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> Yes, that's why I brought it up. We have teaching technology that works (textbooks) if you're motivated enough to put in the effort required, but insofar as l

> Yes, that's why I brought it up. We have teaching technology that works (textbooks) if you're motivated enough to put in the effort required, but insofar as learning requires effort and effort is demotivating, most people will gravitate towards the solution that demands the least effort (and provides the least learning) without being obviously useless. That’s wrong. Duolingo sucks. So does the conventional textbook approach. People can go through years of the conventional textbook approach and learn nothing. I certainly did. The litmus test for learning isn’t how much effort it requires and how much it demotivates you. The school of thought where language input with sufficient comprehension is emphasized has already worked for all those people who learned English as an nth language by playing video games, watching movies and Netflix, and without grinding through books. And compared to that? Duolingo looks much more like the conventional approach if you look past the insipid gamification and toddler-level "the boy drinks water and sits on an apple".

yorwba 2y ago
I don't mean that textbooks are all great, but that textbooks work as a technology, i.e. there are textbooks where if you work through them front to back and do all the exercises, you come away with a decent understanding of the topics the book was designed to cover. If you don't, that's less an indictment of their insufficient technological sophistication than an indication that the content wasn't good enough. Actually, Duolingo as a technology isn't necessarily that bad either, it's just Duolingo-the-company with its business incentives that limit its potential. And of course not everything that requires effort is necessarily a good way to learn, but I don't think there's any way to learn that's also effortless. E.g. the least-effort way to play a video game in a foreign language is to figure out how to operate the interface through trial-and-error (or watching someone else play) and then rely on spatial memory to press the right buttons without having to read the labels. And people who watch foreign-language movies or shows typically do so with subtitles that free them from having to learn anything, so they might just pick up the names of characters and maybe a few common expressions. The comprehensible input approach requires a lot of effort upfront to make the input comprehensible in the first place (even if it's toddler-level content, that still means it targets people with a vocabulary of several thousand words) and then you still need to push yourself a bit to actually learn something, rather than mentally skipping over the parts you didn't understand.
- keybored 2y ago
  > Actually, Duolingo as a technology isn't necessarily that bad either, it's just Duolingo-the-company with its business incentives that limit its potential. Clearly that’s not the case when multi-year streakers don’t have a clue what to do. They followed the instructions of streaking and didn’t get anywhere. The ones I have seen anyway (YouTube). > And of course not everything that requires effort is necessarily a good way to learn, but I don't think there's any way to learn that's also effortless. No one said effortless. You can’t bolster your side by making up that someone marked a place on the complete opposite extreme of the spectrum. > E.g. the least-effort way to play a video game in a foreign language is to figure out how to operate the interface through trial-and-error (or watching someone else play) and then rely on spatial memory to press the right buttons without having to read the labels. And people who watch foreign-language movies or shows typically do so with subtitles that free them from having to learn anything, so they might just pick up the names of characters and maybe a few common expressions. I don’t know why you are setting up this armchair theory. I said what has worked for people. Not in theory. IN REALITY. People who have immersed enough time into English indirectly by playing video games, watching Netflix and whatnot. And also seeing no real correlation with their practical, day-to-day abilities and their formal studies of English that they have to go through in school. You can see this every time someone goes from relatively passive learning through single-player video games to participating in voice chat in multi-player video games and discussing things in English online. Do you think they stop themselves half-way through this process and grind grammar/whatever other English books in order to work up to talking to people in real life? > The comprehensible input approach requires a lot of effort upfront to make the input comprehensible in the first place (even if it's toddler-level content, that still means it targets people with a vocabulary of several thousand words) and then you still need to push yourself a bit to actually learn something, rather than mentally skipping over the parts you didn't understand. What it requires is a lot of time and exposure. Where your “actually learn” weasel phrase fits in is unclear since all that seems required is sufficient interest in the associated topics (not the language per se).

yorwba 2y ago

I don't mean that textbooks are all great, but that textbooks work as a technology, i.e. there are textbooks where if you work through them front to back and do all the exercises, you come away with a decent understanding of the topics the book was designed to cover. If you don't, that's less an indictment of their insufficient technological sophistication than an indication that the content wasn't good enough. Actually, Duolingo as a technology isn't necessarily that bad either, it's just Duolingo-the-company with its business incentives that limit its potential. And of course not everything that requires effort is necessarily a good way to learn, but I don't think there's any way to learn that's also effortless. E.g. the least-effort way to play a video game in a foreign language is to figure out how to operate the interface through trial-and-error (or watching someone else play) and then rely on spatial memory to press the right buttons without having to read the labels. And people who watch foreign-language movies or shows typically do so with subtitles that free them from having to learn anything, so they might just pick up the names of characters and maybe a few common expressions. The comprehensible input approach requires a lot of effort upfront to make the input comprehensible in the first place (even if it's toddler-level content, that still means it targets people with a vocabulary of several thousand words) and then you still need to push yourself a bit to actually learn something, rather than mentally skipping over the parts you didn't understand.

keybored 2y ago
> Actually, Duolingo as a technology isn't necessarily that bad either, it's just Duolingo-the-company with its business incentives that limit its potential. Clearly that’s not the case when multi-year streakers don’t have a clue what to do. They followed the instructions of streaking and didn’t get anywhere. The ones I have seen anyway (YouTube). > And of course not everything that requires effort is necessarily a good way to learn, but I don't think there's any way to learn that's also effortless. No one said effortless. You can’t bolster your side by making up that someone marked a place on the complete opposite extreme of the spectrum. > E.g. the least-effort way to play a video game in a foreign language is to figure out how to operate the interface through trial-and-error (or watching someone else play) and then rely on spatial memory to press the right buttons without having to read the labels. And people who watch foreign-language movies or shows typically do so with subtitles that free them from having to learn anything, so they might just pick up the names of characters and maybe a few common expressions. I don’t know why you are setting up this armchair theory. I said what has worked for people. Not in theory. IN REALITY. People who have immersed enough time into English indirectly by playing video games, watching Netflix and whatnot. And also seeing no real correlation with their practical, day-to-day abilities and their formal studies of English that they have to go through in school. You can see this every time someone goes from relatively passive learning through single-player video games to participating in voice chat in multi-player video games and discussing things in English online. Do you think they stop themselves half-way through this process and grind grammar/whatever other English books in order to work up to talking to people in real life? > The comprehensible input approach requires a lot of effort upfront to make the input comprehensible in the first place (even if it's toddler-level content, that still means it targets people with a vocabulary of several thousand words) and then you still need to push yourself a bit to actually learn something, rather than mentally skipping over the parts you didn't understand. What it requires is a lot of time and exposure. Where your “actually learn” weasel phrase fits in is unclear since all that seems required is sufficient interest in the associated topics (not the language per se).