as if you never watch anything.
- cheez 7y ago
  Yes, school is terrible and we should all not go.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Well, what's your goal in going to school? If it's to learn a foreign language, this is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint.
tooMuchCensor 7y ago
For a class, I can see it helping. For speaking it seems useless. Memorizing nouns is what Duolingo does best
- hombre_fatal 7y ago

felipemnoa 7y ago

>>Is that enough? Definitely not. Not for me at least. They basically give you the 'hello world' of a language. Maybe try something like this: https://www.conversifi.com https://www.conversifi.com It allows you to practice with a native speaker in your target language. Disclaimer: I'm friends with one of the founders

simonswords82 7y ago

I dare you to come up with something better that has more traction. It's far too easy on HN to put other's work down - they've done fantastically well and made the world a slightly better place IMO.

orliesaurus 7y ago
Oh here we go again...typical HN comment. I ain't putting them down, I am saying they have a lot of headspace to improve now that they proved their worth and valuation. Sharing ideas and feedback on startups is still the focal point of HN last time I checked.
- droithomme 7y ago
  Sounds like an excellent opportunity for you to beat them with your own superior ideas. I look forward to your upcoming "Show HN". Good luck.
muzani 7y ago
That's really the point of the comment. It hasn't really solved a problem, and yet it has a lot of 'traction'. It does worse than say, just picking up a kids book and a dictionary. If anything, I think it makes the world a slightly worse place. It means that someone committed to learning a language spends a lot of time on Duolingo and not something that works. They feel like they've made progress, but after weeks and months, they still can't read a label in the language. I'm saying this as someone who has been using Duolingo heavily this week and was getting frustrated at how inefficient it is.

jaredhansen 7y ago

>I speak 5 languages (learned through school and life choices) but when I tried to learn a 6th on Duolingo I felt like the experience was not good enough for me. Well of course it isn't, but that's like saying "I'm a fighter pilot (trained in the air force), but when I try to use Flight Simulator X, it feels like the experience isn't good enough for me." The DL experience isn't really for you at all. It's for people would a little bit like to learn a new language. Not people who want to do it so badly that they'll invest substantial time in school and "life choices" to make it happen.

krustyburger 7y ago
They aren’t promising the equivalent of a flight simulator, they’re claiming you’ll actually learn these languages. So I think the parent comment’s is a valid critique.
dhdjdhd 7y ago
My wife is using to learn Spanish, and she doing pretty good. First she’s really dedicated to it. And then she also has a lot of exposure to it. My kid goes to Spanish school, my parents speak Spanish, and she already understand a third latin language. So I see duolinguo as a way to systematically increase vocabulary so that you can better understand the language your exposed to.
dx87 7y ago
My parents are a good example of their target audience. They live in Alaska and planned a weeklong vacation in Panama, so they used Duolingo for 4-5 months before they left in order to learn enough spanish that they could ask and answer basic questions during their trip, but they have no desire to spend the time required to be fluent enough to have a full conversation.
- mkl 7y ago
  How did they go? Was it sufficient?
  - 7y ago

claudeganon 7y ago

Duolingo is just a language learning simulator, gameified to make people feel like they’re accomplishing something they’re actually not. It’s ultimately a disservice to foreign language learning overall because there are legitimate self-study courses that can teach people to read various languages (speaking requires practice, back-and-forth with someone else, or lots of hours of videos).

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Nonsense. One of the most important parts of learning a language is daily exposure to it. Duolingo is a great tool in that toolbox. I learned all sorts of vocab and conjugations from Duolingo at a time in my casual learning where I certainly couldn't be fucked to open a grammar book. That didn't come until years into being able to read books in Spanish. To me, it's like telling people that jumping into a programming project does a disservice to you vs studying programming books and source code. Instead you need to realize that the most important thing is to be doing anything. There is no magic roadmap to learning something. Do whatever you can to practice daily even if it's just in the form of Duolingo exercises. You'll outgrow them eventually, but most people don't even reach that point. Most people dabbling in a language don't even know if it's something they want to do for the 5+ years it takes to really learn it. Duolingo excels here. Giving someone some long term serious roadmap does not. They will probably just lose interest and give up.

Rebelgecko 7y ago

When I tried it before, the app felt like flash cards but their actual website included grammar lessons that explained what was going on. Things like the boring old table of verb conjugations that you'd expect in a textbook, which the app tries to teach you more organically.

newguy1234 7y ago

This is the big problem in edtech. If you want to gain tons of users in edtech then you just need to make a bunch of very basic type materials which allows users to not get frustrated (and leave) and allows the platform to create lots of easy to develop content. For anyone serious about edtech, this is a problem because only having a basic understanding of a subject is pretty much useless. At a certain point, you need high-quality (college-level equivalent) type content. For edtech companies, that content is both harder to make and thus more expensive. At the same time, the userbase interested in that level of material declines rapidly.

Roritharr 7y ago
This is interesting, looking from the outside I've always assumed that edtech had the problem of their content becoming less valuable too fast and figured they should invest more in better presentation and delivery of user-generated/curated content than on content itself.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
I concur. I'd phrase like this... at some point you transition from offering the course highlights to simply offering the course. And the highlights seeker is probably a different customer to the more ambitious student.

ben_w 7y ago

Duolingo got me up to about B1 German; I’ve been continuing with it (for practice), Clozemaster (for vocabulary and a much broader range of example sentences), and German language news podcasts specifically aimed at language learners (to get a broader range of voices with easy content). I’m also using Duolingo for Esperanto and Greek, and I don’t feel like it’s teaching me either of those languages to the same standard it taught me German. Nevertheless, it’s good enough for me to subscribe.

ArmandGrillet 7y ago
I didn't know about Clozemaster, seems really useful to learn complex sentences! Would you mind sharing the podcasts you're listening to? I'm watching "Arte journal" in German but it sometimes goes too fast and news for kids like "ZDFtivi logo!" do not teach you a lot of vocabulary after a while.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Sure: News: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/langsam-gesprochene-nachrichten-deutsch-lernen-deutsche/id282930329 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/langsam-gesprochene-na... Interviews with videos: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/video-thema-deutsch-lernen-deutsche-welle/id322542709 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/video-thema-deutsch-le... More general German language learning podcasts: * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coffee-break-german/id595399272 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coffee-break-german/id... * https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/slow-german/id1085828103 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/slow-german/id10858281...
tasubotadas 7y ago
I basically had the same journey. Did you find any tech-related or business-related podcasts in German that would be interesting to listen to?
- ben_w 7y ago
  Not at my skill level. The closest I’ve encountered are occasional German language YouTube adverts that sometimes run before tech videos — but I wouldn’t call those interesting.

netcan 7y ago

>>You can't expect to be fluent enough in a language JUST with Duolingo This is true, but I don't think it's damming. It's also true of exercise books, flash cards and such that they replace. Duolingo teaches a basic vocab grammar, "spoken" in one-liners. Within that scope, it is, imo, a nice app. The core theme is "no pain," and it is enjoyable. "Not good as a tutor" is a high bar. Not sure it's fair. OTOH, "as good as a tutor" is the right bar. It would be awesome if they (or anyone) had software that teaches through to working fluency. In any case, I think we should avoid thinking of good outcomes in tech monolith/monopoly terms. We don't need Duolingo to "eat the world" of language learning. Say we have 20 or 30 duolingos^ that add up to online language learning.

netwanderer3 7y ago

Grammar is one specific area I found Duolingo is lacking. Their method mainly focuses on vocabulary learning while completely ignoring grammar, at least that is the case in Spanish language. Grammar is so fundamental as it is the spinal core of any language. Without comprehension of grammar, we effectively cannot construct full sentences that make sense. We would be limited to just knowing random words and phrases. There are many different ways to express the same idea in Spanish and so without understanding why a sentence was written in such a specific order, it is almost impossible to formulate a long-term pattern for that sentence structure in our brain. This is why grammar acts as a spinal core that holds all vocabulary together. For Duolingo to improve its effectiveness beyond its current capability, its development team needs to add additional modules/lessons that focus more into this area.

jbj 7y ago

From my experience, there is a notable difference between using the app and the website. on the website, I would have a little written blob of theory, which I found missing from the app. other than that I had a much smoother user experience on the website, faster and fewer ads. also typing on a keyboard is a personal preference over a thumb on a touch screen in my hand. that said, I found it to be a reasonable basic intro to a few new languages.

Andrew_nenakhov 7y ago
They do have theory but in the app as well. At least, on Android: https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f16a0abdf3f7ff84d/D33jaYxW/Screenshot_20191207-160050.png https://xmpp.redsolution.com/upload/4bddf4f264f5c6577f16551f...

billfruit 7y ago

May be, how about effectiveness of software like Rosetta Stone in learning new language?

progval 7y ago

I had German courses in middle and high school, but forgot most of it to the point I could barely understand simple sentences. I started re-learning it on Duolingo a year ago, and rapidly caught up at the level I had in high school (which was very low, but still), and now I'm making some progress. eg. I can read a newspaper article and have a rough idea of what it's about. I can't say whether or not I could learn a new language from scratch with Duolingo, but at least in my case it was helpful.