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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

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.
- barney54 7y ago
  There are Duolingo meetups. https://events.duolingo.com/events/ https://events.duolingo.com/events/ I haven’t been to any, but they exist.
matt_the_bass 7y ago
Interesting. I speak 2 foreign languages fluently (French and German) learned through formal training and immersion. I go to the Netherlands at least once a year for work and can understand a little. So 2 weeks ago I started The DL Dutch lessons. I think they’re great! Certainly not a substitute for immersion, but I totally think that in 5 mins/day, I’ll be ready to converse a bit in a month or two. Not to say that DL couldn’t be better, but for what I’m paying, Dutch lessons from DL seem to be worth my time.
- philsnow 7y ago
  Dutch is so similar to German though that you're not having to learn any of the "hard parts". English speakers have a really hard time with German and Dutch piling up verbs at the end of giant clauses. You've already learned that when you became fluent in German. I would probably piss a lot of people off if I were to call Dutch a "dialect" of German, but Dutch is definitely the closest language to German. If you wanted to know whether Duolingo worked for language learning you'd be better off trying a language family that you're not already familiar with, but not one that's renowned for being particularly difficult like Japanese. Maybe Russian?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - xnyan 7y ago
    You’re preaching the truth here. I’m an English speaker who learned Russian and then taught russian for a decade or so. Duolingo is not going to help almost anyone significantly. What I mean by that is if you were a casual learner (nothing wrong with that) dedicating 5 to 30 minutes to duolingo a day, you will never be able to do anything other than say a few phrases or maybe pick out a few words of spoken russian here or there. Unless you are a language genius you will never be anything close to functional much less fluent without living in a 100% or close russian-speaking environment for a couple years at least. This is not me calling anyone dumb, russian is just really hard for almost all english speakers and requires an extreme amount of time and dedication. I don’t know if it’s true for other languages but I have a suspicion is that it is.
benatkin 7y ago
It's worse than virtually any other way to learn a language. Saying that you can't expect it to be perfect doesn't justify it being really bad. DuoLingo isn't optimized to learn a language, it's optimized to give people the feeling they're learning a language. Flash cards are better, books are better, CDs are better, Spotify is better, YouTube videos are a lot better, and learning in person is way better.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But is that actually true? When I see people say Duolingo is bad, they're always comparing it to some highly optimized language learning strategy, where you weave together Anki and suchandsuch grammar resource and a strict regimen of 30 minutes of target language media every day. I'd agree that Duolingo significantly compromises effectiveness for the sake of engagement, but to most people engagement is the hardest part of learning a language!
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    I would say that Duolingo does the distinctly American thing of optimizing for making you “feel good” about your progress, even if that progress has no correlation with actual language ability. It’s more of a self-esteem simulator by way of language-learning than it is a useful tool for foreign language instruction.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    The point is that if you want to learn a language, you either follow an intensive regimen like the one you've described, or you don't and you make essentially no progress. Learning languages is not rocket science. It's mostly just work and dedication.
  - AlchemistCamp 7y ago
    Yes, it's true. Using Duolingo is significantly worse than just about all your other options, including picking up a $30 Living Language textbook/workbook/CD set of whatever language you want. Living Language isn't aimed at university students or the most motivated people either. It's just one of the cheaper options. This is not just a throwaway comment, either. I've built and run a language school for four years (with two partners), taught thousands of children, worked at a language learning startup, and have read a lot L2 acquisition papers and know this space pretty well. I also contributed to Anki long ago, but I'm not a huge fan of using SRS for learning vocabulary. Extensive reading (and listening once you can) is a far better strategy. (Anki is pretty good for memorizing discrete pieces info though, such as how to write each Chinese character or all the atomic weights and numbers on the periodic table). As for engagement, I think Duolingo is pretty boring compared to making new friends, talking with people or even just reading a book about something I'm curious about. If you're learning any popular language (e.g. English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, etc), you'll be able to find some pretty good graded readers aimed at beginners that let you start actually reading in your first few months of studying.
rgoulter 7y ago
"extremely lacking" is an understatement for the neglected courses. My experience is that questions where the expected answer is ungrammatical aren't fixed for months/years. I wish they opened this up to community curation a bit for the less lucrative languages.

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.
barney54 7y ago
There are Duolingo meetups. https://events.duolingo.com/events/ https://events.duolingo.com/events/ I haven’t been to any, but they exist.

matt_the_bass 7y ago

Interesting. I speak 2 foreign languages fluently (French and German) learned through formal training and immersion. I go to the Netherlands at least once a year for work and can understand a little. So 2 weeks ago I started The DL Dutch lessons. I think they’re great! Certainly not a substitute for immersion, but I totally think that in 5 mins/day, I’ll be ready to converse a bit in a month or two. Not to say that DL couldn’t be better, but for what I’m paying, Dutch lessons from DL seem to be worth my time.

philsnow 7y ago
Dutch is so similar to German though that you're not having to learn any of the "hard parts". English speakers have a really hard time with German and Dutch piling up verbs at the end of giant clauses. You've already learned that when you became fluent in German. I would probably piss a lot of people off if I were to call Dutch a "dialect" of German, but Dutch is definitely the closest language to German. If you wanted to know whether Duolingo worked for language learning you'd be better off trying a language family that you're not already familiar with, but not one that's renowned for being particularly difficult like Japanese. Maybe Russian?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xnyan 7y ago
  You’re preaching the truth here. I’m an English speaker who learned Russian and then taught russian for a decade or so. Duolingo is not going to help almost anyone significantly. What I mean by that is if you were a casual learner (nothing wrong with that) dedicating 5 to 30 minutes to duolingo a day, you will never be able to do anything other than say a few phrases or maybe pick out a few words of spoken russian here or there. Unless you are a language genius you will never be anything close to functional much less fluent without living in a 100% or close russian-speaking environment for a couple years at least. This is not me calling anyone dumb, russian is just really hard for almost all english speakers and requires an extreme amount of time and dedication. I don’t know if it’s true for other languages but I have a suspicion is that it is.

benatkin 7y ago

It's worse than virtually any other way to learn a language. Saying that you can't expect it to be perfect doesn't justify it being really bad. DuoLingo isn't optimized to learn a language, it's optimized to give people the feeling they're learning a language. Flash cards are better, books are better, CDs are better, Spotify is better, YouTube videos are a lot better, and learning in person is way better.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
But is that actually true? When I see people say Duolingo is bad, they're always comparing it to some highly optimized language learning strategy, where you weave together Anki and suchandsuch grammar resource and a strict regimen of 30 minutes of target language media every day. I'd agree that Duolingo significantly compromises effectiveness for the sake of engagement, but to most people engagement is the hardest part of learning a language!
- claudeganon 7y ago
  I would say that Duolingo does the distinctly American thing of optimizing for making you “feel good” about your progress, even if that progress has no correlation with actual language ability. It’s more of a self-esteem simulator by way of language-learning than it is a useful tool for foreign language instruction.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  The point is that if you want to learn a language, you either follow an intensive regimen like the one you've described, or you don't and you make essentially no progress. Learning languages is not rocket science. It's mostly just work and dedication.
- AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  Yes, it's true. Using Duolingo is significantly worse than just about all your other options, including picking up a $30 Living Language textbook/workbook/CD set of whatever language you want. Living Language isn't aimed at university students or the most motivated people either. It's just one of the cheaper options. This is not just a throwaway comment, either. I've built and run a language school for four years (with two partners), taught thousands of children, worked at a language learning startup, and have read a lot L2 acquisition papers and know this space pretty well. I also contributed to Anki long ago, but I'm not a huge fan of using SRS for learning vocabulary. Extensive reading (and listening once you can) is a far better strategy. (Anki is pretty good for memorizing discrete pieces info though, such as how to write each Chinese character or all the atomic weights and numbers on the periodic table). As for engagement, I think Duolingo is pretty boring compared to making new friends, talking with people or even just reading a book about something I'm curious about. If you're learning any popular language (e.g. English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, etc), you'll be able to find some pretty good graded readers aimed at beginners that let you start actually reading in your first few months of studying.

rgoulter 7y ago

"extremely lacking" is an understatement for the neglected courses. My experience is that questions where the expected answer is ungrammatical aren't fixed for months/years. I wish they opened this up to community curation a bit for the less lucrative languages.