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I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, ton

• ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Can you talk about the resources you used to learn in the classroom? I learned German using the Foreign Service Institute handbook and I thought it was great introduction to the language. I'd love to know what's in use nowadays.
  • csa 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure this person was learning Pashto or Dari. The materials were mostly (all?) developed in-house. If they were learning Dari, they would have been better off just using externally-produced Farsi textbooks since they have a more robust history of development. The specific recommended materials for an introduction to a language depend on what your goals are for learning the language.
    • least 5y ago
      Yeah, the Dari course was notoriously bad quality and rife with controversy with some of the highest failure rates in the entire Presidio at the time. Not sure if anything's changed at this point?
      • csa 5y ago
        Things improved slightly, then the program got reduced and then cut due to less demand. Somewhere in there, they got creative and had folks who passed Farsi take a 3-month Dari course to bridge the gap between Farsi and Dari, and those folks had a lot of success.
  • least 5y ago
    The language resources were largely designed in house as the other comment mentions, so unfortunately unless you attend DLI, you probably won't get to see them. I don't think there's much in terms of content that you can't find in civilian courses, just that it's designed specifically around being in class for 6-7 hours a day rather than the 3 hours per week you'd be attending at University. There were audio recordings made specifically for the course and there is some deal with Transparent language to provide language software to the military like Rapid Rote, though Anki is just as capable as Rapid Rote is. Big things are access to native speakers (most of the instructors) and non-native "military language instructors" who can help navigate difficult to understand concepts for non-natives. Also the whole spending every day doing it over and over again part. Sorry if this isn't as helpful as you were hoping.
• bawolff 5y ago
  People learn languages for a variety of purposes. Some people just want to know enough to be able to ask where the bathroom is and read a menu at a resturant.
  • YetAnotherNick 5y ago
    More people learn languages to feel good and for bragging rights than for any actual use.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      Bollocks. In Europe you learn languages to be able to go abroad and to at least try to meet strangers halfway. Knowing just your own tongue is rude.
      • Ihatelifebutwe 5y ago
        In America, plenty learn for fun and status. You can travel thousands of miles in the US and still speak to someone in English making language learning extremely rare.
  • jamal-kumar 5y ago
    This is pretty valid, but sometimes people with limited knowledge will do something seemingly innocuous like ask where the 'toilet' is rather than the more polite reference and totally freak a complete stranger out. I think it's not a bad idea to do your best to try and learn at least a little bit beyond this before dropping into a foreign country, at the least because it makes the whole meeting new friends thing a lot easier.
    • realityking 5y ago
      Cultural context is difficult but it also can’t be learned unless you already have some language skills. It’s not helpful to expect 2nd language speakers never to make mistakes Like the foreign exchange student asking for a rubber instead of an eraser, those mistakes can be great learning points.
• jraby3 5y ago
  In theory their valuation is based on expected future returns. There are a lot of apps that have no or limited benefits that still drive traffic and revenue (all the brain training apps come to mind).
  • least 5y ago
    Yes, I agree. I think that there's a lot of value to be extracted from people's desire to learn a language, whether or not the product is actually effective at creating that environment to do so. That's kind of what I meant in my original comment.
• jamal-kumar 5y ago
  I find it really useful for practice, but it's obviously not the best thing to be using solely if you think that's going to reach you to proficiency. It's a fun way to kill like 15-20 minutes a day, it's probably the closest thing I waste my time on that's like a video game these days yet 100x more productive. I've got books for learning Russian and German to go through along with using Duolingo as a pretty good option for practicing basically everything else. It's fun to compare how I got Spanish down via immersion without really practicing too hard on anything outside of rosetta stone (Didn't teach me a damn thing, was a very bad tool back in the day)... Just reading a book from the 1950s (Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish -- highly recommended) and sinking myself into that world for a while took so many years. I'm pretty sure I would have done better off with some better programs and proper study instead, but it definitely gave perspective to where tools like Duolingo have their place and where they're the most useful in pretty much giving you gameified drills and tests.
  • pizza234 5y ago
    > It's a fun way to kill like 15-20 minutes a day, it's probably the closest thing I waste my time on that's like a video game these days yet 100x more productive. I've tried to use Duolingo to learn a new language. I found it very effective for a few weeks (of daily exercise). I remember though, that at some point the questions were repeated frequently, went off the intended theme, and overall, they were not intended to make users think or remember. Getting off track was something that irritated me the most, as I couldn't focus on a subject. Essentially, after the initial phase, it's completely useless as a learning tool. It's a shame because it could be effective and fun at the same, but I have the suspicion that mid/long-term learning effectiveness is not their target.
    • jamal-kumar 5y ago
      Yeah, that's kind of the point where I reached with German on it and I think I'd have to agree with you. The only problem with German is that practicing in-person outside of that country and the conversation usually veers into English much too easily as their English is often quite good. I'm surprised how much I get now between translating words I don't know on leo.org and just reading what I know already on news articles which is how I'm keeping up casually on that. The journalism in that country is top notch and it is probably worth learning the language for this alone.
• holoduke 5y ago
  Exactly. I learned russian to B2 level without any paid material. I used Google translate to learn about 50 words per day. I went for couple of months to the country. Took me about 10 months to get to B2. Advancing further now is harder. Guidance needed from a professional.
• soperj 5y ago
  It's free and it certainly isn't worse for you than watching tv.
  • least 5y ago
    If you're watching TV in your target language it can actually be very productive for your language learning and definitely better than Duolingo. Granted, you have to get to a point in your language learning for that to be the case. Perhaps Duolingo can get you over that first hurdle, though there are probably better resources for that.
• watwut 5y ago
  > The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. It still improves you way more then anything else you can do alone with low effort. Being fluent is absurdly high goal. At first, remembering basic structure of sentence and vocabulary is already achievement.
• gambiting 5y ago
  I've learnt both English and German at school, for pretty much equal amounts of time - about 12 years each. And well, I can speak fluent English, but barely any German, despite usually having at least ~2 hours of lessons a week, plenty of homework, oral exercises..... For me, it has everything to do with actually using the languge in practice. English was and is everywhere - it's much easier to practice when all your favourite movies, games and books are in English - but my real life experience with German was limited to those few times we went to Germany or Austria.; I feel duolingo has the same problem - no matter how much you "learn" with the app, it won't ever stick unless you can practice somewhere in the real world.
  • konschubert 5y ago
    It works if you're learning the language while you're in a place where it's spoken.
    • hirako2000 5y ago
      But then one got to wonder why not spend that time learning in the wild. People have forgotten how it works I suppose. It would take less energy. There are a few options to learn a language. Some say immersion. What's most effective for the brain to capture and memories is _needs_. We tend to learn languages out of a desire to add them to our skill belt. Or out of fun. And we are having a hell of a time this way. Duolingo innovates and will happily monetize their effort. Learn a language? Move to the country where it's spoken. Get a job where interactions are a necessity, but where one would perform to some level without even the basics. Think kitchen porter in a buzzing restaurant. 6 months later you are fluent, and have actually learnt local expressions and the way people actually communicate. From there you can read books and ramp up your vocab to proper fluency. I took English, by force, for 12y , 4h per week. I could still barely read, and in no way get a face to face conversation even started other than hello, what time is it. Months in an environment where communication was a need, and suddenly I found myself nearly fluent. Never having to open a grammar manual or do extra effort for the sake of learning. The teaching models are flawed. They are designed to extract a profit, at the detriment of the learners.
• thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  I got huge value out of Duolingo as a first step. I live in a German speaking country where it’s entirely possible to speak no German. Duolingo and textbooks got me far enough to enroll in a B1 course and find some speaking partners. The alternative would probably have been paying for a year of A-Level courses, and to be honest I may not have found the time. For absolute beginners, Duolingo has a lot of value.
  • least 5y ago
    I'm glad that it worked out for you! I can't comment on the quality of every individual course, but if it propels you towards your language learning goals, then it's definitely doing its job. I do think that for many languages there are more effective ways to learn in a given time period than Duolingo, but if Duolingo helps you stay motivated and keeps you practicing in a way that other methods couldn't, that in itself has a ton of value.
    • end0r 5y ago
      I have been learning languages on Duolingo and Babbel for years now. None of them I can speak well, but certainly well enough to have a good base of knowledge to start with. Duolingo has the advantage that you can do it whenever you want, while commuting, quickly a lesson before lunch, or on the loo. It just sums up if you consequently keep doing it. I totally agree with your point, though, that some languages are better suited for Duolingo style of learning than others. For example with Russian it was quite difficult without any grammar basics explained so I needed to additionally read about it, while with Danish it was much easier to grasp the mechanics. Not quite so with the pronunciation...
  • JCharante 5y ago
    The alternative could be a $40 textbook and an open source flashcard / srs program.
    • neurotrace 5y ago
      The problem with just textbooks is you don't get to hear or speak the language at all. There's also very little structure so you're expecting a novice to know how to effectively test themselves.
• lbriner 5y ago
  The immersion is definitely the most valuable. Very few language apps can help you learn idioms or slang, even if they are in common usage. Even if you were learning English, you are more likely to learn "that is very good" rather than "that is amazing" or "sweet!". I think we also underestimate how much immersion forces us into thinking in the other language when we are surrounded by it, even passively. If you use English all the time and learn German for 2 hours per day, it's not even close to what it would be like living in Germany, even if you were speaking English there.
• Dma54rhs 5y ago
  Every foreign language that I've learned (4 in total) I felt it's necessary to get basic vocabulary and grammar and then just try communicating it in. Obviously living with people surrounded by the language helps, I don't even know if 'remote' is possible. For that purpose duolingo is pretty good.
  • jamil7 5y ago
    This was the only way I could do it as well, formal courses didn't really help me after the basics. It's the same way I learned to program and I think some people are just wired that way.
• duo_comment 5y ago
  > I suppose in the end Duolingo's valuation is more a reflection of people's desire to learn a language rather than people actually learning a language, though. > Language learning is hard and a multifaceted thing that no single application is going to adequately prepare you for. Why do you sound disillusioned with Duolingo? It's just an app. I think the hacker news community undervalues it for no reason
• zarzavat 5y ago
  > Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). In my opinion it's the other way around. Reading is easiest in any alphabetic language. Both intrinsically and to teach. Reading has no time limit so you can make your way through text at whatever pace you want. Reading instruction is strongly amenable to automation. You can just sit and do exercises on an SRS until the cows come home and you will eventually learn to read. Not on duolingo through. Speaking is the next easiest, you can't go at any speed but you can at least go slowly. Plus you only have to deal with one accent when speaking, your own. Most languages have more consistent spelling than English, so if you know how to read an IPA phonology chart (and if you are embarking on the multi-year journey of learning a language then spending a time to learn IPA is a no-brainer) then you can probably figure out how to speak in a way that is understood. Listening is the hardest because you don't control either the content, the pace, nor the accent. If someone is throwing words out like a gattling gun or in a non-standard dialect then tough luck. The learning curve for listening is a cliff in most circumstances. Neither speaking nor listening are amenable to automation. TTS is no substitute for native speakers, and automatic speech recognition is a joke. So the only way to pick up these skills is with real native speakers which is expensive and slow.
  • Aerroon 5y ago
    >So the only way to pick up these skills is with real native speakers which is expensive and slow. TV, movies, anime etc can fulfill the listening purpose. But you have to do it in copious amounts and turn off subtitles.
    • danuker 5y ago
      Or turn on subtitles in the language of the audio; it might let you discover the writing of new words you hear.
  • least 5y ago
    I in fact did indicate that reading is the easiest in my post. Speaking is harder than listening because it requires you to produce language and convey ideas from your own mind, with proficiency in pronouncing it in such a way that a native speaker might understand you. Things like idioms you may be able to infer meaning from interpretation when you are listening or reading but you will never use them in speaking unless you really truly know them. You’re correct that the variables of listening are out of your control (which is what makes it so difficult as compared to reading), but that does not make it harder than speaking. In the military where the DLPT actually tests all three categories for proficiency, speaking is consistently and universally, regardless of target language, the one language learners are least proficient at.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  Yep. I studied French on the side while I was at uni. It was incredibly valuable as I learnt a lot about English and language in general, and a little French. I got to the stage I could actually read books in French, and write a little (I had a pen pal). But when I went to France, I could barely ask for a baguette in a shop and, once the reality set in, I prayed they didn't ask me any follow up questions because I just couldn't understand. Duolingo was the new kid on the block at the time, but there were still some people recommending Rosetta Stone at the time. They used to say it was "used by the US military" or some rubbish. All of these language learning things are the same: they claim to be easy and painless. They tell you it will be like acquiring your first language as a child. Nobody seems to remember the years of babbling and years of schooling that were required to become fluent in their native language. The good news is, learning a language as an adult is easier than learning your first language. The reason is simple: you already have language! You can learn about your second language using your first language. Immersion is still absolutely necessary, but learning grammar and vocabulary using your native language will greatly accelerate the whole process. But, bizarrely, Duolingo etc. actually refuse to use the most powerful tool you'll ever have. It's completely the opposite way you should be learning a language as an adult.
• yobbo 5y ago
  > won't achieve any sort of fluency in your target language from taking a course in it For a randomly picked person, yes, but it doesn't matter to apps that specifically cater to motivated language learners. It's like saying "new training shoes will not make a random person run better or become healthier". Obviously talent and motivation are mandatory. However, any stock-market valuation right now is divorced from the success potential of the business. That's a separate issue.
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  > Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening Listening is much harder for me. I find it easy to mimic/parrot sounds, but not distinguish them when listening.
  • least 5y ago
    Speaking in this case isn't simply speaking words out loud intelligibly, but the entire process of thinking and communicating ideas in a foreign language. There is almost always a gap in your knowledge with regards to what you can understand being said and what you can actually say which is why I say it is harder, even if you can say everything that you can say fluently.
    • LAC-Tech 5y ago
      This doesn't ring true to me. I can memorise a phrase, mimic it, and associate the whole phrase with a meaning. But that comes before I even know what each individual word means.
• nkrisc 5y ago
  I imagine it’s helpful for their valuation as well that there’s no accountability on Duolingo’s part whether anybody actually learns or not, which makes think you’re spot on. They don’t have graduation rates like a school would, or job placement rates or any meaningful metric. There’s no measure of success they can track apart from how many people finish the “course” which means nothing with regard to whether they actually learned anything or not.
• yosito 5y ago
  You're not going to become a triathlete thanks to training wheels either, but if you don't know how to ride a bike, the training wheels give you a good start. I've learned two languages using Duo Lingo as a supporting tool early in the process. I don't think I would have been able to have conversations so early without it. And for me, having conversations (even poorly) in my target language is the single most important factor for achieving fluency. Yeah, you're not going to become fluent from Duo Lingo alone, but early on in the process it's an essential tool.
  • JCharante 5y ago
    but you see people still using Duolingo after 6 months or 1 year. If you saw someone still using training wheels after 1 year, you would tell them to stop because it's handicapping them. Duolingo is the same, it's a terrible investment of time after 1 month.
    • asoneth 5y ago
      As someone who has used Duolingo and spaced repetition apps for ~10m/day for the last four or five years, is there something specific you recommend transitioning to? I've started with some Netflix and podcasts, but they're a little more awkward in 10m chunks.
      • JCharante 5y ago
        If I only had 10 minutes a day, I would go to an online newspaper and go to the advice column. There are people who write in for advice/discuss and people in the comments will reply. They're going to be using native expressions and idioms, making references to shared knowledge that everyone there knows. It's also going to be about a wide variety of problems (although a lot tend to be relationship based) which means you'll be able to naturally recall a large variety of words. Try to read it. If you don't get some words or sentence, skip the sentence for now. Then once you're done with the first read lookup in a dictionary or glosbe and then finally text someone for an explanation to that phrase. (It can be hard to find those friends without visiting a country that speaks your TL and befriending people there). And then feel free to enter that phrase in your SRS. --- I went abroad for 6 months to study my TL (target language) at a foreign language school and would roam campus finding (local) people who don't look busy to help me accomplish this task in real time.
• pedroaraujo 5y ago
  A 16 month course of 6 to 7 hours per day with a lot of exercise and you didn't learn the language at all? I don't think Duolingo is a good solution but in your case you had all the opportunity to become fully fluent with that kind of regime, it starts to be your fault.
  • darkerside 5y ago
    I think this is more of a Dunning-Kruger situation. The more you know a language, the more nuance you recognize and the more you see there is to learn. I only speak English, and I still feel my command of the language could grow.
  • least 5y ago
    Obviously I knew my language well enough to perform a job which required some amount of proficiency in it. I'd imagine that some people might describe my level of proficiency as fluent. If you were to compare it against university, it'd be around the level of a four year degree, but undoubtedly worse than someone with a master's degree in the language. I think this is more a case of your definition of being "fully fluent" is vastly different from mine.
    • pedroaraujo 5y ago
      At this point, we are talking about a really high education of a certain language on a thread about a tool to help people going from zero to say basic sentences on another language. They are two different things. I mean, I am sure that there are academics with superior knowledge than me on my own native language.
• bamboozled 5y ago
  But Duolingo makes people happy because you can sit on your ass, or in bed, not really try and feel like you're putting in the hard yards. Kind of like watching sport instead of playing / training. 10/10 satisfaction score.
• AussieWog93 5y ago
  >The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I don't think anyone is seriously under the delusion that Duolingo alone will make you fluent in a language. It is an amazingly powerful tool to bootstrap you from "I cannot understand a single word of this language" to "I can pick up a newspaper and get a vague idea of what they're talking about", though. I cannot think of a single more effective method than Duolingo to get over this first hurdle.
  • smallerfish 5y ago
    DuoLingo is great as a first hurdle (better than e.g. Babbel, as it's friendly and eases you in gradually) - but there are diminishing returns. I found it useful to jump ship partway through the course and move to LingQ (which has a comparatively crude UX but exposes you to much more context.)
  • saiya-jin 5y ago
    There are definitely more effective methods, just mostly not free and more time demanding. I have a mission to get B1 French, tried Duolingo with some basic level for cca 6 months in past year. You get into the bubble that you think you are progressing but reality is, its a very narrow and not-so-useful progress if whole language knowledge is your goal - mostly passive skills and certain type of language usage that goes along with the type of exercises in Duolingo. If you want real language knowledge, as OP mentions speaking is the hardest part (active & rapid usage of all that you know), and Duolingo doesn't prepare you for this, at all. If your goal is purely passive reading newspapers/articles, then its helpful a bit, but I would still use at least 2-3 other methods if you are even a bit serious about it. Try talking to people after using just Duolingo, heck try writing an official letter on whatever topic. You will not just struggle, you will fail if you don't use any external help. I've made tremendous progress with zoom meetings with professional teacher over shorter period of time. But its because I made it a priority and dedicated my time to it. And it costs quite a bit (doesn't have to, but my case is quite specific).
    • AussieWog93 5y ago
• kirel33 5y ago
  Duolingo is a great example of gamification done well, I'd argue that's the whole selling point of it! I'll also say it was useful for me to learn basic German for a trip to Germany, 6 months of Duolingo + a few extra (beginner) books do wonders
• lm28469 5y ago
  > They also make it a fun activity and incentivize engagement with humor and gamification. That's the part I hated the most and the main reason I stopped using it. I wasted more time in front of "achievement" animations and shiny rewards than on actually learning the language
• volta83 5y ago
  When learning a new language, one uses a lot of tools. Duolingo is just another tool at your disposal. Nobody is claiming that any single tool - much less Duolingo - will make you proficient in a language. If Dolingo is claiming this, that would be false advertisement / scamming.
  • dorchadas 5y ago
    > Nobody is claiming that any single tool - much less Duolingo - will make you proficient in a language. Lots seem to have that belief, though. As I said in another comment, it's something you can see quite often in various language learning forums in Reddit (/r/duolingo) and Facebook, as well as on the DL forums themselves. > If Dolingo is claiming this, that would be false advertisement / scamming. They might not explicitly claim it, but they certainly imply it in my opinion.
• matheusmoreira 5y ago
  It's not perfect but I found that it was the easiest way to just get started. Japanese is intimidating but Duolingo got me started. Immersion and other material such as detailed books on the subject are still absolutely necessary but without Duolingo I'd still be planning to learn japanese instead of doing it.
• dlahoda 5y ago
  duolingo is A2 which is very good to continue own to B2
• high_byte 5y ago
  the problem isn't that it's hard to do. the problem is that their business model relies on their app not achieving it's portrayed purpose - learning. success means losing your customers. that's why I don't use it anymore and I'm baffled by how good they are at being bad. or rather - staying on the exact thin border between "not good enough" and "not bad enough".
  • mym1990 5y ago
    This just isn't true. Duolingo's mission is 'to make education free, fun, and accessible to all'. And for the most part they have succeeded at(or are striving towards) doing those things and have left the learning part to you. Maybe it is not working out for you, and that is likely the case for many people, but to say that their model is to create an unsuccessful learning environment sounds a little bitter.
  • Fernicia 5y ago
    Such a silly way to think about it. You could frame every service as having this conflict. Does Google want to obfuscate results so I'll spend longer looking for results? Duolingo is extremely popular because people get use out of it and like it. You've taken a tiny perverse incentive and jumped to the conclusion that it trumps all the other more important incentives.
• wpietri 5y ago
  As a general rule, modern-day capitalism produces products based on whether you can market it to somebody with money, not on actual results. For a lot of markets, the revenue is nearly as good and it's much cheaper to make something that doesn't work well, or doesn't work at all. The most obvious example here is make-money-fast schemes. Those things never work; if they did, they wouldn't be offered for sale to randos. But there are a ton of others.
• bobwaycott 5y ago
  > * Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages).* I’ve always found speaking and reading to be far easier than listening—especially keeping up with native speakers of a foreign language.
• Reason077 5y ago
  I think Duolingo's valuation says more about the current stock market than it does about Duolingo.
• mym1990 5y ago
  Can I just say that 'cryptologic linguist for the army' sounds like an incredibly far out occupation, and also that 16 months of 7 hours a day of linguistics training sounds like a very daunting undertaking. Kudos to you!
• websites2023 5y ago
  Everything you say is true, which is why when I talk about language learning, I discourage people from setting fluency as their goal. Just knowledge of another language is good for the brain, and the fact that you can't become a native speaker should not deter anyone from trying it for fun.
• jdavis703 5y ago
  Duolingo is great for producing a cursory introduction to a language. But yes, there is no substitute for immersion. For example I spent some time in Spain after learning the language basically on Duolingo. I’m sure I spoke like a 2 year old, but at least I wasn’t totally helpless (I was even able to give someone directions to the airport!). Contrast that with my experience in France where I barely knew anything, and felt totally out of place and awkward.
• orky56 5y ago
  Totally echo all of this. I'm one of the owners at the Orange County Lingual Institute (oclanguages.com) and we see Duolingo as the gateway for people to tap into their language learning interest but then get serious with in-person or online language learning classes. We have seen firsthand hundreds of students unsuccessful with apps since they are not practicing live conversations and not understanding grammar. With 80+% retention of our 2 month/once a week classes, adult professionals get through a college textbook in a year and can become fluent enough to travel to those countries, speak with relatives, and read novels & newspapers with high levels of profiency. Language learning is hard work with no shortcuts but can still be accessible without apps that overpromise and underdeliver. Ping me privately or check out our site for more info.
• JoeyBananas 5y ago
  Duolingo is such a joke. They don't have even a single textbooks worth of content for the languages that I've tried.
• WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
  >>"Duolingo's valuation is more a reflection of people's desire to learn a language rather than people actually learning a language" Duolingo is a game 1st and then a learning app. It's very engaging at first but it failed for me since I started to play it without learning much even though I was advancing (which I equated as learning, wrong..). I think it's certainly better than nothing but ultimately it's just a game. I think it could be a great part of a structured language program. I hope that they use some of the IPO money to create such a program where you need to learn the language to advance in it. I believe that games can be used to learn. In nature, playing is a way to learn so we should be able to use games for learning. I never played it, but a friend used to play EverQuest and he told me how he had friends that had become Leather Craftsmen as a result of playing it. I wonder if Duolingo could be that inspiring to language learners in the future?