Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
I'm trying a language learning startup and surveyed a lot of people. The response is universal that everyone's tried Duolingo, and it didn't work for them in actually learning, despite monster streaks.
I think it's masterful as a dopamine machine and employing habit building tactics. Perhaps it's a good icebreaker for people in language learning, as long as people are resourceful enough to look beyond Duolingo.
Duolingo has worked great for me. I had learned Spanish a decade ago and completely forgotten it. In a few months of consistent practice, I learned enough to get around. And after 6-9 months, I could have basic conversations.
I was never good at learning languages and Duolingo has been the best system for me. I like the paced repetition it does. Also, that it has you practice reading, writing, saying, and listening.
That's cool I'd love to hear more about it, I've actually been thinking about ways that a language app could work better. Seems like all the current research is that "immersion" in the target language is critical, an app that just played me conversations, had me read text, etc and 'creatively' formulate responses, not just simply fill in the missing word, obviously in increasing difficulty would be ideal.
> The response is universal that everyone's tried Duolingo, and it didn't work for them in actually learning, despite monster streaks.
I think this is an issue of mismatched expectations. For actually getting to know a language a tool like Duolingo is too limited, as knowing a language is an umbrella term comprising multiple skills and Duo helps with only vocabulary, a bit of grammar and pronunciation to some extent (but I have no experience with that aspect). If someone starts a course thinking they'll be able to speak the language once it's over, no wonder they eventually end up disappointed. What Duolingo is excellent at, however, is kickstarting the process of learning a language you're interested in. Hard to find a better tool for that.
I can't agree more. I made some progress on Japanese only to find that when I spoke it was completely incomprehensible to a native speaker. I think speech/pronunciation correction is still an unsolved problem.
I took foreign language courses in high school and college. I couldn't actually communicate until moving to the country where they spoke it and living there for six months. Then I had to go back home :(
My personal experience leads me to disagree. I've been using Duolingo to learn Chinese for about 400 days now. I recently took another step and started taking private zoom lessons and my tutor said a few of her students have come from the same path. Duo has given me a good understanding of sentence structure and raw vocabulary. Even though my pronunciation needs work, Duo has given me so much for watching a few ads and I hope to continue with it. Given everything, my tutor said I would pass HSK 1 and maybe level 2.
I learned Chinese in college and then lived in China for a year and a half. Personally, I think sentence structure and basic (spoken) vocabulary are the easiest parts of Chinese since there's no real conjugation and particles do all the heavy lifting instead of messing with word forms [1]. The hard parts are memorizing a decent number of hanzi and properly pronouncing with tones. I tried duo to learn some Japanese and found it... not great.
[1] Note: Personally, I find Chinese superior to romance languages in this regard - it was actually really refreshing as a learner.
The problem is that language learning is inherently about putting your brain in tricky, slightly painful situations. You have to decipher confusing sentences, handle unfamiliar words and wrestle your brain into thinking in a different language.
You can't really make a fun game that does this. Therefore Duolingo makes a game that focuses on translating the foreign language to your native one. That's great for starting out, but eventually you gotta start composing sentences and ideas in the foreign language.
> The problem is that language learning is inherently about putting your brain in tricky, slightly painful situations
Immersion is the only way you’ll ever truly learn a language. All the classes, flash cards, etc., in the world can’t teach you how to clear up a misunderstanding with the manager at hotel in Spanish.
I remember at some point we did Duolingo in Spanish, and the Spanish speaking kids were shocked how fast we (black) tested out of topics and progressed. The reason was pretty obvious; we’re around y’all a lot lol.
My recommendation is even if you don’t have many people speaking the language you want to learn near you, immerse yourself. Read popular modern authors in the language, listen to podcasts in the language, join a game server and practice in-game interaction in the language (hard mode).
Maybe it is useless. But you may find that those encounters take place on a foundation built by some little green bird named Duo.
I wouldn't call it "pretty useless". I think it has two distinct places in a language learning process.
1) They make learning a new language very accessible and fun to get started. Books and courses do not have such a low level of entry.
2) It's good for learning new words in a context. Memrise for example often just gives you a single word and translation. But I think it's much more effective to then put words into sentences.
That said, if you really want to learn a language past the "I can manage for a few days as a tourist" you need to add other methods to it. Read books, listen to audio content, watch TV, have lessons (speak the language!), study grammar etc.
Then not everybody is alike. So try different methods. See what works for you. Some might have more success with Duolingo, some will have less.
Yeah, I've gone through not quite half the introductory Spanish audio course from Language Transfer [1], and it feels like I've made massively more progress than Duolingo, even though I'd spent at least twice as long on the Duolingo courses over the year. All the Language Transfer is available free too so that's nice.
It's a shame, because Duolingo is fun, the art style is cool and the gamified stuff is potentially useful for keeping people coming back and doing the lessons. It just really hasn't felt very effective to me at language learning at all...
For Duolingo, you might mix it with other materials for a much better experience. I told our kids' experience learning foreign languages here [1]. My wife used the same technique to learn some French, Duolingo reinforced with audio and visual materials, songs with lyrics, regular learning books, podcasts etc.
Duolingo is used daily in our house and we're paying for not seeing ads.
This proves the OP's point. Duolingo is trash if you aspire to fluency. It's only useful in fluency as an additive to a robust training program. You don't get fluent by following Duolingo alone.
It’s useless for properly learning a language. For getting the basics of a language in a game-y way that doesn’t feel like studying, it’s great. My wife managed to pass her German A1 (CEFR [0]) exam almost completely by just using Duolingo. She took some free Deutsche Welle exam prep courses in the week before, but to even get to the level to understand those, she used Duolingo.
If you need to learn a language quickly, I’d call it the wrong tool. If you are okay spending time properly studying a language, I’d say that will be better. But for certain cases, Duolingo is great.
So I am using Duolingo as I will have to take the sane exam at some point over the next year or two. I think it works ok for being able to consume simple German but less well for understanding spoken German, or constructing one’s own ideas.
In other words, it doesn’t make the hard things easy or easier.
It is a great alternative to wasting time on social media or news sites, however.
I find their approach of "drag and drop these 6 words to form a sentence" or "fill in the missing word in this sentence" was just leading me to recognize correct patterns of letters, not words or meaning.
"aog" always goes after "Lor" and before "san" (obviously made up example) - I couldn't tell you what the individual words meant or what the full sentence said; but I knew that those groups of letters belonged in that order.
I'm also a lapsed B2 in German and played around with that course a few years ago. 3 or 4 weeks ago I got an email that they finally accepted my correction on a blatantly incorrect translation, which had apparently been unfixed in one of their most popular courses for years.
I'm learning tons of grammar and vocabulary through Duolingo. Are you not learning these things, or do you find them useless?
BTW the quality of the language programs differs vastly. Spanish, which I'm studying, is very fleshed out. Tried Arabic and it was anemic and even broken in parts.
Can only agree. Duolingo gives some basic vocabulary but after that basically is useless, especially as the way it teaches grammar forms (and on the mobile app barely any explicit rules) is 100% useless. Native speakers looking at example sentences in the target language are often shocked at the nonsense that is provided.
But worst for me is that it wastes time. The unnecessarily ineffective repetitions, all the features and ads intended to upsell 'Pro', etc. There are dozens of other apps that do it better for free (e.g. good old Anki, or newcomers like Clozemaster) and when on a desktop a whole wealth of professional learning resources are available, both old ones that are now public domain, the world of wikis and collaborative learning and flashcards, and no-profit materials. For instance lots of organizations fund free courses, e.g. the EU funded a bunch of sites for learning languages, like https://deutsch.info, and national broadcasters like RF1 (French), DW (German) provide great professional and current materials. Podcasts and youtubers teach any language imaginable, etc.
Try Duolingo to get a taste, but after a few lessons look for your language online and you'll find much better stuff.
My partner is doing a “cocktail” of Duolingo, Memrise, and a grammar textbook for French. They are progressing a lot in just a month (and given the early learning curve from the grammar, I’ve found it good)
I think that these language tools work best when you have a mixture, because they can complement each other and keep on feeding into the novelty factor.
(In particular Memrise and Duolingo operate on different sort of teaching strategies so just those two together is really interesting)
For non-ubiquitous languages (everything other than English), part of the difficulty of learning is not just the basic learning, it's retaining what you've learned; it might be difficult to practice it unless you're on the country that speaks it. Of I'm in the middle of Tennessee, probably don't have a lot of opportunity to prescribe my Japanese. That's where Duolingo shines, in my opinion: as a learning companion.
Totally echo all of this. I'm one of the owners at the Orange County Lingual Institute (oclanguages.com) and we see Duolingo as the gateway for people to tap into their language learning interest but then get serious with in-person or online language learning classes. We have seen firsthand hundreds of students unsuccessful with apps since they are not practicing live conversations and not understanding grammar. With 80+% retention of our 2 month/once a week classes, adult professionals get through a college textbook in a year and can become fluent enough to travel to those countries, speak with relatives, and read novels & newspapers with high levels of profiency. Language learning is hard work with no shortcuts but can still be accessible without apps that overpromise and underdeliver. Ping me privately or check out our site for more info.
Same here. This valuation makes no sense to me. I’ve spent a LOT of time optimizing ways in which I learn languages, and duolingo doesn’t do much.
Here’s what I can recommend:
- follow as many instagram account as possible to teach you the language. There’s so many “teaching chinese” instagram account for example. Every day when I check instagram I learn a few chinese words.
- check browser plugins to display subs in different languages simultaneously on netflix
- use memrise or anki or other app or real world flash cards. There’s a reason people always go back to the flashcards.
It’s all about input. You need to learn a lot of vocab, fast. Don’t even focus on grammar at first, and even less on output. Output will come naturally after a while.
Quick search gave this review: The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.
Yeah I used Babbel to pick up some basic Italian a few years ago and thought that while a bit more “boring” than Duolingo, I felt like I was learning more useful stuff. It’s structured more like a language class at school.
Memrise is worth a look as a Duolingo alternative. It’s similar but feels a bit more “serious”, there are some nice features like you get videos of native speakers saying phrases with a variety of accents.
Babbel is great and they also have shorter subscription plans. I only needed a quick fresh up of my French skills and did not see why I should subscribe to a full twelve months plan, which was the shortest that I could find on Duolingo.
I find that Duolingo is to human languages what Codecademy is to programming languages. It's gamefied and fun but will only scratch the surface teaching you the very basics. In order to truly learn the language you have to put in the much harder work elsewhere. That's not to say that both platforms dont have a place, they still can be pretty valuable tools for beginners.
It serves as a useful tool for learning some fairly basic words and phrases, not much else. Languages have many subtle nuances that simply can not be taught via spaced repetition.
ngokevin|4 years ago
I think it's masterful as a dopamine machine and employing habit building tactics. Perhaps it's a good icebreaker for people in language learning, as long as people are resourceful enough to look beyond Duolingo.
thesausageking|4 years ago
I was never good at learning languages and Duolingo has been the best system for me. I like the paced repetition it does. Also, that it has you practice reading, writing, saying, and listening.
vncecartersknee|4 years ago
trwired|4 years ago
I think this is an issue of mismatched expectations. For actually getting to know a language a tool like Duolingo is too limited, as knowing a language is an umbrella term comprising multiple skills and Duo helps with only vocabulary, a bit of grammar and pronunciation to some extent (but I have no experience with that aspect). If someone starts a course thinking they'll be able to speak the language once it's over, no wonder they eventually end up disappointed. What Duolingo is excellent at, however, is kickstarting the process of learning a language you're interested in. Hard to find a better tool for that.
Areading314|4 years ago
wyxuan|4 years ago
greesil|4 years ago
daxaxelrod|4 years ago
mdorazio|4 years ago
[1] Note: Personally, I find Chinese superior to romance languages in this regard - it was actually really refreshing as a learner.
dorchadas|4 years ago
hardwaregeek|4 years ago
You can't really make a fun game that does this. Therefore Duolingo makes a game that focuses on translating the foreign language to your native one. That's great for starting out, but eventually you gotta start composing sentences and ideas in the foreign language.
okwubodu|4 years ago
Immersion is the only way you’ll ever truly learn a language. All the classes, flash cards, etc., in the world can’t teach you how to clear up a misunderstanding with the manager at hotel in Spanish.
I remember at some point we did Duolingo in Spanish, and the Spanish speaking kids were shocked how fast we (black) tested out of topics and progressed. The reason was pretty obvious; we’re around y’all a lot lol.
My recommendation is even if you don’t have many people speaking the language you want to learn near you, immerse yourself. Read popular modern authors in the language, listen to podcasts in the language, join a game server and practice in-game interaction in the language (hard mode).
Maybe it is useless. But you may find that those encounters take place on a foundation built by some little green bird named Duo.
N00bN00b|4 years ago
I think that's a really good description of learning in general.
this_is_not_you|4 years ago
1) They make learning a new language very accessible and fun to get started. Books and courses do not have such a low level of entry. 2) It's good for learning new words in a context. Memrise for example often just gives you a single word and translation. But I think it's much more effective to then put words into sentences.
That said, if you really want to learn a language past the "I can manage for a few days as a tourist" you need to add other methods to it. Read books, listen to audio content, watch TV, have lessons (speak the language!), study grammar etc.
Then not everybody is alike. So try different methods. See what works for you. Some might have more success with Duolingo, some will have less.
stephen_g|4 years ago
It's a shame, because Duolingo is fun, the art style is cool and the gamified stuff is potentially useful for keeping people coming back and doing the lessons. It just really hasn't felt very effective to me at language learning at all...
1. https://www.languagetransfer.org/
zwayhowder|4 years ago
gokhan|4 years ago
Duolingo is used daily in our house and we're paying for not seeing ads.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25408576
devin|4 years ago
Semaphor|4 years ago
If you need to learn a language quickly, I’d call it the wrong tool. If you are okay spending time properly studying a language, I’d say that will be better. But for certain cases, Duolingo is great.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_European_Framework_of_R...
vr46|4 years ago
In other words, it doesn’t make the hard things easy or easier.
It is a great alternative to wasting time on social media or news sites, however.
scrooched_moose|4 years ago
"aog" always goes after "Lor" and before "san" (obviously made up example) - I couldn't tell you what the individual words meant or what the full sentence said; but I knew that those groups of letters belonged in that order.
I'm also a lapsed B2 in German and played around with that course a few years ago. 3 or 4 weeks ago I got an email that they finally accepted my correction on a blatantly incorrect translation, which had apparently been unfixed in one of their most popular courses for years.
colordrops|4 years ago
BTW the quality of the language programs differs vastly. Spanish, which I'm studying, is very fleshed out. Tried Arabic and it was anemic and even broken in parts.
estaseuropano|4 years ago
But worst for me is that it wastes time. The unnecessarily ineffective repetitions, all the features and ads intended to upsell 'Pro', etc. There are dozens of other apps that do it better for free (e.g. good old Anki, or newcomers like Clozemaster) and when on a desktop a whole wealth of professional learning resources are available, both old ones that are now public domain, the world of wikis and collaborative learning and flashcards, and no-profit materials. For instance lots of organizations fund free courses, e.g. the EU funded a bunch of sites for learning languages, like https://deutsch.info, and national broadcasters like RF1 (French), DW (German) provide great professional and current materials. Podcasts and youtubers teach any language imaginable, etc.
Try Duolingo to get a taste, but after a few lessons look for your language online and you'll find much better stuff.
rtpg|4 years ago
I think that these language tools work best when you have a mixture, because they can complement each other and keep on feeding into the novelty factor.
(In particular Memrise and Duolingo operate on different sort of teaching strategies so just those two together is really interesting)
whatever_dude|4 years ago
orky56|4 years ago
baby|4 years ago
Here’s what I can recommend:
- follow as many instagram account as possible to teach you the language. There’s so many “teaching chinese” instagram account for example. Every day when I check instagram I learn a few chinese words.
- check browser plugins to display subs in different languages simultaneously on netflix
- use memrise or anki or other app or real world flash cards. There’s a reason people always go back to the flashcards.
It’s all about input. You need to learn a lot of vocab, fast. Don’t even focus on grammar at first, and even less on output. Output will come naturally after a while.
BooneJS|4 years ago
achow|4 years ago
Quick search gave this review: The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.
tomduncalf|4 years ago
Memrise is worth a look as a Duolingo alternative. It’s similar but feels a bit more “serious”, there are some nice features like you get videos of native speakers saying phrases with a variety of accents.
jansan|4 years ago
vncecartersknee|4 years ago
I also found busuu and linq to be okay as well.
ALotOfBees|4 years ago
dazc|4 years ago
mgh2|4 years ago
chillingeffect|4 years ago