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Duolingo should be on borrowed time, as a method to learn a language it’s inefficient to the point of being ineffective - it seems to serve as an acceptable rea

by vr46 3y ago

Duolingo should be on borrowed time, as a method to learn a language it’s inefficient to the point of being ineffective - it seems to serve as an acceptable reason for fiddling with one’s phone, like a Guilt-Eze pill. I spent 18 months on it and the learning was soundly thrashed by three weeks in a classroom, and for all the pupils, not just me, primed for success by 18 months with Duolingo. Unless anyone has had a different experience, Duolingo is an exercise in self-deception. No doubt there will be people in difficult situations that have managed just fine with Duolingo, or in spite of it, but it doesn’t feel like a growing market.

jncfhnb 3y ago
I feel like you’re saying “primed for success” ironically but I’m not seeing the irony.
- i_am_jl 3y ago
  If they were actually primed for success then 18 months of Duolingo should've given them a significant head start on the other students. Judging by the tone, I'm assuming that didn't actually occur.
- eterm 3y ago
  It took me a few times to understand their sentence correctly. What I think OP meant to say: All pupils found success. My success could be explained by being primed for success with 18 months of duolingo, but all pupils had similar success. As written, it reads like "all pupils [...] primed for success by duolingo" which is perhaps why you tried to look for irony to match it with their conclusion.
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    Hah ok. I’m amused.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Studying Duolingo for 18 months should have primed them for success, but after just three weeks of an in-person class, it was evident that it had not. It's implied (or assumed) that the class was for 2nd year students or less, so Duolingo must be less effective than traditional instruction.
  - attentive 3y ago
    Duolingo saving a year of in-person classes sounds like a success to me.
    - karaterobot 3y ago
      It took much longer and did not work, and that's a success in your opinion?
  - vr46 3y ago
    Class is ongoing and it's for complete and utter beginners, I'm in week 5 right now. Gave up on Duolingo maybe 18 months ago or more.
huytersd 3y ago
You learn the vocabulary, you learn pronunciations and you learn how to listen and comprehend. I don’t see what’s so bad about it. It’s never going to be able to compete with a native speaker just speaking to you in that language but nothing will.
- andy_ppp 3y ago
  Never is a very long time, I suspect you’ll be able to chat with an AI assistant, in a language of your choosing, within 5 years.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    You can do it now. ChatGPT vocal conversations are brilliant and mind blowing.
- Panini_Jones 3y ago
  It's deceptively ineffective. Sure, it can teach you things, but it has not been a good use of time for me personally (I'm not OP btw).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- gretch 3y ago
  I’ve used duolingo several times on and off throughout my life for different languages (Spanish, German, French). Sometimes paid, sometimes free. In the beginning I thought it was excellent and that’s why I kept coming back. I tried it again the last 12 months and the app wasted so much of my time making me skip through promotions and do-nothing animations. Opening chests, collecting gems, all the gamified stuff. I didn’t need it. I was already self motivated to learn without a bunch of time sinking doodads that you have to click through. I guess duolingo is good if you are struggling with motivation. Recently I used a paid app called Pimsleur that I liked. There’s also a lot of good free resources on YT
ttmb 3y ago
I'm sure it's not the best language learning tool around, but it has taught me enough of three different languages to visit a foreign country, ask for directions, order things, etc, with a number of conversations never falling back into English. And all for the price of free.
- forinti 3y ago
  It all depends on one's expectations. I have no expectation of speaking a new language correctly or with a decent accent (I'm probably too old). I've being using Duolingo for some time and I complement it with Youtube videos and random texts. My French spelling has improved and I can read Russian news. I'd call it a success. Of course it won't replace a proper course and teacher, but it's not worthless.
pkulak 3y ago
I'm about 18 months in as well and feel like I don't know crap. I just can't memorize thousands of new words. I honestly have no idea how anyone is bilingual.
- kranke155 3y ago
  They use other methods, like Rosetta. Duolingo is trash.
  - tayo42 3y ago
    Why is roesetta better?
    - treprinum 3y ago
      It's not, it's just a different style, "full immersion" where you have no clue what is going on and they think at some point you'll understand. I don't think it works well but whatever. Best is to pay for a trip to some remote area speaking only the target language and force yourself to understand it quickly, swim or sink.
      - bavarianbob 3y ago
        Do you think an environment like this in say, VR, has merit?
        treprinum 3y ago
        No idea, if you can survive with VR goggles for hours, and you have reasonable VR partners not trying to teach you all kinds of slang and swearwords, then maybe.
- colordrops 3y ago
  Go live, date, and work in a country that speaks the language you are studying. You will find that you don't need to start from ground zero and you will gain speaking and listening skills quickly.
colordrops 3y ago
As someone else has said in response, my vocabulary, pronunciation, and understanding of grammar rules are solid. I believe I've already learned 3000 words of Spanish at this point. I will need immersion to gain the speaking and listening skills, but I was never deceived about that. I figured this would be a small daily investment for a few years that I would eventually need to actualize.
hammock 3y ago
It seems like AI, deployed against a few hundred learners, ought to be able to discern what the most efficient path to learning a new language is. Then you can just create a new app that does exactly that
- thorum 3y ago
  At least in the grassroots language learner community, there seems to be a growing sense that the most efficient way to achieve real fluency in a second language is: regular long-term effort to read or listen to text or media in the language that is just a little above your level of understanding. Notably different from how duolingo works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
- diggan 3y ago
  > what the most efficient path to learning a new language is. This is assuming that there is a "most efficient path to learning a new language" that applies to everyone.
  - bhdlr 3y ago
    That's the nice thing about ai though, it could be tailored to your experience and learn so you do. For example if you are progressing on pace with similar learners it could apply a different learning program or vary course materials until it sees improvement
- malwarebytess 3y ago
  It's pretty clear immersion is the best path. Using AIs conversational skills seems like the best way to employ AI in language learning.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Immersion will absolutely get you speaking and listening fluency (with enough time). Reading and writing? That's another matter. If you're coming from a Latin alphabet language and trying to learn to read and write Chinese or Japanese then you've got a lot of study and practice ahead of you. Acquiring the knowledge of several thousand Chinese characters (needed for both languages) can only be done through deliberate study.
yreg 3y ago
I know of some people who have learned languages through Duolingo. I also know some people who took classroom courses and accompanied those with Duolingo – and they believe Duolingo was helpful in that sense. I know people who learned foreign language by a combination of Duolingo + staying in a foreign country at the same time. I myself have used Duolingo to learn some rudimentary basics of a foreign language and I haven't forgotten those. I doubt Duolingo is the most efficient, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
- simlevesque 3y ago
  I've learned a new language in the last 2 years. You can't do it with just Duolingo. But I truly believe that there is no method except for full immersion which can make you learn a language alone. It's always: in person classes, reading, watching medias, changing your phone's language, going out to restaurants, language learning apps, making new friends. Duolingo is effective, just not alone.
segasaturn 3y ago
Duolingo has the same incentives problem as dating apps - once someone is sufficiently fluent in the language they want to learn, they stop using the app. So instead of efficiently teaching the language, Duolingo makes the process as slow as possible while tricking the user into feeling that they're quickly learning.
- mattmaroon 3y ago
  Eh, I don't think that's accurate since there's no "monogamy" equivalent to language. It takes a long time to learn a language deeply, and if that were made easier, many people would just want to learn more of them. The nature of (the vast majority of) relationships is that when you find one you're done looking for more, that is not the nature of any type of knowledge.
  - danielenick89 3y ago
    And as a plot twist using actual dating apps to learn a new language while abroad can be very effective
  - sidlls 3y ago
    It does take a long time, and also "real life" immersion, to learn a language deeply. It's the immersion part that Duolingo doesn't do well if at all. So it has to artificially slow down those things it does do in order to keep subscribers.
  - temporarara 3y ago
    Learning even one new language when you are already an adult is hard (or even almost impossible if complete fluency is the goal) for an average person. It's not just acquiring some knowledge, it's hard, and I'd say in general people are much more likely to f up their relationships just for the thrills than to learn new languages just for the thrills.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Like many things, circumstances will differ. One thing that I deem a falacy though, is comparing it with e.g. an expensive paid for classroom or personal lessons. It may well fail in such direct comparison, and no surprise! People then use that comparison to claim "it's worthless", and I disagree with that. If the claim is "30min of structured learning with duolingo will get you no closer to learning a language than 30 min of mindlessly scrolling facebook cat videos", I don't believe that's true. And THAT is the correct comparison :) One thing to note though, is how you use it - note I used the term "structured learning" in previous sentence, not "doing match madness for points" :) Personally, I spent first few months learning on duolingo, and it was wonderful; had some small chats with people who speak that language at work, occasionally wrote a sentence or two in that language in emails, etc. Then I spent next few months preserving the streak. I did the challenges and matches and got thousands of points and first places... but learned nothing. In fact, my knowledge deteriorated. Then after 200 days, I lost my streak and... breathed a sigh of relief. I am now making sure I do the lessons and practice and learn, and purposely avoid the competition part of it or activities which give many repetitive points but don't increase my knowledge. My familiarity with language is increasing again and I can make more and more sentences on my own.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  DuoLingo is so annoying with the gamification. It just won't shut up. I found that if I limit my use, it stops reminding me what league I'm in, probably because it realized I don't care. I just hope I'm not learning wrong things from the new AI-powered checker. It's bad enough that I can't always find an explanation why I got something wrong. (I've actually used ChatGPT 3.0 to explain some of my mistakes, and then was able to verify its explanation because of the keywords it used, and then googling those.)
  - NikolaNovak 3y ago
    I don't know if previous versions of DuoLingo had different approach, but on iOS, Android and Windows, I just said "No" to every option when first using it, and I don't get ANY of those. I declined notifications, widgets, reminders, everything. Not sure about the AI checker yet; we'll see! I've used ChatGPT myself though as a wonderful language tutor to complement Duolingo, so I'm trying to not be completely skeptical / cynical :-)
madjam002 3y ago
Are there any better apps for learning a foreign language?
- pahool 3y ago
  I prefer Mango Languages, which I get for free through my public library. The progression feels better to me, it's not as gamified (sorry for using that word), and there is some (though not a ton of) actual lesson content in there. For example, learning Spanish, it gives some context on the different usages of "Ser" vs. "Estar" for "to be", and it includes discussion on gendered nouns. DuoLingo may have gotten to some brief lesson content at some point, but for me it was too grating to continue with and I quit before I made much progress with it.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Language Transfer is free, non-commercial, and many swear by it: https://www.languagetransfer.org https://www.languagetransfer.org
  - lsllc 3y ago
    I'll heartily second this, Mihalis is great! I learned far more in the first 10 mins of LT than in months of Duolingo.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    No Japanese. I get it, but it does seem like choosing any Logo graphic language limits what services there are. At least if your base language is phonetic.
- Panini_Jones 3y ago
  I like Memrise. I did the full German course with them. It's similar to Duolingo. I also suggest using something like News In Slow German to understand actual content generated (and read) by real people.
Affric 3y ago
I found Duolingo to be incredibly helpful. The language I was learning had no tuition available for adults in my country and I practiced with native speakers when I could find them and consumed media from the community of the target language. All while on public transport, when I would otherwise be on my phone. All for the price of nothing (though their model has grow much more user hostile). This is not to advocate for Duolingo as a company or even the app as a method but I found it effective and useful as a tool. Duolingo isn’t going to learn a language for you. You have to internalise the grammar and vocabulary. Could I have done the same with a book? No. I could have done something different. Could I have done the same with a class? No, no classes existed for me.
- threatofrain 3y ago
  Nothing is a substitute for immersion, and learning a language is so incredibly hard that it's fair to question the motivation of the learner and ask whether they intend to live in the place that speaks the language. If you intend to move, then whether you practice Chinese for 4 years in a classroom vs. with Duolingo, any differences are going to melt away very quickly and what will emerge as the forefront factor of success will be one's innate ability to push yourself in a foreign environment; i.e., don't be safe and only interact with people who speak your native language.
  - Affric 3y ago
    100% We quickly learn how vulnerable we are without a local language or Lingua Franca. In my experience working class immigrants who have immigrated to places that have no large established language community in their new home are the best demonstration of this. They often start with nothing but end up with great skills whereas others will just stay and interact with their native language community and be barely conversational in the majority language.
  - cracrecry 3y ago
    Learning a language is not that hard. Everybody does it, so it is not be that hard. I learned French and Spanish natively because of my family, but I speak other languages like German or Mandarin, although I only know the most common Chinese symbols I can understand people talking and communicate myself effectively. The most important thing is not forgetting what you learn, specially when the neural connections are weak. For this I used Anki and my own tools. You do not need to push yourself so much. In fact I do not recommend pushing yourself into a foreign environment without basic understanding, specially If you are an adult and need to function in that enviroment. I traveled to Germany only after studying it for years 30 min a day. It was much better experience than in China in witch it was similar to your "pushing yourself" method where very few people speak English. In China the rate at which I could learn was not better than if I had started learning that in Europe. It overwhelmed my capabilities. Also, China is a different culture, and you have to learn it the hard way with painful misunderstandings.
simonw 3y ago
"Unless anyone has had a different experience" I've tried classroom instruction, and teacher-driven courses, multiple times in my life. They never really stuck for me. Duolingo has worked for me where other techniques haven't. I'm now at a stage where I can read a newspaper article in Spanish and understand ~90% of the content. (5 year streak, but that's 5 years of 5-15 minutes a day which turns out to be exactly the commitment that works for me.)
- chrisdbanks 3y ago
  For comparison, I taught myself Spanish with paper flashcards I wrote, and a grammar book and I was at a similar stage after 5 months. 3 hours effort per week approx so a bit more than you.
  - simonw 3y ago
    If I had the discipline to do it I'm sure I could get further with other techniques, but for me the biggest feature of Duolingo is the way you don't need very much discipline at all to make progress with it.
    - dayjaby 3y ago
      "You don't need very much discipline" and "5 year streak". Sorry, but is my definition of discipline that off? You managed to have 5 years of discipline. That's the reason you managed to learn a language, not because the duolingo gamishittification does miracles.
      - simonw 3y ago
        The gamification is what helped me make it this far. Remembering to pop open an app for a few minutes on your phone takes so much less discipline than any other form of language learning I've tried in the past.
lgessler 3y ago
IMO this is a misunderstanding of the product. This might be a cynical take, but I think that for most users of Duolingo, it functions more as a game than as a tool which produces substantial gains in language knowledge. I'm a computational linguist, and whenever on hearing this people ask me what I think about Duolingo, I like to say it's language-flavored entertainment.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  _____-flavored entertainment pretty much describes everything our culture consumes over TCP/IP.
  - bavarianbob 3y ago
    Is it necessary to specify TCP/IP? Is it not also applicable to books? Reading piles of pulp fiction is subtly different than language-flavored entertainment.
- Aeolun 3y ago
  So what do you think one should use if not Duolingo?
  - lgessler 3y ago
    The gold standard is immersion, everyone agrees on that. Most people can't have that, so a mix of language instruction, conversation with native speakers, and exposure to appropriately challenging texts with memorization tools like Duolingo or Anki as a _supplement_ is the next best thing.
vasco 3y ago
The way to think about Duolingo is like another mobile phone game. Except the "universe" of the game is language learning instead of a random farming or middle ages theme. And so you learn about the language in the same way you learn about farming or middle ages from those games. Meaning if you never read anything about farming or the middle ages now you know of some things, but you'd really be much faster ahead by picking up a proper book on the subject. So it is with language learning apps.
- manmal 3y ago
  The vocab is definitely useful in the real world, and audio comprehension is improved. Foreign language textbooks also have vocab sections, and Duolingo makes that part easier.
ed_elliott_asc 3y ago
I’ve used it when visiting countries to pick up some very basics - if I wanted to actually learn a language I would get a tutor.
sureglymop 3y ago
The thing is that their whole marketing and selling point is mostly to people who don't have real strong motivation or focus to learn a language or don't have the time. E.g. to the tone of "you'll need to do this for just two minutes a day", "it'll feel more like a game", " much easier than in a traditional classroom setting ", etc. But the truth is that it doesn't really work that way; someone with focus and motivation learning grammatical rules and more in a classroom will always be either more effective or progressing at least at the same pace (or at least be just as ineffective). Their business is more about selling the idea of learning a language and that it is actually easy, partly by presenting it in a gamified way. It kind of works because people fall for it and buy a subscription for ~3 months but probably eventually stop. They then need new subscribers and have to double down on that marketing/selling of the idea. In reality, there is no shortcut to learning something. It's just about having the curiosity, motivation and discipline to do so. And many people may think they have that or are enticed by the idea of learning a new language but their life doesn't depend on it enough to have the aforementioned qualities to do it.
- webdood90 3y ago
  I don't think that deeply about it and suspect you're misinterpreting the goals of their target audience. I don't use Duolingo to learn a language as effectively as possible. I use it because it's a super easy and an entertaining way to stay motivated while I learn a language. I would never go out of my way to take a class or watch videos to learn the language. I don't think people are "falling for it". It does exactly what they want it to do for them.
  - gunalx 3y ago
    This. Duolingo is not the best learning toolbut it is the difference between something and nothing for me.
MattGaiser 3y ago
> I spent 18 months on it and the learning was soundly thrashed by three weeks in a classroom, and for all the pupils, not just me, primed for success by 18 months with Duolingo. Yeah, but if you have time for 3 weeks in class, why do Duolingo in the first place? Those serve different markets. Duolingo is for low effort, low commitment, but interested enough to do it a bit in their spare time kind of people.
attentive 3y ago
You said it yourself they were primed by 18months of duolingo. Your classroom experience could have been different otherwise.
rpmisms 3y ago
It's excellent for building vocab and reinforcing basics. Expecting any more from it is silly.
locallost 3y ago
Learning a language at an older age is anyway difficult and will only succeed with a lot of effort. As someone that's learned a foreign language at almost 30 in a classroom, I can say that Duolingo does some things well, mostly by forcing or motivating you to repeat to memorize things. I say I learned it in a classroom, but objectively I never would've made it if I was not in the country whose official language I was learning. So the classroom gives you some basics and then you need to practice a lot until it becomes something you don't need to think about. As they say, internalize it. This takes years, but also depends on the language, some are more difficult or have different learning curves. Duolingo is again good at the practice part. Most people try to use logic and comparisons to their native language, but this is imho not a good way. Kids don't learn like that. It's argued that grownups lose this ability, but personally I sometimes say thing where I have no idea why I said that and if it's really correct. But then it turns out it is. It's somewhere in my head and it got there by listening to other people speak or reading. I know a lot of people that got nowhere by going to class because they had their group of friends from e.g. Spain, China or Korea around them. I met a person from the US who was disappointed with the little progress they made and said "I don't understand that and why it's like that". My only answer was really "because it just is". So I think Duolingo has a place, as a sort of a virtual native speaker you can interact with.
- vr46 3y ago
  I’m bilingual from birth and have never found languages difficult, but finding the time to put into them does get more challenging over the years. Maybe that’s why I went with Duolingo initially. I’m not finding the language learning particularly hard even though I have twenty years on you, but I also have the benefit of having to be in a classroom four hours a day, five days a week. That is making the difference, apart from a very good teacher. I know that in theory languages get tougher as you get older, but the teaching of languages has come leaps and bounds since I did French and Spanish at school, and my motivation has shifted too, so I’m finding things easier now than ever before.
  - selcuka 3y ago
    > I’m finding things easier now than ever before. Your experience may not be typical as bilingual people are known to pick up additional languages more easily than monolinguals [1]. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/bilingual-and-monolingual-adults-learning-an-additional-language-erps-reveal-differences-in-syntactic-processing/9ABA529BA57B742DAFB9548990D311DE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-languag...
JoshGG 3y ago
Thanks for posting your experience. I haven’t tried duolingo. Do you think it’s possible that the 18 months helped prep you for classroom learning , vocabulary etc? How intense was your classroom learning and how much time per week? I took years of French in school and would like to learn Spanish.
- KerrAvon 3y ago
  Duolingo is basically the app equivalent of flashcards. It's a little smarter than that, but not much. If you're serious about learning a language, it absolutely has a place. But Duolingo __alone__ is not going to make you competent, much less fluent. Personally, I'm happy with it. I took years of Spanish and started with Duolingo in French with zero prior French, and I can now recognize phrases and hold some basic conversation; for 5 minutes a day with no significant continuous time commitment that's not bad!
- vr46 3y ago
  I've only recently started the classroom learning, week 5 just began, and I'm in there five days a week, four hours a day, so that's really great and the outcome required is, I think, B1 level. Duolingo over 18 months contained so little vocabulary and grammar, plus I stopped it maybe 18 months ago too, so its impact was restricted to about one day's worth of class. I did five years of French at school and three years of Spanish and definitely enjoyed the Spanish more.
ozzydave 3y ago
The first time I used DuoLingo, I was just trying to get through the tree, without really learning, and that was useless. Now I have a different technique: I’ll only listen (never read), and if I can’t comprehend and respond immediately, I’ll fail that exercise deliberately, so I’ll be re-tested later. For me, I only understand the language if I can understand some one speaking to me and respond in real time.
- throwaway9191aa 3y ago
  I started doing the listen-only as well! By this, I mean I just don't look at the screen, I'd love to know if there is a way to setup a listen-only option. I've also used Jumpspeak, which is an AI conversation partner. It works ok, but the speech recognition is... not great. But you can have a conversation and practice listening and responding. I was able to treat the AI as an uber driver and ask about places to go in Peru, and how to get there, and why they were nice.
raz32dust 3y ago
My experience was different. I was able to learn enough Spanish to survive in Peru for a month with just 6-7 hours in Duolingo. Different people may have different learning styles. When you're comparing to classroom, are you normalizing the number of hours spent? Of course live interaction will be several times more effective, but it's not something everyone can afford to do. It's also about goals. Duolingo isn't for you if you really want to become a proficient native speaker or be able to understand books. But it's great to learn a language casually enough to converse with locals.
mynameisash 3y ago
When I started learning French (probably 8 years ago), I started with Duolingo. Pairing Duolingo with some other tools/methods, I made good progress, and before long, I outgrew it. Last year, I decided I'd start working on Japanese, so I did the same thing I did before: hit Duolingo hard, listen to audiobooks to build up my phoneme recognition, etc. I was shocked at how slow progress was - not because I wasn't putting in the effort but because it had me redoing over and over and over again the same damn words and phrases. Gohan, mizu, sushi, gohan, gohan, mizu, gohan, sushi. I was a proponent of the site/app for quite a while - even after I outgrew it - because I legitimately believed it helped me. Now that I've seen what it's become, I can't recommend it to anyone unless you strictly do it for entertainment value with no expectation of useful education.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Yeah, I mean it’s almost like they’re incentivized to slow your progress so you stay subscribed every month or something…
  - mynameisash 3y ago
    That's another thing: the 'enshittification' is in full-force with really terrible ads plus the not-bad-but-annoying Super Duolingo ads. I could probably deal with that if the platform was good, but as I mentioned, it's just not providing any education value (to me, at least; YMMV).
  - gs17 3y ago
    At the same time though, it's really easy to set your account as a classroom account and get most of the paid features.
- gs17 3y ago
  It really needs something like Anki has where you can say "I know the word for rice confidently, don't ask me for a long time" with the space between repetitions extending based on your feedback.
- tehbeard 3y ago
gnicholas 3y ago
I found it helpful for reacquainting myself with vocabulary from a language I learned decades ago. I think it would also be helpful in learning the basics of a new language adjacent to that language (romance, in my case) before going on a trip. Beyond that, I’m not sure how useful it is on its own.
pipeline_peak 3y ago
I used Spanish with DuoLingo for 3 months straight. The matching is ridiculous. It doesn’t really challenge you with conjugate variations. Example, your answer choices are: estas, estamos, or somos. Hmm which one is not like the other? I felt like I was pattern matching my way into Dora leveled “can you find the airport?”
distortionfield 3y ago
I canceled Duolingo subscription in favor of just using ChatGPT. Duolingo wanted $30 (a $20 increase) for Max, which is as far as I can tell less flexible and capable than ChatGPT anyway.
j45 3y ago
I don’t know if it will be on borrowed time when there’s deeper things to go into. It’s important to not throw the digital learning baby out with the bath water. No single EdTech is that effective or ubiquitous, even though the possibility of new solutions anchored in the future starting to form is increasing.
w0m 3y ago
honestly you sound like a success story for the app. 3 weeks in-class after 18mo fiddling on phone leading to dramatic progress.
klipt 3y ago
I've found Anki way better than Duo for learning vocabulary. Clozemaster is a bit like Anki with prepackaged sentences.
jacquesm 3y ago
> I spent 18 months on it and the learning was soundly thrashed by three weeks in a classroom, and for all the pupils, not just me, primed for success by 18 months with Duolingo. I wonder how well you would have done if it hadn't been for that 18 months. Because 'three weeks in a classroom' sounds suspiciously to how I learned Polish: I seemed to be making zero progress for years and then in a very short amount of time (a couple of weeks at most) it suddenly 'clicked' and I started to make sense of what I heard. I probably was learning at some level that wasn't accessible all the while thinking I wasn't making any progress at all. Duolingo is 'infotainment', it gets you from zero to a little bit above zero and it may give you some useful number of words to recognize and maybe even to use actively. But it won't help you to speak a language, for that you need to progress beyond it. This is pretty much the same story with every other language, nobody learns to speak and use a language actively by reading the dictionary. But it certainly doesn't hurt to have a basic 200 or 300 word vocabulary on which to build. Personally I use Anki for such learning rather than commercial services, it allows for far more customization and you won't be sucked into silly gamification for the sake of extending your subscription because there is none.
- vr46 3y ago
  That everyone in the class demonstrated the same progress showed that Duolingo provided little advantage, which is what I was attempting to say in the quote. I gave up Duolingo around 18 months before starting the course, which is for complete beginners with zero knowledge.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >everyone in the class demonstrated the same progress s Did they really? Did they all ace the tests and do all the assigned homework? I find that even harder to believe than Duolingo being the primary resource to teach you a language. It's not like it's impossible, depending on the age of the class, money spent, if the school had a selection process, etc. But most adult classes aren't really that selective.
    - vr46 3y ago
quickthrower2 3y ago
Maybe because your brain made new connections, but was "primed" by what it knew from Duolingo. A bit like you plan a holiday, read the guidebook, then you go to the destination. Your knowledge of the place was thrashed vs. reading the guide book. But the guidebook helped with some foundational knowledge and was still useful.
throw__away7391 3y ago
I have found it helpful, even as the central foundation for learning languages, but you have to remember at the end of the day it is *you* who is learning the language and you absolutely must mentally engage yourself, it can definitely lure you into a path of scoring points without making real progress. I will pause my lesson and jump over to Google or ChatGPT, and usually end a session with a pen and paper writing out any phrases I was less familiar with. You also need to make sure you’re being challenged, with some languages I get into a phase where it is really easy for a long time, when that happens, you need to skip ahead because just scoring points is meaningless. I still think the gamification is useful and unique and can help keep your overall learning efforts progressing. Also I always supplement with Pimsleur, an audio-only program that is great for listening while you’re at the gym or biking or otherwise unable to read or interact with a screen.
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  My finding as well - how I engage with DuoLingo had massive impact on my progress. Focusing on streak, leagues, and XP/points was detrimental. I'd do the repetitive high-points exercises instead of lessons and feel "I've accomplished my goal" (of having a high score). Once focusing on my goal of "I want to learn a language" rather than points, it was WAY better. I also create my own cheat-sheets for conjugation / adjectives / etc, and find ChatGPT a phenomenally patient tutor for my incessant "WHY, French? WHY is it thus?!?!?" questions :->
hintymad 3y ago
> Duolingo should be on borrowed time, as a method to learn a language it’s inefficient to the point of being ineffective A lot of Duolingo's questions ask a user to pick and choose words to complete a sentence. That gives a false sense of achievement when in reality it simply does not challenge one's mind enough to learn a language effectively. Besides, a simple sentence does not give me enough context to build my intuition. I personally find the idea of Comprehensible Input works much better: reading extensively, watching videos extensively, using a language increasingly frequently, and etc.
93po 3y ago
Duolingo works for me because it keeps me engaged in a way other language learning resources wouldn’t. I might be making super slow progress but I’m making some progress versus none at all
hotdogscout 3y ago
I learned better with Duolingo than during Class. It really depends on the quality of the material and teacher.
changadera 3y ago
I used Duolingo in 2022 for the 35 days leading up to a holiday in Greece. I went from knowing 0 greek to being able to read the alphabet and words, pronounce them and do things like order in a restaurant, explain allergies and convey our room number. Around the beginning of 2023 they did a couple of things that ruined it a bit for me. They completely changed the track system so now you have to follow one set path, and they got rid of the classes feature which was awesome because for around $5 I could have a zoom lesson with a native teacher and other people learning the language. Also the sentences it teaches you are a bit less silly now and that was a cool gimmick.

by vr46 3y ago

jncfhnb 3y ago

I feel like you’re saying “primed for success” ironically but I’m not seeing the irony.

i_am_jl 3y ago
If they were actually primed for success then 18 months of Duolingo should've given them a significant head start on the other students. Judging by the tone, I'm assuming that didn't actually occur.
eterm 3y ago
It took me a few times to understand their sentence correctly. What I think OP meant to say: All pupils found success. My success could be explained by being primed for success with 18 months of duolingo, but all pupils had similar success. As written, it reads like "all pupils [...] primed for success by duolingo" which is perhaps why you tried to look for irony to match it with their conclusion.
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  Hah ok. I’m amused.
karaterobot 3y ago
Studying Duolingo for 18 months should have primed them for success, but after just three weeks of an in-person class, it was evident that it had not. It's implied (or assumed) that the class was for 2nd year students or less, so Duolingo must be less effective than traditional instruction.
- attentive 3y ago
  Duolingo saving a year of in-person classes sounds like a success to me.
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    It took much longer and did not work, and that's a success in your opinion?
- vr46 3y ago
  Class is ongoing and it's for complete and utter beginners, I'm in week 5 right now. Gave up on Duolingo maybe 18 months ago or more.

huytersd 3y ago

You learn the vocabulary, you learn pronunciations and you learn how to listen and comprehend. I don’t see what’s so bad about it. It’s never going to be able to compete with a native speaker just speaking to you in that language but nothing will.

andy_ppp 3y ago
Never is a very long time, I suspect you’ll be able to chat with an AI assistant, in a language of your choosing, within 5 years.
- huytersd 3y ago
  You can do it now. ChatGPT vocal conversations are brilliant and mind blowing.
Panini_Jones 3y ago
It's deceptively ineffective. Sure, it can teach you things, but it has not been a good use of time for me personally (I'm not OP btw).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gretch 3y ago
I’ve used duolingo several times on and off throughout my life for different languages (Spanish, German, French). Sometimes paid, sometimes free. In the beginning I thought it was excellent and that’s why I kept coming back. I tried it again the last 12 months and the app wasted so much of my time making me skip through promotions and do-nothing animations. Opening chests, collecting gems, all the gamified stuff. I didn’t need it. I was already self motivated to learn without a bunch of time sinking doodads that you have to click through. I guess duolingo is good if you are struggling with motivation. Recently I used a paid app called Pimsleur that I liked. There’s also a lot of good free resources on YT

ttmb 3y ago

I'm sure it's not the best language learning tool around, but it has taught me enough of three different languages to visit a foreign country, ask for directions, order things, etc, with a number of conversations never falling back into English. And all for the price of free.

forinti 3y ago
It all depends on one's expectations. I have no expectation of speaking a new language correctly or with a decent accent (I'm probably too old). I've being using Duolingo for some time and I complement it with Youtube videos and random texts. My French spelling has improved and I can read Russian news. I'd call it a success. Of course it won't replace a proper course and teacher, but it's not worthless.

pkulak 3y ago

I'm about 18 months in as well and feel like I don't know crap. I just can't memorize thousands of new words. I honestly have no idea how anyone is bilingual.

kranke155 3y ago
They use other methods, like Rosetta. Duolingo is trash.
- tayo42 3y ago
  Why is roesetta better?
  - treprinum 3y ago
    It's not, it's just a different style, "full immersion" where you have no clue what is going on and they think at some point you'll understand. I don't think it works well but whatever. Best is to pay for a trip to some remote area speaking only the target language and force yourself to understand it quickly, swim or sink.
    - bavarianbob 3y ago
      Do you think an environment like this in say, VR, has merit?
      - treprinum 3y ago
        No idea, if you can survive with VR goggles for hours, and you have reasonable VR partners not trying to teach you all kinds of slang and swearwords, then maybe.
colordrops 3y ago
Go live, date, and work in a country that speaks the language you are studying. You will find that you don't need to start from ground zero and you will gain speaking and listening skills quickly.

colordrops 3y ago

As someone else has said in response, my vocabulary, pronunciation, and understanding of grammar rules are solid. I believe I've already learned 3000 words of Spanish at this point. I will need immersion to gain the speaking and listening skills, but I was never deceived about that. I figured this would be a small daily investment for a few years that I would eventually need to actualize.

hammock 3y ago

It seems like AI, deployed against a few hundred learners, ought to be able to discern what the most efficient path to learning a new language is. Then you can just create a new app that does exactly that

thorum 3y ago
At least in the grassroots language learner community, there seems to be a growing sense that the most efficient way to achieve real fluency in a second language is: regular long-term effort to read or listen to text or media in the language that is just a little above your level of understanding. Notably different from how duolingo works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis
diggan 3y ago
> what the most efficient path to learning a new language is. This is assuming that there is a "most efficient path to learning a new language" that applies to everyone.
- bhdlr 3y ago
  That's the nice thing about ai though, it could be tailored to your experience and learn so you do. For example if you are progressing on pace with similar learners it could apply a different learning program or vary course materials until it sees improvement
malwarebytess 3y ago
It's pretty clear immersion is the best path. Using AIs conversational skills seems like the best way to employ AI in language learning.
- chongli 3y ago
  Immersion will absolutely get you speaking and listening fluency (with enough time). Reading and writing? That's another matter. If you're coming from a Latin alphabet language and trying to learn to read and write Chinese or Japanese then you've got a lot of study and practice ahead of you. Acquiring the knowledge of several thousand Chinese characters (needed for both languages) can only be done through deliberate study.

yreg 3y ago

I know of some people who have learned languages through Duolingo. I also know some people who took classroom courses and accompanied those with Duolingo – and they believe Duolingo was helpful in that sense. I know people who learned foreign language by a combination of Duolingo + staying in a foreign country at the same time. I myself have used Duolingo to learn some rudimentary basics of a foreign language and I haven't forgotten those. I doubt Duolingo is the most efficient, but that doesn't mean it's useless.

simlevesque 3y ago
I've learned a new language in the last 2 years. You can't do it with just Duolingo. But I truly believe that there is no method except for full immersion which can make you learn a language alone. It's always: in person classes, reading, watching medias, changing your phone's language, going out to restaurants, language learning apps, making new friends. Duolingo is effective, just not alone.

segasaturn 3y ago

Duolingo has the same incentives problem as dating apps - once someone is sufficiently fluent in the language they want to learn, they stop using the app. So instead of efficiently teaching the language, Duolingo makes the process as slow as possible while tricking the user into feeling that they're quickly learning.

mattmaroon 3y ago
Eh, I don't think that's accurate since there's no "monogamy" equivalent to language. It takes a long time to learn a language deeply, and if that were made easier, many people would just want to learn more of them. The nature of (the vast majority of) relationships is that when you find one you're done looking for more, that is not the nature of any type of knowledge.
- danielenick89 3y ago
  And as a plot twist using actual dating apps to learn a new language while abroad can be very effective
- sidlls 3y ago
  It does take a long time, and also "real life" immersion, to learn a language deeply. It's the immersion part that Duolingo doesn't do well if at all. So it has to artificially slow down those things it does do in order to keep subscribers.
- temporarara 3y ago
  Learning even one new language when you are already an adult is hard (or even almost impossible if complete fluency is the goal) for an average person. It's not just acquiring some knowledge, it's hard, and I'd say in general people are much more likely to f up their relationships just for the thrills than to learn new languages just for the thrills.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Like many things, circumstances will differ. One thing that I deem a falacy though, is comparing it with e.g. an expensive paid for classroom or personal lessons. It may well fail in such direct comparison, and no surprise! People then use that comparison to claim "it's worthless", and I disagree with that. If the claim is "30min of structured learning with duolingo will get you no closer to learning a language than 30 min of mindlessly scrolling facebook cat videos", I don't believe that's true. And THAT is the correct comparison :) One thing to note though, is how you use it - note I used the term "structured learning" in previous sentence, not "doing match madness for points" :) Personally, I spent first few months learning on duolingo, and it was wonderful; had some small chats with people who speak that language at work, occasionally wrote a sentence or two in that language in emails, etc. Then I spent next few months preserving the streak. I did the challenges and matches and got thousands of points and first places... but learned nothing. In fact, my knowledge deteriorated. Then after 200 days, I lost my streak and... breathed a sigh of relief. I am now making sure I do the lessons and practice and learn, and purposely avoid the competition part of it or activities which give many repetitive points but don't increase my knowledge. My familiarity with language is increasing again and I can make more and more sentences on my own.

demondemidi 3y ago
DuoLingo is so annoying with the gamification. It just won't shut up. I found that if I limit my use, it stops reminding me what league I'm in, probably because it realized I don't care. I just hope I'm not learning wrong things from the new AI-powered checker. It's bad enough that I can't always find an explanation why I got something wrong. (I've actually used ChatGPT 3.0 to explain some of my mistakes, and then was able to verify its explanation because of the keywords it used, and then googling those.)
- NikolaNovak 3y ago
  I don't know if previous versions of DuoLingo had different approach, but on iOS, Android and Windows, I just said "No" to every option when first using it, and I don't get ANY of those. I declined notifications, widgets, reminders, everything. Not sure about the AI checker yet; we'll see! I've used ChatGPT myself though as a wonderful language tutor to complement Duolingo, so I'm trying to not be completely skeptical / cynical :-)

madjam002 3y ago

Are there any better apps for learning a foreign language?

pahool 3y ago
I prefer Mango Languages, which I get for free through my public library. The progression feels better to me, it's not as gamified (sorry for using that word), and there is some (though not a ton of) actual lesson content in there. For example, learning Spanish, it gives some context on the different usages of "Ser" vs. "Estar" for "to be", and it includes discussion on gendered nouns. DuoLingo may have gotten to some brief lesson content at some point, but for me it was too grating to continue with and I quit before I made much progress with it.
Apocryphon 3y ago
Language Transfer is free, non-commercial, and many swear by it: https://www.languagetransfer.org https://www.languagetransfer.org
- lsllc 3y ago
  I'll heartily second this, Mihalis is great! I learned far more in the first 10 mins of LT than in months of Duolingo.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  No Japanese. I get it, but it does seem like choosing any Logo graphic language limits what services there are. At least if your base language is phonetic.
Panini_Jones 3y ago
I like Memrise. I did the full German course with them. It's similar to Duolingo. I also suggest using something like News In Slow German to understand actual content generated (and read) by real people.

Affric 3y ago

I found Duolingo to be incredibly helpful. The language I was learning had no tuition available for adults in my country and I practiced with native speakers when I could find them and consumed media from the community of the target language. All while on public transport, when I would otherwise be on my phone. All for the price of nothing (though their model has grow much more user hostile). This is not to advocate for Duolingo as a company or even the app as a method but I found it effective and useful as a tool. Duolingo isn’t going to learn a language for you. You have to internalise the grammar and vocabulary. Could I have done the same with a book? No. I could have done something different. Could I have done the same with a class? No, no classes existed for me.

threatofrain 3y ago
Nothing is a substitute for immersion, and learning a language is so incredibly hard that it's fair to question the motivation of the learner and ask whether they intend to live in the place that speaks the language. If you intend to move, then whether you practice Chinese for 4 years in a classroom vs. with Duolingo, any differences are going to melt away very quickly and what will emerge as the forefront factor of success will be one's innate ability to push yourself in a foreign environment; i.e., don't be safe and only interact with people who speak your native language.
- Affric 3y ago
  100% We quickly learn how vulnerable we are without a local language or Lingua Franca. In my experience working class immigrants who have immigrated to places that have no large established language community in their new home are the best demonstration of this. They often start with nothing but end up with great skills whereas others will just stay and interact with their native language community and be barely conversational in the majority language.
- cracrecry 3y ago
  Learning a language is not that hard. Everybody does it, so it is not be that hard. I learned French and Spanish natively because of my family, but I speak other languages like German or Mandarin, although I only know the most common Chinese symbols I can understand people talking and communicate myself effectively. The most important thing is not forgetting what you learn, specially when the neural connections are weak. For this I used Anki and my own tools. You do not need to push yourself so much. In fact I do not recommend pushing yourself into a foreign environment without basic understanding, specially If you are an adult and need to function in that enviroment. I traveled to Germany only after studying it for years 30 min a day. It was much better experience than in China in witch it was similar to your "pushing yourself" method where very few people speak English. In China the rate at which I could learn was not better than if I had started learning that in Europe. It overwhelmed my capabilities. Also, China is a different culture, and you have to learn it the hard way with painful misunderstandings.

simonw 3y ago

"Unless anyone has had a different experience" I've tried classroom instruction, and teacher-driven courses, multiple times in my life. They never really stuck for me. Duolingo has worked for me where other techniques haven't. I'm now at a stage where I can read a newspaper article in Spanish and understand ~90% of the content. (5 year streak, but that's 5 years of 5-15 minutes a day which turns out to be exactly the commitment that works for me.)

chrisdbanks 3y ago
For comparison, I taught myself Spanish with paper flashcards I wrote, and a grammar book and I was at a similar stage after 5 months. 3 hours effort per week approx so a bit more than you.
- simonw 3y ago
  If I had the discipline to do it I'm sure I could get further with other techniques, but for me the biggest feature of Duolingo is the way you don't need very much discipline at all to make progress with it.
  - dayjaby 3y ago
    "You don't need very much discipline" and "5 year streak". Sorry, but is my definition of discipline that off? You managed to have 5 years of discipline. That's the reason you managed to learn a language, not because the duolingo gamishittification does miracles.
    - simonw 3y ago
      The gamification is what helped me make it this far. Remembering to pop open an app for a few minutes on your phone takes so much less discipline than any other form of language learning I've tried in the past.

lgessler 3y ago

IMO this is a misunderstanding of the product. This might be a cynical take, but I think that for most users of Duolingo, it functions more as a game than as a tool which produces substantial gains in language knowledge. I'm a computational linguist, and whenever on hearing this people ask me what I think about Duolingo, I like to say it's language-flavored entertainment.

demondemidi 3y ago
_____-flavored entertainment pretty much describes everything our culture consumes over TCP/IP.
- bavarianbob 3y ago
  Is it necessary to specify TCP/IP? Is it not also applicable to books? Reading piles of pulp fiction is subtly different than language-flavored entertainment.
Aeolun 3y ago
So what do you think one should use if not Duolingo?
- lgessler 3y ago
  The gold standard is immersion, everyone agrees on that. Most people can't have that, so a mix of language instruction, conversation with native speakers, and exposure to appropriately challenging texts with memorization tools like Duolingo or Anki as a _supplement_ is the next best thing.

vasco 3y ago

The way to think about Duolingo is like another mobile phone game. Except the "universe" of the game is language learning instead of a random farming or middle ages theme. And so you learn about the language in the same way you learn about farming or middle ages from those games. Meaning if you never read anything about farming or the middle ages now you know of some things, but you'd really be much faster ahead by picking up a proper book on the subject. So it is with language learning apps.

manmal 3y ago
The vocab is definitely useful in the real world, and audio comprehension is improved. Foreign language textbooks also have vocab sections, and Duolingo makes that part easier.

ed_elliott_asc 3y ago

I’ve used it when visiting countries to pick up some very basics - if I wanted to actually learn a language I would get a tutor.

sureglymop 3y ago

The thing is that their whole marketing and selling point is mostly to people who don't have real strong motivation or focus to learn a language or don't have the time. E.g. to the tone of "you'll need to do this for just two minutes a day", "it'll feel more like a game", " much easier than in a traditional classroom setting ", etc. But the truth is that it doesn't really work that way; someone with focus and motivation learning grammatical rules and more in a classroom will always be either more effective or progressing at least at the same pace (or at least be just as ineffective). Their business is more about selling the idea of learning a language and that it is actually easy, partly by presenting it in a gamified way. It kind of works because people fall for it and buy a subscription for ~3 months but probably eventually stop. They then need new subscribers and have to double down on that marketing/selling of the idea. In reality, there is no shortcut to learning something. It's just about having the curiosity, motivation and discipline to do so. And many people may think they have that or are enticed by the idea of learning a new language but their life doesn't depend on it enough to have the aforementioned qualities to do it.

webdood90 3y ago
I don't think that deeply about it and suspect you're misinterpreting the goals of their target audience. I don't use Duolingo to learn a language as effectively as possible. I use it because it's a super easy and an entertaining way to stay motivated while I learn a language. I would never go out of my way to take a class or watch videos to learn the language. I don't think people are "falling for it". It does exactly what they want it to do for them.
- gunalx 3y ago
  This. Duolingo is not the best learning toolbut it is the difference between something and nothing for me.

MattGaiser 3y ago

> I spent 18 months on it and the learning was soundly thrashed by three weeks in a classroom, and for all the pupils, not just me, primed for success by 18 months with Duolingo. Yeah, but if you have time for 3 weeks in class, why do Duolingo in the first place? Those serve different markets. Duolingo is for low effort, low commitment, but interested enough to do it a bit in their spare time kind of people.

attentive 3y ago

You said it yourself they were primed by 18months of duolingo. Your classroom experience could have been different otherwise.

rpmisms 3y ago

It's excellent for building vocab and reinforcing basics. Expecting any more from it is silly.

locallost 3y ago

Learning a language at an older age is anyway difficult and will only succeed with a lot of effort. As someone that's learned a foreign language at almost 30 in a classroom, I can say that Duolingo does some things well, mostly by forcing or motivating you to repeat to memorize things. I say I learned it in a classroom, but objectively I never would've made it if I was not in the country whose official language I was learning. So the classroom gives you some basics and then you need to practice a lot until it becomes something you don't need to think about. As they say, internalize it. This takes years, but also depends on the language, some are more difficult or have different learning curves. Duolingo is again good at the practice part. Most people try to use logic and comparisons to their native language, but this is imho not a good way. Kids don't learn like that. It's argued that grownups lose this ability, but personally I sometimes say thing where I have no idea why I said that and if it's really correct. But then it turns out it is. It's somewhere in my head and it got there by listening to other people speak or reading. I know a lot of people that got nowhere by going to class because they had their group of friends from e.g. Spain, China or Korea around them. I met a person from the US who was disappointed with the little progress they made and said "I don't understand that and why it's like that". My only answer was really "because it just is". So I think Duolingo has a place, as a sort of a virtual native speaker you can interact with.

vr46 3y ago
I’m bilingual from birth and have never found languages difficult, but finding the time to put into them does get more challenging over the years. Maybe that’s why I went with Duolingo initially. I’m not finding the language learning particularly hard even though I have twenty years on you, but I also have the benefit of having to be in a classroom four hours a day, five days a week. That is making the difference, apart from a very good teacher. I know that in theory languages get tougher as you get older, but the teaching of languages has come leaps and bounds since I did French and Spanish at school, and my motivation has shifted too, so I’m finding things easier now than ever before.
- selcuka 3y ago
  > I’m finding things easier now than ever before. Your experience may not be typical as bilingual people are known to pick up additional languages more easily than monolinguals [1]. [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-language-and-cognition/article/bilingual-and-monolingual-adults-learning-an-additional-language-erps-reveal-differences-in-syntactic-processing/9ABA529BA57B742DAFB9548990D311DE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bilingualism-languag...

JoshGG 3y ago

Thanks for posting your experience. I haven’t tried duolingo. Do you think it’s possible that the 18 months helped prep you for classroom learning , vocabulary etc? How intense was your classroom learning and how much time per week? I took years of French in school and would like to learn Spanish.

KerrAvon 3y ago
Duolingo is basically the app equivalent of flashcards. It's a little smarter than that, but not much. If you're serious about learning a language, it absolutely has a place. But Duolingo __alone__ is not going to make you competent, much less fluent. Personally, I'm happy with it. I took years of Spanish and started with Duolingo in French with zero prior French, and I can now recognize phrases and hold some basic conversation; for 5 minutes a day with no significant continuous time commitment that's not bad!
vr46 3y ago
I've only recently started the classroom learning, week 5 just began, and I'm in there five days a week, four hours a day, so that's really great and the outcome required is, I think, B1 level. Duolingo over 18 months contained so little vocabulary and grammar, plus I stopped it maybe 18 months ago too, so its impact was restricted to about one day's worth of class. I did five years of French at school and three years of Spanish and definitely enjoyed the Spanish more.

ozzydave 3y ago

The first time I used DuoLingo, I was just trying to get through the tree, without really learning, and that was useless. Now I have a different technique: I’ll only listen (never read), and if I can’t comprehend and respond immediately, I’ll fail that exercise deliberately, so I’ll be re-tested later. For me, I only understand the language if I can understand some one speaking to me and respond in real time.

throwaway9191aa 3y ago
I started doing the listen-only as well! By this, I mean I just don't look at the screen, I'd love to know if there is a way to setup a listen-only option. I've also used Jumpspeak, which is an AI conversation partner. It works ok, but the speech recognition is... not great. But you can have a conversation and practice listening and responding. I was able to treat the AI as an uber driver and ask about places to go in Peru, and how to get there, and why they were nice.

raz32dust 3y ago

My experience was different. I was able to learn enough Spanish to survive in Peru for a month with just 6-7 hours in Duolingo. Different people may have different learning styles. When you're comparing to classroom, are you normalizing the number of hours spent? Of course live interaction will be several times more effective, but it's not something everyone can afford to do. It's also about goals. Duolingo isn't for you if you really want to become a proficient native speaker or be able to understand books. But it's great to learn a language casually enough to converse with locals.

mynameisash 3y ago

When I started learning French (probably 8 years ago), I started with Duolingo. Pairing Duolingo with some other tools/methods, I made good progress, and before long, I outgrew it. Last year, I decided I'd start working on Japanese, so I did the same thing I did before: hit Duolingo hard, listen to audiobooks to build up my phoneme recognition, etc. I was shocked at how slow progress was - not because I wasn't putting in the effort but because it had me redoing over and over and over again the same damn words and phrases. Gohan, mizu, sushi, gohan, gohan, mizu, gohan, sushi. I was a proponent of the site/app for quite a while - even after I outgrew it - because I legitimately believed it helped me. Now that I've seen what it's become, I can't recommend it to anyone unless you strictly do it for entertainment value with no expectation of useful education.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
Yeah, I mean it’s almost like they’re incentivized to slow your progress so you stay subscribed every month or something…
- mynameisash 3y ago
  That's another thing: the 'enshittification' is in full-force with really terrible ads plus the not-bad-but-annoying Super Duolingo ads. I could probably deal with that if the platform was good, but as I mentioned, it's just not providing any education value (to me, at least; YMMV).
- gs17 3y ago
  At the same time though, it's really easy to set your account as a classroom account and get most of the paid features.
gs17 3y ago
It really needs something like Anki has where you can say "I know the word for rice confidently, don't ask me for a long time" with the space between repetitions extending based on your feedback.
tehbeard 3y ago

gnicholas 3y ago

I found it helpful for reacquainting myself with vocabulary from a language I learned decades ago. I think it would also be helpful in learning the basics of a new language adjacent to that language (romance, in my case) before going on a trip. Beyond that, I’m not sure how useful it is on its own.

pipeline_peak 3y ago

I used Spanish with DuoLingo for 3 months straight. The matching is ridiculous. It doesn’t really challenge you with conjugate variations. Example, your answer choices are: estas, estamos, or somos. Hmm which one is not like the other? I felt like I was pattern matching my way into Dora leveled “can you find the airport?”

distortionfield 3y ago

I canceled Duolingo subscription in favor of just using ChatGPT. Duolingo wanted $30 (a $20 increase) for Max, which is as far as I can tell less flexible and capable than ChatGPT anyway.

j45 3y ago

I don’t know if it will be on borrowed time when there’s deeper things to go into. It’s important to not throw the digital learning baby out with the bath water. No single EdTech is that effective or ubiquitous, even though the possibility of new solutions anchored in the future starting to form is increasing.

w0m 3y ago

honestly you sound like a success story for the app. 3 weeks in-class after 18mo fiddling on phone leading to dramatic progress.

klipt 3y ago

I've found Anki way better than Duo for learning vocabulary. Clozemaster is a bit like Anki with prepackaged sentences.

jacquesm 3y ago

> I spent 18 months on it and the learning was soundly thrashed by three weeks in a classroom, and for all the pupils, not just me, primed for success by 18 months with Duolingo. I wonder how well you would have done if it hadn't been for that 18 months. Because 'three weeks in a classroom' sounds suspiciously to how I learned Polish: I seemed to be making zero progress for years and then in a very short amount of time (a couple of weeks at most) it suddenly 'clicked' and I started to make sense of what I heard. I probably was learning at some level that wasn't accessible all the while thinking I wasn't making any progress at all. Duolingo is 'infotainment', it gets you from zero to a little bit above zero and it may give you some useful number of words to recognize and maybe even to use actively. But it won't help you to speak a language, for that you need to progress beyond it. This is pretty much the same story with every other language, nobody learns to speak and use a language actively by reading the dictionary. But it certainly doesn't hurt to have a basic 200 or 300 word vocabulary on which to build. Personally I use Anki for such learning rather than commercial services, it allows for far more customization and you won't be sucked into silly gamification for the sake of extending your subscription because there is none.

vr46 3y ago
That everyone in the class demonstrated the same progress showed that Duolingo provided little advantage, which is what I was attempting to say in the quote. I gave up Duolingo around 18 months before starting the course, which is for complete beginners with zero knowledge.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >everyone in the class demonstrated the same progress s Did they really? Did they all ace the tests and do all the assigned homework? I find that even harder to believe than Duolingo being the primary resource to teach you a language. It's not like it's impossible, depending on the age of the class, money spent, if the school had a selection process, etc. But most adult classes aren't really that selective.
  - vr46 3y ago

quickthrower2 3y ago

Maybe because your brain made new connections, but was "primed" by what it knew from Duolingo. A bit like you plan a holiday, read the guidebook, then you go to the destination. Your knowledge of the place was thrashed vs. reading the guide book. But the guidebook helped with some foundational knowledge and was still useful.

throw__away7391 3y ago

I have found it helpful, even as the central foundation for learning languages, but you have to remember at the end of the day it is *you* who is learning the language and you absolutely must mentally engage yourself, it can definitely lure you into a path of scoring points without making real progress. I will pause my lesson and jump over to Google or ChatGPT, and usually end a session with a pen and paper writing out any phrases I was less familiar with. You also need to make sure you’re being challenged, with some languages I get into a phase where it is really easy for a long time, when that happens, you need to skip ahead because just scoring points is meaningless. I still think the gamification is useful and unique and can help keep your overall learning efforts progressing. Also I always supplement with Pimsleur, an audio-only program that is great for listening while you’re at the gym or biking or otherwise unable to read or interact with a screen.

NikolaNovak 3y ago
My finding as well - how I engage with DuoLingo had massive impact on my progress. Focusing on streak, leagues, and XP/points was detrimental. I'd do the repetitive high-points exercises instead of lessons and feel "I've accomplished my goal" (of having a high score). Once focusing on my goal of "I want to learn a language" rather than points, it was WAY better. I also create my own cheat-sheets for conjugation / adjectives / etc, and find ChatGPT a phenomenally patient tutor for my incessant "WHY, French? WHY is it thus?!?!?" questions :->

hintymad 3y ago

> Duolingo should be on borrowed time, as a method to learn a language it’s inefficient to the point of being ineffective A lot of Duolingo's questions ask a user to pick and choose words to complete a sentence. That gives a false sense of achievement when in reality it simply does not challenge one's mind enough to learn a language effectively. Besides, a simple sentence does not give me enough context to build my intuition. I personally find the idea of Comprehensible Input works much better: reading extensively, watching videos extensively, using a language increasingly frequently, and etc.

93po 3y ago

Duolingo works for me because it keeps me engaged in a way other language learning resources wouldn’t. I might be making super slow progress but I’m making some progress versus none at all

hotdogscout 3y ago

I learned better with Duolingo than during Class. It really depends on the quality of the material and teacher.

changadera 3y ago

I used Duolingo in 2022 for the 35 days leading up to a holiday in Greece. I went from knowing 0 greek to being able to read the alphabet and words, pronounce them and do things like order in a restaurant, explain allergies and convey our room number. Around the beginning of 2023 they did a couple of things that ruined it a bit for me. They completely changed the track system so now you have to follow one set path, and they got rid of the classes feature which was awesome because for around $5 I could have a zoom lesson with a native teacher and other people learning the language. Also the sentences it teaches you are a bit less silly now and that was a cool gimmick.