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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3754 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 1 of 27 09 October 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged |
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I am new to language learning (finally started about 5 months ago). My first experience of language learning (and one of my only experiences so far) has been with the completely free website called Duolingo. I assume many of you have heard of this website, although it is only a bit over two years old.
Upon searching for information (reviews, critiques, users experiences) relating to Duolingo on this website (HTLAL) I haven't found all that much. The list of tags for language programs does not include Duolingo; in fact, no tag for Duolingo exists. My question is, do 'serious' language learners (such as those on this website) have something against Duolingo? If anyone here has used or currently uses Duolingo, what have you thought about it? Is it as great as I think it is? Is Duolingo really the revolutionary language learning platform that is going to (or should) put many other language learning methods and programs out of business? Thank you for your replies. (This is my first post!) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 27 09 October 2014 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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The search software doesn't seem to be working. I did a search through Google and found this:
Duolingo: Translate the Internet Duolingo: opinions, progress, levels? Duolingo Edited by patrickwilken on 09 October 2014 at 6:28pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| bryanpeabody Groupie United States Joined 4985 days ago 48 posts - 79 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 3 of 27 09 October 2014 at 6:33pm | IP Logged |
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I've used it before but not any longer. I think if you are interested in using it as a
supplement for learning vocab then it could be helpful. I had some objections to it though. There wasn't much in the way of grammar or explanations and the audio wasn't native speakers. I didn't like that the voice was what sounded like computer generated text to speech. I much prefer to hear native speakers and dialogs. But, having said that, if Duolingo works for you and you like it, then keep using it. But I would recommend using it as a supplement and use it along with Assimil or Teach Yourself as your main course. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 4 of 27 09 October 2014 at 6:43pm | IP Logged |
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Apparently they don't list the gender of nouns in their German learning materials, which makes the system seem pretty half-baked: http://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/2iagv4/der_die_das /
If you are going to use flash cards to learn vocabulary, you'd be much better off using Anki and learning the gender (and plural) at the same time. That's something that seems so obvious, that it makes me wonder how really useful their system is. Edited by patrickwilken on 09 October 2014 at 6:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 27 09 October 2014 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
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Here's one more thread.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5016 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 27 09 October 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
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A Wikipedia article isn't as well written as one in Encyclopedia Brittanica. We don't expect it to be!
The same goes for Duolingo. It's not as good as a course that has been prepared by a professional. But hey, we use it anyway because it's free. UPDATE: For the record, I've used Duolingo and although I liked it at first, I soon encountered a couple of hiccups: bad explanations, correct answers being marked wrong and incomprehensible audio. The last problem was what got my goat the most. It was frustrating being unable to understand a word of their computer generated audio when I could understand what french people said on TV. Well, most it anyway. BTW, welcome to the forum. :) Edited by napoleon on 09 October 2014 at 9:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3754 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 7 of 27 09 October 2014 at 10:28pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you everyone for your suggestions and feedback so far :)
I am getting the impression that Duolingo is not the 'be all and end all' of language learning programs. On a side note, I have got my eye on the 'Teach Yourself' Spanish book, and a family friend happened to have some Michel Thomas Spanish CD's which he's lent me, so that's really good I suppose. Although, I've read (on this website) that some say 'Colloquial Languages' tends to be a little more basic and easy paced, so I may give Colloquial Spanish a go first. The fact that many of you have used Duolingo, but either don't anymore or only as a supplement, suggests to me that real experienced language learners such as yourselves look for other methods. But hey, DL got me into learning languages, so for that it deserves my respect :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4144 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 8 of 27 09 October 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged |
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Duolingo is good for basic vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar (if you dig through the comments when
you don't understand a sentence). It's also fun and free, which is a plus in my book. I think that it's much more useful for the first 3/4 of the tree. It tends to gloss over complex verb tenses very quickly in later lessons. Overall, I think that Duolingo is good as a supplement. It isn't enough on its own to learn a language. (But then, very few things are.) I do think that it's possible to cobble together a high quality Spanish program using free online resources, and that Duolingo can be a useful addition to the list! Free online learning resources in addition to Duolingo (all easily found via google): Destinos VeinteMundos Language Transfer Complete Spanish Extr@ en español (on YouTube) FSI Basic Spanish Notes in Spanish italki (for language partners or for text correction) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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