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I don’t doubt that it’s less efficient than learning from a human teacher, if you just look at the time spent by the student and ignore the “efficiency” of soft

by sjy 7y ago

I don’t doubt that it’s less efficient than learning from a human teacher, if you just look at the time spent by the student and ignore the “efficiency” of software that interacts with millions of students at the same time. I’ve never heard of anyone learning a language by passively listening to Spotify, so I have a hard time seeing it as a Duolingo alternative, but I’m sure just like Duolingo and other language tapes, it would be a valuable complement to any other language-learning tool. None of them will make you fluent without immersion. What makes you say that explicit instruction in grammar (which does exist in Duolingo, although you’re right that the emphasis is on vocabulary) and pronunciation is necessary? That’s not how people learn their native languages. Considering that anyone can learn any language with enough exposure, and most people fail to achieve their language learning goals due to giving up after less than a thousand hours, I’m skeptical of this kind of pedagogical criticism.

wbl 7y ago
Language acquisition after the developmental window is fundamentally different. Native language learning is not a good model for second language learning.
- sjy 7y ago
  The evidence for that “is limited, and support stems largely from theoretical arguments and analogies to other critical periods in biology such as visual development”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis
  - foldr 7y ago
    You can't trust Wikipedia on linguistics.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    I think it's not so much that second-language acquisition is harder than first-language acquisition, but that first-language acquisition is horribly slow. After five years of full-time study, do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language? Not to mention that you probably don't have the time to study a language full-time anymore. Babies spend a lot of time babbling, basically brute-forcing their way to a correct pronunciation. But what if you could make use of phonological research and resources like https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ to help you get there faster? Parents spend a lot of time playing "look at the X" games to help them learn vocabulary from examples. But what if you just look up unknown words in a dictionary and use spaced repetition to efficiently retain them? Second-language learners have already bootstrapped their way to being able to communicate with other humans. So why not just make use of that, rather than repeating the same slow process of trial and error for another language?
    - sjy 7y ago
      This is a good point. I did take a class on phonetics at uni, and it helps a lot with learning the basics of a new language. Maybe Duolingo should do a phonetics course which teaches IPA using examples from a range of different languages!
    - foldr 7y ago
      >do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I would regard the ability to speak as well as a 5 year old native speaker as an excellent outcome for five years of full time study of a language. Very few people achieve such a high level within that time.
      - yorwba 7y ago
        > In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I don't know about grammar, but I found a study [0] that estimates children in kindergarten (age 6) to have a mean vocabulary size of about 3000 root words. If you wanted to beat that in 5 years using spaced repetition, you'd only need to add less than 2 new flashcards per day. In my experience, 10+ new flashcards per day is doable. (When I was adding that many, I spent an hour a day on reviewing flashcards, which eventually made me scale back because I was only studying for fun in my free time.) If you know full-time language students who don't have as large a vocabulary, I wonder how full their time actually was. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimating_root_word_vocabulary_growth_in_normative_and_advantaged_populations_Evidence_for_a_common_sequence_of_vocabulary_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimatin...
        foldr 7y ago
        That's an estimate of expressive vocabulary (i.e. the range of words typically used). It's very obviously not the case that a typical five year old knows only 3000 words of English.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
> I’ve never heard of anyone learning a language by passively listening to Spotify Maybe not, but learning a language by passively listening to podcasts is a popular strategy.

by sjy 7y ago

wbl 7y ago

Language acquisition after the developmental window is fundamentally different. Native language learning is not a good model for second language learning.

sjy 7y ago
The evidence for that “is limited, and support stems largely from theoretical arguments and analogies to other critical periods in biology such as visual development”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis
- foldr 7y ago
  You can't trust Wikipedia on linguistics.
- yorwba 7y ago
  I think it's not so much that second-language acquisition is harder than first-language acquisition, but that first-language acquisition is horribly slow. After five years of full-time study, do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language? Not to mention that you probably don't have the time to study a language full-time anymore. Babies spend a lot of time babbling, basically brute-forcing their way to a correct pronunciation. But what if you could make use of phonological research and resources like https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/ipa-charts/ to help you get there faster? Parents spend a lot of time playing "look at the X" games to help them learn vocabulary from examples. But what if you just look up unknown words in a dictionary and use spaced repetition to efficiently retain them? Second-language learners have already bootstrapped their way to being able to communicate with other humans. So why not just make use of that, rather than repeating the same slow process of trial and error for another language?
  - sjy 7y ago
    This is a good point. I did take a class on phonetics at uni, and it helps a lot with learning the basics of a new language. Maybe Duolingo should do a phonetics course which teaches IPA using examples from a range of different languages!
  - foldr 7y ago
    >do you want to reach the level of a five-year old or do you want to be able to handle any communication you could handle in your first language In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I would regard the ability to speak as well as a 5 year old native speaker as an excellent outcome for five years of full time study of a language. Very few people achieve such a high level within that time.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      > In terms of grammar and vocabulary, five year olds have a much higher level than all but the best L2 speakers. I don't know about grammar, but I found a study [0] that estimates children in kindergarten (age 6) to have a mean vocabulary size of about 3000 root words. If you wanted to beat that in 5 years using spaced repetition, you'd only need to add less than 2 new flashcards per day. In my experience, 10+ new flashcards per day is doable. (When I was adding that many, I spent an hour a day on reviewing flashcards, which eventually made me scale back because I was only studying for fun in my free time.) If you know full-time language students who don't have as large a vocabulary, I wonder how full their time actually was. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimating_root_word_vocabulary_growth_in_normative_and_advantaged_populations_Evidence_for_a_common_sequence_of_vocabulary_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232518465_Estimatin...
      - foldr 7y ago
        That's an estimate of expressive vocabulary (i.e. the range of words typically used). It's very obviously not the case that a typical five year old knows only 3000 words of English.

thaumasiotes 7y ago

> I’ve never heard of anyone learning a language by passively listening to Spotify Maybe not, but learning a language by passively listening to podcasts is a popular strategy.