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Babbel and Duolingo | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4689 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 1 of 36 25 February 2014 at 3:56am | IP Logged |
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I spent the weekend playing around with Babbel and Duolingo, and it seems that they've improved their products since the last round of discussions on here. Here's my initial take:
Overall Neither would work as a primary language tool, but both would be strong additional tools in the early stages of learning. Both have a similar format, with a mix of games, voice recognition software, and TL > English & English > TL drills. Both are also easy to use on an iPhone. DuoLingo (Italian) Pros * Free * Plays like a game - you earn lots of rewards for each level, and you can "compete" with friends. This is the perfect tool for the Candy Crush generation. * Voice recognition software is easy to use * Uses crowd sourcing to check answers; sometimes there is no one single answer * Seems to go to an intermediate level * Great for learning the little details: gender, prepositions, etc. I'm not sure how well it will do when I hit the advanced grammar stages Cons * Theoretically you can test out of levels, though I tried this with French and it's easy to 'fail' a level if you don't know the target vocabulary. I think you would get restless if you were at a higher level. However ... I'm pretty sloppy sometimes with my French prepositions, so it's also a good reality check for how many of the basic details I am missing. Babbel (Turkish) Pros * They have Turkish!!! It's nice to see this language on a popular platform. * The "basic level" is geared specifically for CEFR A1. They don't try to aim higher than what they can offer * There is an extensive vocabulary section, and a section for SRS drills (that I haven't tried yet) * It's tailored for Turkish - they don't try to squeeze Turkish into a Romantic-language learning format. * You don't get a pass for faking it on the vowel harmony, or getting the proper endings. It's been excellent for internalizing those basic concepts. Cons * Costs $10 / month, roughly * Not as fun or addictive as duolingo * Voice recognition software isn't as smooth as duolingo. (Alternate theory: my Turkish accent sucks) * Drills can be slow - you might get four or five new vocab words in a seven-minute session in the beginning. * I don't know how deep they will get into the grammar, of if their Turkish lessons remain at an A1/A2 level. I looked ahead, and didn't see sections for past & future tenses; perhaps they're hidden. * The keyboard requires you to switch screens for special characters (ç,ğ,ş,i). This can be a pain for even simple words like "iyiyim." I'm impressed with both. Duolingo is easily my favorite, but their language selection is more limited. I'll be using them both for the next couple weeks. By comparison, I've had the Living Language apps on my phone for both Japanese and Italian, and while they're nice, I rarely open them. They mostly repeat the lessons that are in the books. These two I think I could work into a regular routine. Previously: Why so little love for Babbel.com Android and language learning iPad and language learning Language Exchange Websites 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4054 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 2 of 36 25 February 2014 at 4:27am | IP Logged |
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Check out Duolingo's incubator page, they've created a way to crowd-source courses for new languages. Right now they're only accepting new language bases for existing language courses (which is why so many of the incubator courses are for learning English). But I believe they've said they've designed it such, that when someone makes a new language base for the English course, they can then carry over some of that work into the reverse course (X language for English speakers), and I believe in a few weeks they're supposed to start allowing people to make new courses for the newly added languages.
At the moment they're adding one new course to the incubator every week, and it looks like eventually there's going to be tons of language combinations which will make it great for L2->L3. Edited by YnEoS on 25 February 2014 at 4:30am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 3944 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 3 of 36 25 February 2014 at 11:13am | IP Logged |
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I used Duolingo for Spanish and found it very useful as a supplement to other learning! Like you, I think that it's
best for beginners. I stopped working on my skill tree when I got higher up and I found that complex concepts like the subjunctive mood were "done" in 3 lessons. It's fun and addictive, though. I highly recommend it to beginners! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4668 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 4 of 36 25 February 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged |
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I have been using Babbel for some time learning German and now also for French. I have a subscription that include all the languages Babbel has. I like it because I can have all the courses on my mobile and it tell me then to review things. In some German courses Babbel says it is about A2/B1.
Haven't tried writing exercise and chatting at Babbel. Don't know how that works. For that I use Busuu and recently iTalki. Haven't tried Duolingo, I'm busy enough with Babbel,Busuu and iTalki. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4966 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 36 26 February 2014 at 5:54pm | IP Logged |
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I've checked Apple Store and the Babbel apps are free. When should I pay, then?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bjorn Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4668 days ago 244 posts - 286 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 6 of 36 26 February 2014 at 6:00pm | IP Logged |
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The vocabulary apps are free, if you want the complete course, you have to pay. And there is an app for the complete course too. For ios and andriod. Edited by Bjorn on 26 February 2014 at 6:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4689 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 7 of 36 03 March 2014 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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The incubator page is exciting! There aren't a lot of people working on some of the
languages, but I can see this idea spreading once it catches on. @ Expugnator - the free parts of Babbel will last you about a day, then you need to join to progress. Ten Day Update Duolingo is a nicer iPhone platform on almost every level: cost, graphics, spaced repetition, progression, and variety of activities. It's also far more fun. You get little badges to post on Facebook, you earn points to dress your owl in fancy clothes ... silly stuff, but it keeps me entertained. There are a few quirks with the voice recognition software - there are times where I know that I've missed the proper pronoun, but still got a correct score. After a very promising start Babbel has settled into being little more than a fancy vocabulary drilling program. The pattern is: 1. Introduce four new words 2. Match the Turkish and English words 3. Unscramble the letter to form the Turkish word 4-6. Repeat with four new words 7-9. Repeat with four new words It's not very dynamic, and the words aren't presented in context - it's straight vocabulary, no sentences. It's still useful, to a point, but it's a disappointing use of technology. It could be so much better! Especially at $10 / month. Babbel does have a review section, which is nice; I'm not sure yet if they use spaced repetition or not. And the speakers sound more natural than the computer-sounding voice that Duolingo uses. Babbel's main strength is in it's variety: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Dutch, Polish, Indonesian, Norwegian, and Danish. Duolingo has Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. The incubation phase still has these main languages, but for a wider variety of native languages (e.g. English for Greek speakers, French for Spanish speakers, etc.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4350 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 8 of 36 04 March 2014 at 3:29am | IP Logged |
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I think French for Spanish speakers is available normally. At least, I've been using it
and have no idea what an "incubation phase" is in this context (or "crowd-source",) nor did I access it through any special page. I just set the base language to Spanish under settings. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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