I'm a former military linguist who was trained to learn Arabic.
I've always disliked and distrusted Duolingo (and before that, Rosetta Stone), for providing people the basics (which they do just fine) but making it seem like fluency is always just one more upgrade or lesson around the corner while not-so-subtly implying that it's your fault that you're not there yet.
Even for the most talented learners of languages it takes many, many more hours and types of exposure that these apps cannot achieve. For Arabic, for instance, the military gave us 88 weeks of full-day instruction with native speakers, in addition to homework. And that's all just to achieve basic reading/listening fluency. And many of the people who start the program (and have passed an aptitude test even to start the program) do not complete it.
Like I said, it's as good as anything to start, but it's the marketing of it as the complete package that irks me.
Duolingo own marketing does not claim they teach up to fluency. I never seen anyone claim that duolingo can, should or did teach up to fluency.
I have seen people claim that duolingo made them able to consume simple content or have basic conversation (usually they claim it about Spanish which is the longest course).
Indeed, it's a beginner course, but they market their app as if they've discovered some secret algorithm to learning languages when any of their students would get just as much value out of any number of other independent learning methods.
But at least it's not University courses which are, dollar for dollar, ridiculously overpriced.
And for the record, "learn Spanish" also doesn't imply fluency to me... I feel like anyone would be able figure out it takes more than an app to make you fluent in another language.
That is literally what every physical language school or textbook for beginners have in the materials ... and literally none of them teaches up to fluency.
Maybe because I had experience with language learning, but it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that.
>it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that
That's because you've been marketed-to by beginner's courses your whole life, probably. Like I said, this goes back to things like Rosetta Stone, or Berlitz before that, etc. etc.
They all have done the same business model. Suck people in with the ambiguity of "learn a language" (and all the sweet social capital it will give you!) teach you a few touristy words and phrases without any way of telling you if your pronunciation is way off (AI might help in the future, but it isn't there yet), and happily blow sunshine up your you-know-what about how well you're doing.
If you can't tell, I'm a bit cynical about general audience language apps.
I think that you have unrealistic expectations. Math books have "learn math" on them. Physics books have "learn physics" on them. Drawing books have "learn drawing" on them. You do not expect to be at PhD level after reading them.
There is no reason to make exception for language learning. And even there, real life courses have "learn English" or "learn Spanish" on them. Literally none of them can make you fluent.
Also, fluency is super far reaching goal. It is absurd as a benchmark. You will reach fluency only after you consumed huge amount of content, wrote a lot of text and spoken with people for hundreds of hours. Which beginner, intermediate or advanced resources you learned on the way does not matter much.
> If you can't tell, I'm a bit cynical about general audience language apps.
I learned two foreign languages up to fluency - enough to be able to use them in work, life, internet, to converse with people, use them to learn new things.
> while not-so-subtly implying that it's your fault that you're not there yet
It's disappointing to me how many people try learning a language with Duolingo, do not succeed, then just "accept" that they're "bad with languages" and "can't learn them".
I use Duo every day, but understand and accept its limitations. It's free, it fits into my schedule, and I do move forward albeit slowly.
After about 2 years with my language I'm able to read at around an A2/B1 level. Listening is hit or miss in the A1/A2 level. It depends a lot on the speaker. But I can't speak at all, clearly my brain hasn't rewired itself to think on the fly like that.
If the features of Duolingo are available in another app (i.e. their various memorization techniques, vocabulary building, various interactive learning, etc.) that doesn't gamify or nag. Let me know since I really detest these aspects of Duolingo.
I succumbed to paying for the app since it is virtually unusable with the frequency of ads on the freemium model.
I like Duolingo for the exact reasons you don't. I want to learn a language, and I will need to know the basics to be able to talk to people on my honeymoon next year. What you see as "nagging" I see as "holding me accountable to a goal I've set for myself."
I can definitely see why you'd want to be able to dial back the notifications, though.
On principle, I'd usually be on your side in this kind of situation. But again, for me, in this particular case, the nagging is a feature, not a nuisance. Besides, of all the things an app can nag you about, learning a language is pretty innocuous.
Fun fact: if you have a pi-hole, the only ad you'll ever get is their own ad promoting Super Duolingo. I'm assuming it's a video embedded in the app somewhere.
If it’s important, why cede control of your own discipline to a notification loop of a for-profit company? A technique I like to use is to wake up an hour early everyday and do some studying before anyone else is awake. Making dedicated time for something is like making a commitment to myself. Strengthens my ability to do it each time, feels more like I am in control.
Awesome to be learning something new either way though!
Edit: I reworded my original comment to sound much less harsh. Same sentiment, better delivery!
I generally don’t think all people are equally capable. I have a kid with fairly severe adhd, and i am mildly affected myself. I’m very familiar with executive dysfunction. What I have found is that it’s a muscle I can exercise and keep in shape, and if I start slacking on it it’s very easy for my discipline to fall apart. It took a couple of years to build up that fitness as well.
I have fairly severe ADHD myself, and while it's possible for me to be vaguely functional, it already takes all of my energy just to not quit my job, and then there is no energy left for my personal time.
(I love my job, but that unfortunately doesn't stop it from being made nearly impossible for me. thanks, ADHD)
I started writing this before you updated your comment. I'm glad I saw the change, because I was going to reply with a similar level of snark!
In my case, I'm learning German. My wife already knows a good bit of German (which she learned in "real" classes, not Duolingo) so I have a captive practice buddy. We speak German with each other sometimes, and she has coached me through some things Duolingo can't - like properly articulating the German "ch" sound.
I like your approach, by the way - it's almost exactly what I use for my photography. I wake up with the sun, about 2 hours before my wife, and I go make photos.
The thing about HN comment threads is that you don't know who anyone is. So, the natural(?) assumption ends up being that anyone who disagrees with you is the perfect strawman for your own side of the argument. In my case, I have a support structure outside of Duolingo, I have an active interest in taking my learning outside the app...
and I still find the gamification and notifications helpful. I just don't feel very motivated some days, but I still get a few lessons in! Something in me wants to be high up on that leaderboard. Is this the healthiest way to harness behavioral psychology to learn a language? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. In any case, I'm practicing German every day, and that's pretty cool.
With Duolingo, I think the ends justify the means. FWIW you can turn off the notifications in your phone's settings, and emails are easy to direct to junk/spam/whatever black hole you prefer.
Thanks for the detailed response. Sounds like what I do too, but for the social component I try and find someone learning the same thing. Sometimes that’s easy, sometimes not.
Like most people with young kids these days, I’m struggling with the reduced willpower people are trading for their digital conveniences. My original comment took that reflexivity too far and ignored the obvious utility of apps (I have ones I use too!) with a blanket assumption.
Because language learning generally sux, is horribly boring and I don't get enough of sleep enough anyway.
So, if there is an app that makes me want to open it, enjoy the process, then it is pure gain. Sometimes I get double motivated and do extras (content consumption, reading grammar), other times I just keep the streak.
But if I had to wake up every day an hour sooner to study language, then I would be forgetting everything in two weeks, because that would genuinely lowered my quality of life.
And yes, I am ok with idea that you will learn faster then I will.
Then why are you using Duolingo in the first place?
That app has to be the worst method, because people think they are progressing while they in fact don't. From personal experience it's the worst method I tired to learn a language, and the content present for languages I know isn't good either.
I plan on adding a community college class into the mix, so there is some education outside of the app that will happen eventually. But, there's at least a few reasons why you'd use Duolingo exclusively.
1. If you can't afford something better. I keep getting pummeled on the leaderboard by people doing 5000+ XP/week worth of English for Spanish Speakers. None of them have Super Duolingo (you can see if they have it by looking at their profile)
2. If you're testing the waters. I already talked about the money, but a semester of a language class is a big time commitment, too. You also lose scheduling flexibility that's especially desirable when you don't know if you want to commit to a class yet.
Then there's supplemental, extracurricular practice. If you never use a language outside of class, you'll lose it very quickly. Anyone who had to take a language class in middle/high school knows this. Duolingo (or any other app) can help reinforce learning, by regularly poking the "foreign language" part of your brain, even on days when you aren't in class.
The supplemental is what I'm using it as, in between my A1 and A2 in-class lessons I'm using it to keep my level up and improve my ability to sentence build. New vocabulary is also nice.
I'm definitely progressing. I won't get fluent, but my level is definitely higher than that of languages I learned in high school, and I can read signs and stuff. (In fact, I think the method is fairly similar.)
The reason I use Duolingo because it's the only thing I'll actually use, thanks to the emotional blackmail.
Resources for things like vocabulary building and such will vary by your target language.
However, the "memorization techniques" of most language apps really boil down to "spaced repetition" (SRS) of some form, which is basically doing reps, and having the space between reps increase over time as you remember them better.
Anki and Mochi are two spaced repetition systems (which will require you to create or find your own flashcards, but will take care of spacing out when to review them), and if you google for spaced repetition software targeting your target language, you'll probably find other alternatives too.
I personally find Anki to be a joy of a piece of software, and after using it for 5 years I have no intention of stopping or switching to another SRS app.
Could you elaborate on which features you'd miss from Duolingo if you switched?
For context I'm working on a language learning app (phrasing.app) and I'm pretty against gamification. I've got a couple different review methods (listening, tapping, and typing) but I assume you're referring to a more complete feature set.
PS: If anyone wants to beta test the application, contact me on twitter @barrelltech. I just got everything re-released this weekend, so I'm just now starting to work on user guides and documentation!
I don't think they do anything special. It's just on aggregate between their various interactive mechanisms, there is nice variance to the types of interaction you get to do. Speaking, typing, word selection, etc.
So when you click on a lesson - you like the variance of all the review types before the lesson finishes? That's very doable! Definitely somewhere I'm working towards, and I have a loooot of review ideas XD it'll be a few months until I add more I think though.
Thanks for the recommendation. But just checking it out there,it seems to also follow a gamification model that forces you to click "commitment" buttons like you are some kind of child.
With a PiHole/DNS blocking of ad servers, I just get their presumably baked-in "Get Super Duolingo" ads, these are not skippable but I just close the app and reopen it a second later.
It's not the ads that bother me it's the heart model. I use the website, not the app. About a year and change ago they transitioned to the hearts. The amount I use Duo every day dropped by about half as once I'm out of hearts for the day I stop.
I have unlimited hearts and I don't pay for subscription. I don't know if there is a glitch with my account or maybe my streak is so long (>1500 days) they have just given up on trying to monetise me.
I'm the same, I just figured I'd been grandfathered into something. Although I don't use the app any more since they redesigned all the courses last year or so; it's worthless now.
Babbel kind of takes traditional textbook style learning, and adapts it quite well to technology. It's also built around really colloquial conversations, and the audio is high quality. I would say it tends to focus more on how people actually speak than textbook-style speech
Rosetta Stone was the big player before Duolingo. They had a method that involved not using your mother tongue, which they called 'immersion'. I believe in the recent years (since Duolingo ate their pie) they have moved more and more towards dueling style learning. They have an app that's a lot more corporate, but I've heard good things about it too
Note, I haven't used either of these applications in years, I just work in the space and this is my understanding of them
The whole purpose of Duolingo is emotional and psychological manipulation to get us to override our tendencies to procrastinate, forget, etc. Otherwise we'd just pick up a foreign language book.
Yeah, I was about to say the same - this is exactly why my partner uses it, for instance. Whether it's the most efficient or healthy method is another question entirely (I suspect not, personally, but I'm also not a fan of telling people how to live their life).
That's more or less what I was thinking. I want something to help me learn a language. Using gamification and reminders is a way to accomplish that. I don't see where it's doing anything wrong.
You cant learn foreign language from a book. Or, very very few people ever succeeded to learn basics of reading and write in foreign language from a book. And you can not possibly learn listening and talking.
Why can't you? As someone else already said, it's a combination. I'm learning french and I'm enjoying A1/A2-specific books and newspapers (Zeit Sprachen, idk if something like this exists in other countries)
But at some point you understand the usual pronunciations. Even if you make mistakes at 5% of the words, learning more vocabulary by reading is probably a positive overall
It feels to me like we're in agreement, so I'm not certain why you're saying my original sentence is nonsense.
> people would still not picked book as replacement
Yes, exactly.
> And book as your only resource have massive drop put rates. People generally give up very soon.
Yes, entirely correct.
That's what something like Duolingo promises to solve and these obstacles (independent of Duolingo) are why people won't pick up a book or do other forms of self-learning instead. They want a service like Duolingo, because it promises to make learning more approachable and accessible and provides mental tricks to keep you engaged regularly and long-term.
Which brings me around to my original argument: The article is framing it in this weirdly malicious way as if it isn't exactly what people wanted from a service like Duolingo. It's like turning a water boiler on and then getting upset that the water is hot. I thought that was the point?
In that case I misunderstood your original sentence. I knee jerked, projecting something that was not present in your writing into it. So I apologize.
For whatever it is worth, I know you did not wrote it, the "pick a textbook for language learning" meme is sort of my pet peeve. I kinda suspect that people saying it never learned foreign language.
That's okay, I'm glad we could clear it up. I won't pretend that I have any idea how one would best learn a language and I don't know if Duolingo is effective at all. I just understand why people want services like it.
Psychological manipulation to increase your engagement in something you want to do and is paying for the privilege of doing is in your interest. Signing up for a physical class and have the scheduled class drive you to attend even if you weren't really in the mood at that time is also psychological manipulation.
It's only negative once it stops being productive, because Duolingo has limitations.
I realised the gamification had missed its purpose when I caught myself memorising the bigrams and trigrams of answers without reading the full text so I could click through and retain my streak each day. My learning had stalled at this point but my streak looked great.
I do this myself. But is the memorization not a feature as opposed to a bug? Essentially embedding certain sentences/phrases in your brain to the point where you already know what you need to type/say without having to fully engage with the prompt.
I was thinking the same thing. I don't process English one word at a time. I consider it a sign of progress that I don't process certain bits and pieces of German one word at a time.
It does have its issues, in particular for those relatively good at games to begin with...
There's quite a big difference between their language classes though, but I do prefer alternative apps that target a specific language with laser focus. They tend to have better organic content for the purpose of practice.
You also need to realize that you will only truly be good at the language if you get to practice using it with other speakers. Something needs to click in your head in the right way.
Depends on your language of choice. For Mandarin, I like Hello Chinese better than Duolingo. It still has a gamification aspect, but the content is much more varied and includes things like practicing reading comprehension and mock conversations, not to mention stroke order practice.
I would expect something similar to exist for other popular languages - I know that is the case for Japanese at least.
What I really don't like about Duolingo is how they try to progressively increase your load. Whether it's the monthly achievement or friends' quest, if you try to go faster, then you'll have to go through much more in order to finish those. I experimented with this a bit and found out that to keep the app out of the aggressive mode I just need to do the bare minimum, like 1 lesson per day. And having a sub does not help here. So I just canceled it and doing 1-2 lessons per day to stay in a chill mode.
To be fair, that's actually one of the things that I've liked about it. Pushing me to study more on a week-by-week basis is at least theoretically valuable, no?
I don't know. I'm either too old, or too jaded, or don't give a fuck too much.
It was nagging me, and I just ignored it. It's bad, of course, that I have ignored it, because as a result, learning hasn't happened. But it was very easy for me to ignore it. I didn't feel blackmailed.
And then I keep wondering what all those years of nagging telemarketing calls one has learned to hang up on despite all the tricks can do to one's psyche.
The many ways in which Duolingo is unethical and abusive derive from the simple fact that if it actually worked, even the slightest, then you would stop using the thing and cashing them $$$
For me the worst is that when you indulge, you feel bad and will do something; but with Duolingo you are still indulging the same, however it makes you feel accomplished and that you made your work.
No, you didn't — You just watched the ads they wanted you to watch. Doing nothing is literally better than Duolingo.
My problem with Duolingo, as an English person, is the ‘English’ is actually American English (even uses a US flag!) and sometimes marks my answers as wrong when they are actually correct in English! Some of the required responses aren’t even English (e.g. “the books had gotten lost”). I would really appreciate it if they could allow actual English answers as well as American English ones.
The icon only changes on April fools as a joke or something like that. And it changes for everybody. At least on iPhone, I don't think you can change the app icon without notifying the user.
I had a pretty good streak, but due to hospitalised sickness I lost it by a few hours. Couldn't face picking the app back up and starting again from a zero streak.
I've always disliked and distrusted Duolingo (and before that, Rosetta Stone), for providing people the basics (which they do just fine) but making it seem like fluency is always just one more upgrade or lesson around the corner while not-so-subtly implying that it's your fault that you're not there yet.
Even for the most talented learners of languages it takes many, many more hours and types of exposure that these apps cannot achieve. For Arabic, for instance, the military gave us 88 weeks of full-day instruction with native speakers, in addition to homework. And that's all just to achieve basic reading/listening fluency. And many of the people who start the program (and have passed an aptitude test even to start the program) do not complete it.
Like I said, it's as good as anything to start, but it's the marketing of it as the complete package that irks me.