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Duolingo barely scratches the surface, and at the same time, in many ways, hinders progress for beginners (I've seen people struggle with things they shouldn't

Duolingo barely scratches the surface, and at the same time, in many ways, hinders progress for beginners (I've seen people struggle with things they shouldn't have to struggle with). I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

kranner 6y ago
I've seen one friend who was learning French (non-Québécois) exclusively via Duolingo use "bienvenue" instead of "de rien".
yorwba 6y ago
> I've seen people struggle with things they shouldn't have to struggle with Could you give some examples? I've never used Duolingo for very long, but I had the impression that they were making things too easy, especially with multiple-choice/sort-the-words questions where you can often guess the correct answer.
- solarmist 6y ago
  The translation exercises are terrible and should never be used by anyone not specifically training to be a translator. I’m an intermediate learner and I almost always can identify exactly what the phrase should mean, but when I try to write the English sentence more than 80% of the time I will phrase it differently than they do and get it wrong. Translations make me spend time worrying about how EXACTLY the original translator phrased it rather than focusing on the contents of the sentences.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Note that grading of translations is impossible for them to do without a model that maps arbitrary English to a semantic representation. I believe IBM actually implemented something like this as part of their "Watson" efforts, but there's certainly not a public solution around. That doesn't mean it's impossible to offer useful translation exercises, though. It means it's impossible to use a computer to grade them. If you, as the student, are willing to ignore whether you get marked "right" or "wrong", you get the full value of the instruction -- you make the attempt, Duolingo tells you what the sentence meant, and even though Duolingo can't tell whether your sentence meant the same thing, you can.
louhike 6y ago
Duolingo is pretty bad to learn japanese. They did adapt how it works for the specificities of japanese, but it's still pretty bad. It's fun to use, to learn some words, but I wasn't learning to speak/write japanese with it. I'm making far more progress with books like Genki, which is a shame because Duolingo is fun to use.
- lrossi 6y ago
  Duolingo is pretty bad to learn any language.
29athrowaway 6y ago
Duolingo can be pretty bad but when I use it I still take notes with a physical notebook and that makes a world of difference. I also use it slowly, read the words aloud, vocalizing everything being said.

kranner 6y ago

I've seen one friend who was learning French (non-Québécois) exclusively via Duolingo use "bienvenue" instead of "de rien".

yorwba 6y ago

> I've seen people struggle with things they shouldn't have to struggle with Could you give some examples? I've never used Duolingo for very long, but I had the impression that they were making things too easy, especially with multiple-choice/sort-the-words questions where you can often guess the correct answer.

solarmist 6y ago
The translation exercises are terrible and should never be used by anyone not specifically training to be a translator. I’m an intermediate learner and I almost always can identify exactly what the phrase should mean, but when I try to write the English sentence more than 80% of the time I will phrase it differently than they do and get it wrong. Translations make me spend time worrying about how EXACTLY the original translator phrased it rather than focusing on the contents of the sentences.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  Note that grading of translations is impossible for them to do without a model that maps arbitrary English to a semantic representation. I believe IBM actually implemented something like this as part of their "Watson" efforts, but there's certainly not a public solution around. That doesn't mean it's impossible to offer useful translation exercises, though. It means it's impossible to use a computer to grade them. If you, as the student, are willing to ignore whether you get marked "right" or "wrong", you get the full value of the instruction -- you make the attempt, Duolingo tells you what the sentence meant, and even though Duolingo can't tell whether your sentence meant the same thing, you can.

louhike 6y ago

Duolingo is pretty bad to learn japanese. They did adapt how it works for the specificities of japanese, but it's still pretty bad. It's fun to use, to learn some words, but I wasn't learning to speak/write japanese with it. I'm making far more progress with books like Genki, which is a shame because Duolingo is fun to use.

lrossi 6y ago
Duolingo is pretty bad to learn any language.

29athrowaway 6y ago

Duolingo can be pretty bad but when I use it I still take notes with a physical notebook and that makes a world of difference. I also use it slowly, read the words aloud, vocalizing everything being said.