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> Duolingo is great for practicing and keeping motivated. It has successfully gamifyed language learning, getting users to practice frequently. I used it for 8

by gwd 4y ago

> Duolingo is great for practicing and keeping motivated. It has successfully gamifyed language learning, getting users to practice frequently. I used it for 8 months or so, and came to the conclusion that the gamification was completely counter-productive. One of the big things in raising kids these days is "external rewards" vs "intrinsic motivation". There have been studies that show that kids who already enjoyed drawing, when given a reward for doing drawing, found drawing by itself less enjoyable afterwards. Duolingo is all about external rewards: And the reward isn't for learning the language, but for completing lessons. I found myself always trying to race through as many lessons as possible; stopping to investigate a word or phrase, which should be rewarded, was actually discouraged by their system.

godelski 4y ago
> One of the big things in raising kids these days is "external rewards" vs "intrinsic motivation" I think this is a bit more complicated and what works for some doesn't work for others. But I think to be a successful language learning app (as in successfully teaching language) then they can't just rely on this "immersion" approach. There needs to be study tools too. > Duolingo is all about external rewards I definitely agree with this. It seems like a big alignment problem. But I think they could make more money if they better aligned their app with user goals. It could reduce attrition rate, get more paid signups, and more active users. They have "first mover" advantage, but the hype phase is over, there are more competitors in the space, and they need to adapt or fail. Momentum is a pain. It is the reason for a lot of companies' success but also the reason for many (including the same) companies' quick and "unexpected" decline. Hacking is a good early strategy. It can get you to the moon, but it won't keep you there.
- dnissley 4y ago
  I think the issue is that your average Duolingo user doesn't have an intrinsic reason for learning a language -- anecdotally it seems many are just trying to fill their time in a way that's marginally more productive than playing a mobile game or scrolling social media.
  - watwut 4y ago
    And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
  - illiac786 4y ago
    No, Duolingo is not "marginally more productive" than playing mobile games. It's way better. You're learning something useful, albeit very sloely, instead of wasting your time.
raincole 4y ago
I don't want to bash Duolingo like this, but I can tell you why it's like that. Because a learning app's KPI is not how much the user actually learned. It's how much the user feels they learned. Gamification makes you feel you earned "something". And that's the whole point.
- aix1 4y ago
  > It's how much the user feels they learned. > Gamification makes you feel you earned "something". And that's the whole point. The distinction between "learned" in the first paragraph and "earned" in the second is, IMO, crucial. At some point it becomes more about maintaining steaks and suchlike rather than actually learning a language. (Speaking as some who spent a lot of time on Duolingo.)
jghn 4y ago
> came to the conclusion that the gamification was completely counter-productive. Something that boggles my mind when I look at spots like /r/duolingo are the people who care more about the gamification than actually learning. You'll see people talk about their 2 year streak, but they got there by doing the minimum amount of material per day plus many, many streak freezes. But hey, congrats to them for winning some fake awards.
- CalRobert 4y ago
  It's kinda weird to realize how motivated people are by updating a spreadsheet in a complicated way.
- illiac786 4y ago
  I think what you're missing here is that some people do not have the discipline to stick to a daily exercise regimen except when it's gamified like this. So I think for them it's great, they do learn something instead of nothing at all.
  - simplotek 4y ago
    > I think what you're missing here is that some people do not have the discipline to stick to a daily exercise regimen except when it's gamified like this. It sounds like you're the one missing the whole point. The goal of learning a language is not grinding on an app, but to have progress. Duolingo's gamification pushes grinding behavior, and not actual progress. Duolingo does not reinforce pushing forward, but does prompt you repeatedly on how to say "I drink milk" regardless whether you're on the app for two weeks or two years. You can be on Duolingo for two years grinding stuff daily and still have nothing to show for. You are prompted to keep your streak up of answering things like "I eat bread" over and over again regardless of language, and if you fail to keep your steak up you're prompted to pay for something to artificially keep it up. This is not educational. It's a waste of time.
    - illiac786 4y ago
      Let me repeat: some people cannot learn faster than this, they need gamification. Hence my statement: Duolingo is better than nothing for these.
cageface 4y ago
I think the gamification was a bit part of why I stopped using it. It made it feel more like a chore than something I enjoyed doing. I also realized that while it wasn't bad for teaching some basic vocabulary it was terrible for grammar and completely fell apart when it started to get into some more complex sentence construction (in Spanish, in my case).
watwut 4y ago
The amount of people that find learning languages fun on itself is miniscule. Intrinsic motivation only gets so far ... and for most of us it means "no learning at all" or "two monts of learning and then giving up".
Vaslo 4y ago
I don’t know, it makes me get on everyday and do something - and they are pretty forgiving with the streak piece of the app. I’d rather learn a little everyday than look at one of the overly pedantic texts that the super geniuses of Hacker News will recommend that only work for them and that I’ll close and never look at after day 3.

by gwd 4y ago

godelski 4y ago

> One of the big things in raising kids these days is "external rewards" vs "intrinsic motivation" I think this is a bit more complicated and what works for some doesn't work for others. But I think to be a successful language learning app (as in successfully teaching language) then they can't just rely on this "immersion" approach. There needs to be study tools too. > Duolingo is all about external rewards I definitely agree with this. It seems like a big alignment problem. But I think they could make more money if they better aligned their app with user goals. It could reduce attrition rate, get more paid signups, and more active users. They have "first mover" advantage, but the hype phase is over, there are more competitors in the space, and they need to adapt or fail. Momentum is a pain. It is the reason for a lot of companies' success but also the reason for many (including the same) companies' quick and "unexpected" decline. Hacking is a good early strategy. It can get you to the moon, but it won't keep you there.

dnissley 4y ago
I think the issue is that your average Duolingo user doesn't have an intrinsic reason for learning a language -- anecdotally it seems many are just trying to fill their time in a way that's marginally more productive than playing a mobile game or scrolling social media.
- watwut 4y ago
  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
- illiac786 4y ago
  No, Duolingo is not "marginally more productive" than playing mobile games. It's way better. You're learning something useful, albeit very sloely, instead of wasting your time.

raincole 4y ago

I don't want to bash Duolingo like this, but I can tell you why it's like that. Because a learning app's KPI is not how much the user actually learned. It's how much the user feels they learned. Gamification makes you feel you earned "something". And that's the whole point.

aix1 4y ago
> It's how much the user feels they learned. > Gamification makes you feel you earned "something". And that's the whole point. The distinction between "learned" in the first paragraph and "earned" in the second is, IMO, crucial. At some point it becomes more about maintaining steaks and suchlike rather than actually learning a language. (Speaking as some who spent a lot of time on Duolingo.)

jghn 4y ago

> came to the conclusion that the gamification was completely counter-productive. Something that boggles my mind when I look at spots like /r/duolingo are the people who care more about the gamification than actually learning. You'll see people talk about their 2 year streak, but they got there by doing the minimum amount of material per day plus many, many streak freezes. But hey, congrats to them for winning some fake awards.

CalRobert 4y ago
It's kinda weird to realize how motivated people are by updating a spreadsheet in a complicated way.
illiac786 4y ago
I think what you're missing here is that some people do not have the discipline to stick to a daily exercise regimen except when it's gamified like this. So I think for them it's great, they do learn something instead of nothing at all.
- simplotek 4y ago
  > I think what you're missing here is that some people do not have the discipline to stick to a daily exercise regimen except when it's gamified like this. It sounds like you're the one missing the whole point. The goal of learning a language is not grinding on an app, but to have progress. Duolingo's gamification pushes grinding behavior, and not actual progress. Duolingo does not reinforce pushing forward, but does prompt you repeatedly on how to say "I drink milk" regardless whether you're on the app for two weeks or two years. You can be on Duolingo for two years grinding stuff daily and still have nothing to show for. You are prompted to keep your streak up of answering things like "I eat bread" over and over again regardless of language, and if you fail to keep your steak up you're prompted to pay for something to artificially keep it up. This is not educational. It's a waste of time.
  - illiac786 4y ago
    Let me repeat: some people cannot learn faster than this, they need gamification. Hence my statement: Duolingo is better than nothing for these.

cageface 4y ago

I think the gamification was a bit part of why I stopped using it. It made it feel more like a chore than something I enjoyed doing. I also realized that while it wasn't bad for teaching some basic vocabulary it was terrible for grammar and completely fell apart when it started to get into some more complex sentence construction (in Spanish, in my case).

watwut 4y ago

The amount of people that find learning languages fun on itself is miniscule. Intrinsic motivation only gets so far ... and for most of us it means "no learning at all" or "two monts of learning and then giving up".

Vaslo 4y ago

I don’t know, it makes me get on everyday and do something - and they are pretty forgiving with the streak piece of the app. I’d rather learn a little everyday than look at one of the overly pedantic texts that the super geniuses of Hacker News will recommend that only work for them and that I’ll close and never look at after day 3.