
Who Pays for Cheap Language Instruction? The Dangers Behind Duolingo - lilrhody
https://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/yuliya-komska-alberto-bruzos-moro-roberto-rey-agudo-who-pay-cheap-language-classes
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Waterfall
>The company she works for, 51Talk, charges learners an average of 45 yuan
($6.36) per 25-minute session. Yet teachers receive on average only 130 pesos
($2.53) per hour. English, a legacy of U.S. imperialism in the country, may
have made the Philippines one of Asia’s largest providers of proficient
speakers, but it is certainly not showering online language teachers with
riches.

People work jobs that make them money, they work jobs that give them the most
money. If she didn't want to do that job, she would choose another better
paying one.

>“Learners” on Duolingo are actually just performing the free labor—or even
paying for the privilege—of helping the company improve its proprietary
algorithms.

Learners don't benefit at all from learning a language, they're just cogs in a
wheel, in fact learning languages hurts them and wastes useful calories that
could be better used like thinking about what to wear or the regretful thing
they forgot but remember now.

I fail to see the danger of combining translations and language learning
together.

