4 ms·

Duolingo is incredibly good if you're receptive to spaced repetition learning.

by onion2k 5y ago

nicbou 5y ago
After a certain point, you need to talk with a human. I can't praise Chatterbug enough.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Yeah, that's reasonable. It's incredibly good, but Duolingo alone isn't enough to become fluent. As a way to introduce yourself to a language it's brilliant though.
wimagguc 5y ago
A huge Duolingo fan and I play every day, but I wonder whether it's actually helping me to learn anything. I've been using it to study mandarin characters for the 3rd year now, but when I actually see Chinese text there's barely anything I recognize. Admittedly, I spend maybe 5-15 minutes per day on average and most of that I do in a rush, but the expectation still sounds fair -- reading would be relatively passive knowledge too.
- ollysb 5y ago
  I spent good year using Duolingo, I made steady progress, but only in Duolingo. It hasn't had any impact on my ability to hear/speak the language.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    It can be very hard to perceive the progress you’ve made if you aren’t actually putting it into practice. Speaking from personal experience, if you’ve actually put in substantial time in the last year, you’ll find that a lot of that practice will demonstrate itself over the course of a few conversation classes with a teacher.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  You’ve certainly learned something, but at the level of commitment it’s going to be less than if you put more time into it (yes I’m captain obvious here). One thing that you will notice is that even if you can’t utilize it fluidly now, if you were to jump into more immersive methods now, you’ll realize that it’s all there under the surface - you’ll very likely make very rapid progress.
- tgb 5y ago
  I’m studying too mostly on my own for about 2.5 years. I can read a most characters I see in the wild, though that still leaves enough that understanding the text is hard or impossible. OverallI find reading much easier to study than listening. I haven’t used DuoLingo and would recommend HelloChinese instead. But that’s only a few months to half a year of material; you have to move on. After that I used an Anki deck of HSK vocab. Are you reading anything? Find graded readers like from Mandarin Companion and read those (start with ones that seem too easy). Have you learned to write any of the characters? I don’t think you need to learn to write all of them, but learning at least 50 or so got me to understand and recognize the characters better in my reading as well. The Pleco app is a nice reader letting you look up words just by tapping on them. Also turn off pinyin in any study apps you’re using, just use characters (except for in answers to verify you’re right).
- globular-toast 5y ago
  Doing Duolingo every day makes you good at Duolingo. There aren't any tricks IMO. You have to practise the thing you actually want to be able to do. You wouldn't expect to get good at playing guitar by tapping an app every day, why would it help you learn a language?
  - wbsss4412 5y ago
    I’ve successfully used duolingo to learn multiple languages. I’ve used it as the way to get started and build a base of vocabulary and grammar, allowing me to comfortably jump into immersion with audio/video/speaking etc. Duolingo is quite effective at what it advertises, it never claims it will bring you to full fluency.
- lupire 5y ago
  what fraction / count of characters from a dictionary do you recognize? How many characters has Duolingo showed you (if you can get that metric)?
TigeriusKirk 5y ago
I like to say Duolingo is a slow way to learn a language, but it's infinitely faster than not learning it at all. The main benefit of Duolingo is the streak. Gotta keep the streak going, so I use it every single day. Is it working? I can read French news articles for the most part, filling in the blanks from context. I have trouble listening at normal talking speeds to French youtube videos. For speaking, I'm sure I could order a croissant and get a hotel room, but beyond that... Still, it's much better than looking for perfection and learning nothing.
ukraineally 5y ago
I was able to get to ~500 day streak in french on duolingo. there was certainly a few freebie days in there for free. I thought I was doing great. Then I bought a bunch of french books for my daughter and learnt I knew nothing.
- onion2k 5y ago
  Then I bought a bunch of french books for my daughter and learnt I knew nothing. Was it really the case that you didn't know anything in the books? That would be very surprising. At the very least you'd expect to recognize vocabulary you've encountered before, even if the sentences weren't familiar. I'd have thought after 500 * 15 minutes you'd be able to figure some things out. As it is though, even if the books were completely unfamiliar, I don't really know how you'd measure or test that Duolingo had had no impact on you. Obviously if a book has vocabulary in it that you've not encountered on Duolingo then you're not going to know what it means, but how could you know that you aren't picking up new things faster because you've worked through Duolingo first? My experience of it has been very different. I work through Duolingo courses for languages I build software in. I've not spent anywhere close to 500 days on any language yet, but I've found I am able to work with languages better having done a few months of Duolingo courses. When I've been working on German and Spanish websites I've actually understood much more of the text than I could with websites I haven't learnt any of. I mean, I couldn't drop in to Madrid and have a chat with someone, but it definitely has made a difference.
- Tepix 5y ago
  You need to do a certain amount of learning grammar, DuoLingo will teach you very little. Do read the tips for every exercise on the DuoLingo website (they are not in the app). Those are great!
  - ukraineally 5y ago
    >You need to do a certain amount of learning grammar, DuoLingo will teach you very little. Do read the tips for every exercise on the DuoLingo website (they are not in the app). Those are great! Honestly, probably not fluent in any language except python. I probably need to put significantly more effort into learning the language than I was doing. I hate the gendered nature of french. I love quebecois over the french academy crap. I guess I'm not an ideal student by any means.
jgwil2 5y ago
I think Duolingo is good for learning vocabulary but should be supplemented with other forms of study.

Duolingo is incredibly good if you're receptive to spaced repetition learning.

nicbou 5y ago

After a certain point, you need to talk with a human. I can't praise Chatterbug enough.

onion2k 5y ago
Yeah, that's reasonable. It's incredibly good, but Duolingo alone isn't enough to become fluent. As a way to introduce yourself to a language it's brilliant though.

wimagguc 5y ago

A huge Duolingo fan and I play every day, but I wonder whether it's actually helping me to learn anything. I've been using it to study mandarin characters for the 3rd year now, but when I actually see Chinese text there's barely anything I recognize. Admittedly, I spend maybe 5-15 minutes per day on average and most of that I do in a rush, but the expectation still sounds fair -- reading would be relatively passive knowledge too.

ollysb 5y ago
I spent good year using Duolingo, I made steady progress, but only in Duolingo. It hasn't had any impact on my ability to hear/speak the language.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  It can be very hard to perceive the progress you’ve made if you aren’t actually putting it into practice. Speaking from personal experience, if you’ve actually put in substantial time in the last year, you’ll find that a lot of that practice will demonstrate itself over the course of a few conversation classes with a teacher.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
wbsss4412 5y ago
You’ve certainly learned something, but at the level of commitment it’s going to be less than if you put more time into it (yes I’m captain obvious here). One thing that you will notice is that even if you can’t utilize it fluidly now, if you were to jump into more immersive methods now, you’ll realize that it’s all there under the surface - you’ll very likely make very rapid progress.
tgb 5y ago
I’m studying too mostly on my own for about 2.5 years. I can read a most characters I see in the wild, though that still leaves enough that understanding the text is hard or impossible. OverallI find reading much easier to study than listening. I haven’t used DuoLingo and would recommend HelloChinese instead. But that’s only a few months to half a year of material; you have to move on. After that I used an Anki deck of HSK vocab. Are you reading anything? Find graded readers like from Mandarin Companion and read those (start with ones that seem too easy). Have you learned to write any of the characters? I don’t think you need to learn to write all of them, but learning at least 50 or so got me to understand and recognize the characters better in my reading as well. The Pleco app is a nice reader letting you look up words just by tapping on them. Also turn off pinyin in any study apps you’re using, just use characters (except for in answers to verify you’re right).
globular-toast 5y ago
Doing Duolingo every day makes you good at Duolingo. There aren't any tricks IMO. You have to practise the thing you actually want to be able to do. You wouldn't expect to get good at playing guitar by tapping an app every day, why would it help you learn a language?
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  I’ve successfully used duolingo to learn multiple languages. I’ve used it as the way to get started and build a base of vocabulary and grammar, allowing me to comfortably jump into immersion with audio/video/speaking etc. Duolingo is quite effective at what it advertises, it never claims it will bring you to full fluency.
lupire 5y ago
what fraction / count of characters from a dictionary do you recognize? How many characters has Duolingo showed you (if you can get that metric)?

TigeriusKirk 5y ago

I like to say Duolingo is a slow way to learn a language, but it's infinitely faster than not learning it at all. The main benefit of Duolingo is the streak. Gotta keep the streak going, so I use it every single day. Is it working? I can read French news articles for the most part, filling in the blanks from context. I have trouble listening at normal talking speeds to French youtube videos. For speaking, I'm sure I could order a croissant and get a hotel room, but beyond that... Still, it's much better than looking for perfection and learning nothing.

ukraineally 5y ago

I was able to get to ~500 day streak in french on duolingo. there was certainly a few freebie days in there for free. I thought I was doing great. Then I bought a bunch of french books for my daughter and learnt I knew nothing.

onion2k 5y ago
Then I bought a bunch of french books for my daughter and learnt I knew nothing. Was it really the case that you didn't know anything in the books? That would be very surprising. At the very least you'd expect to recognize vocabulary you've encountered before, even if the sentences weren't familiar. I'd have thought after 500 * 15 minutes you'd be able to figure some things out. As it is though, even if the books were completely unfamiliar, I don't really know how you'd measure or test that Duolingo had had no impact on you. Obviously if a book has vocabulary in it that you've not encountered on Duolingo then you're not going to know what it means, but how could you know that you aren't picking up new things faster because you've worked through Duolingo first? My experience of it has been very different. I work through Duolingo courses for languages I build software in. I've not spent anywhere close to 500 days on any language yet, but I've found I am able to work with languages better having done a few months of Duolingo courses. When I've been working on German and Spanish websites I've actually understood much more of the text than I could with websites I haven't learnt any of. I mean, I couldn't drop in to Madrid and have a chat with someone, but it definitely has made a difference.
Tepix 5y ago
You need to do a certain amount of learning grammar, DuoLingo will teach you very little. Do read the tips for every exercise on the DuoLingo website (they are not in the app). Those are great!
- ukraineally 5y ago
  >You need to do a certain amount of learning grammar, DuoLingo will teach you very little. Do read the tips for every exercise on the DuoLingo website (they are not in the app). Those are great! Honestly, probably not fluent in any language except python. I probably need to put significantly more effort into learning the language than I was doing. I hate the gendered nature of french. I love quebecois over the french academy crap. I guess I'm not an ideal student by any means.

jgwil2 5y ago

I think Duolingo is good for learning vocabulary but should be supplemented with other forms of study.