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15 minutes a day gets you your 480 hours in 5.2 years. The problem is not the marketing line, the problem is people expecting to learn a language in 1 year with
by rcarr 3y ago
15 minutes a day gets you your 480 hours in 5.2 years. The problem is not the marketing line, the problem is people expecting to learn a language in 1 year with only 15 minutes a day practice. There is a reason why a full time university course in a foreign language is typically 3 to 4 years long including one year spent abroad.
In your defence, the 480 hours is also only for group 1 languages. If you are learning a harder language it may take many more hours than this. Category 5 languages take 2200 hours. 15 minutes a day is totally reasonable for a category 1 language. For a category 5 language, not so much as it’s going to take you about 20 years. But I strongly suspect that the main problem is not the “15 minutes a day” but the fact that people are not expecting (or willing) to do it for years.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y agoThe marketing line speaks of learning a language with little effort. So it's setting an expectation.
- comfypotato 3y agoAnd it meets expectations! That’s the point of the person you’re arguing with. The “low effort” is made possible by Duolingo segmenting lessons into tiny chunks. It doesn’t lower the total hours necessary because that would be witchcraft.
- hydrok9 3y agoBut it definitely lulls people into a false sense of security. The ads make it seem like the language just seeps into your brain because of 15 min on the app a day. When in reality you learn very little.
- comfypotato 3y agoYour viewpoint definitely agrees with the majority of commenters here, but if you read the immediately surrounding context you’ll see that there is strong opposition. The takeaway is that Duolingo has definitely made learning the basics possible where every other popular alternative has failed for many people.
- hydrok9 3y agoI have my own anecdotal evidence, which is that a large quantity of people use this because they really do think they can use it and only it to learn a language, and don't really grasp how much of it is just a game. But I'm not disputing that Duolingo has uses and that its helped a lot of people.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- comfypotato 3y agoYour “anecdotal” snark is unwelcome. What’s your purpose here? It’s been communicated that Duolingo is the only thing that works for me and others, and you continue to make time to berate the tool. It comes across that you’re a language learning snob, a gatekeeper, or both. Kindly let me enjoy myself in peace.
- hydrok9 3y agoIm saying it (meaning "Duolingo's marketing") lulls a lot of people into a false sense of security, as witnessed by myself. It doesn't mean the app doesn't work for others in various ways.
- comfypotato 3y agoThe proposition that people think Duolingo is the only option is absurd. Duolingo is slower than other methods, and it only progresses through the basics of any language. It only covers the fundamentals of some languages. Fluency necessitates other mediums, and this is obvious to any user. Nobody thinks they’re fluent after Duolingo. Duolingo covers the hardest part, the beginning, of learning a language. If at this point you say that you have met Duolingo-ers who claim fluency (but lack it) then we circle back around to the top-level comment. It’s your word against mine, and I say there’s no way you know many people who have spent the hundreds of hours required to learn a language. 10 years of daily lessons for an English speaker just to learn Spanish. (Spanish is the only Duolingo course that holds a candle for any level of fluency.) The point is that nobody would adopt Duolingo when they needed to speak well quickly. Its target audience is people who casually want to learn a language and don’t have the motivation to use better tools. These people effectively have no other option, and shitting on the only thing that works for them makes you a gatekeeper and a snob.