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Yep, complaining about Duolingo suggests to me that someone thinks any single resource is going to be a silver bullet. Otherwise it’s meaningless to complain th

Yep, complaining about Duolingo suggests to me that someone thinks any single resource is going to be a silver bullet. Otherwise it’s meaningless to complain that a single resource isn’t a silver bullet. I used Duolingo to reach a place where I could read books in Spanish, and then I switched to books. It can’t be that bad. The best tools are the ones you use. If Duolingo is the tool that compels you to advance your practice, then it’s de facto better than the ones that don’t compel you that you never use.

showerst 6y ago
I didn't mean to criticize Duolingo for not being a silver bullet, but they definitely do market it as one. They literally say right on their homepage that using it for 34 hours is equal to a semester of university language class. When googling it I got an ad with the text "All you need to learn your next language". FWIW I like duolingo, but I wish they were clearer about their strengths and weaknesses. I've maxed out Arabic, and am halfway through French. I got about 1/3 through Japanese before giving up because their approach just doesn't work for it. It clearly works much better for latin languages, and even in Arabic it's great for vocab but lousy for grammar and idioms. As I said in my top post, I think phone typing is an underrated skill, particularly for a foreigner in a new country. Nothing short of time and immersion are going to solidly teach just about anybody a language, but I have some friends who've tried it and then got discouraged on language learning all together because of the frustrating parts of the app, and the fake sense of progress that's inherent in some of their marketing =(. On the other hand I'm on a 600+ day streak and have gained a ton from the app pressuring me to come back every single day.
- jhbadger 6y ago
  Lots of people learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, etc. without immersion. Immersion is nice, but it assumes the point of learning is to chat, rather than interacting with great minds using the language that may be long dead (whether or not the language in question is).

showerst 6y ago

I didn't mean to criticize Duolingo for not being a silver bullet, but they definitely do market it as one. They literally say right on their homepage that using it for 34 hours is equal to a semester of university language class. When googling it I got an ad with the text "All you need to learn your next language". FWIW I like duolingo, but I wish they were clearer about their strengths and weaknesses. I've maxed out Arabic, and am halfway through French. I got about 1/3 through Japanese before giving up because their approach just doesn't work for it. It clearly works much better for latin languages, and even in Arabic it's great for vocab but lousy for grammar and idioms. As I said in my top post, I think phone typing is an underrated skill, particularly for a foreigner in a new country. Nothing short of time and immersion are going to solidly teach just about anybody a language, but I have some friends who've tried it and then got discouraged on language learning all together because of the frustrating parts of the app, and the fake sense of progress that's inherent in some of their marketing =(. On the other hand I'm on a 600+ day streak and have gained a ton from the app pressuring me to come back every single day.

jhbadger 6y ago
Lots of people learn Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, etc. without immersion. Immersion is nice, but it assumes the point of learning is to chat, rather than interacting with great minds using the language that may be long dead (whether or not the language in question is).