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Babbel and Duolingo | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4053 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 9 of 36 04 March 2014 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Actually I believe Duolingo limits the number of people who contribute in the first phase for quality control, everyone who contributes is a pre-approved bi-lingual speaker who submitted an application. The highest number of contributors they've put on any course so far is 6. They actually manage to crank out courses pretty fast, the Russian->English course went into beta in just over a month. Even the courses that are moving slower are still being completed at a remarkable speed when you consider how few courses companies like Assimil or Pimsleur release each year in comparison. Once they hit beta, then anyone can submit corrections/alternate translations, and the contributors will then make the changes they agree with. The beta courses have hundreds of thousands of people using them, so if you consider the first phase is just the laying out the spine of the course, and the beta is where it gets fleshed out into a complete, well made course, there's actually a whole lot of people working on them. The real speed also comes from the ability to develop lots of courses simultaneously, and I think by next year we'll see a huge number of courses and language choices available.
All the incubator courses end up being available normally and are indistinguishable from the normal courses, they were just created by Duolingo users instead of Duolingo staff. The incubator phase isn't for learners, it's only if you want to see what new courses are being worked on, or if you want to apply to be a contributor. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tollpatchig Senior Member United States Joined 3806 days ago 161 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Maltese | Message 10 of 36 10 March 2014 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Babbel keeps my attention while Duolingo gets boring after a while. Although the free
sample of Babbel lessons don't really show me anything worth paying 10 bucks a month for. I didnt bother doing it with German, I picked a language Ive never studied before (Swedish) and I didn't see indication that I would get far with it. Same with Busuu which I did like better than Babbel, but Busuu is kinda sheisty. I used the app in my early learning days and paid for access and they they come telling me that I needed to pay again because my premium account was running out. Never said anything about needing to pay more than once so I ditched it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4053 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 11 of 36 13 March 2014 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Duolingo finally implemented the ability to create reverse courses so the following languages have shown up on the incubator page.
Dutch Russian Hungarian Turkish Polish Romanian All from an English base. So if these take the same amount of time as the English teaching courses, it should be just a few months before some of these show up in beta. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4965 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 12 of 36 13 March 2014 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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That made my afternoon, YnEoS!
Duolingo is doing wonders to activate my German. It's like doing Assimil but only actively. Of these only Dutch and Polish aren't in my hitlist somehow, but if Russian works for me the same German did, I'll move a CEFR level even. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4965 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 13 of 36 17 March 2014 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The estimated completion date for the Russian course is October 8th 2018!! How come is
that? I want to be fluent by that time. Data estimada de conclusão: 8 de outubro de 2018 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| oldearth Groupie United States Joined 4694 days ago 72 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 14 of 36 17 March 2014 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wish Duolingo really was a gamified Assimil, because they have done a fantastic job making it
beautiful and addictive as a game. But it's not that great; The computer voice and computer sentences leave a lot of be desired. I recently gave Duolingo a serious try and leveled up to level 12 over a 50 day streak before losing interest. The biggest problem is that the sentences used in the exercises seem to be generated algorithmically and therefore not that useful or interesting. I quit using it because the skill decay mechanism meant I kept being asked to translate/review sentences like "The boy drinks milk," "She does not want cheese", or "The penguin has an umbrella" numerous times. If you're intermediate, you already know how to say these type of things and reviewing them is a waste of time (I didn't know pengüino, but I question the usefulness). And if you're new to a language, I would argue there are more useful sentences you should be concentrating on. I don't remember ever getting useful phrases like "Hello, my name is..." or "Where is the bathroom?" If they ditched their template sentences and plugged in the dialogs from FSI I think it would be a million times better. Edited by oldearth on 17 March 2014 at 9:37pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4053 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 15 of 36 17 March 2014 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
The estimated date is just a projection based on the current pace. It can fluctuate a severely, especially when a course has just started. It probably won't show an accurate date until more work has been done. Edited by YnEoS on 17 March 2014 at 10:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5664 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque | Message 16 of 36 18 March 2014 at 3:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Anyway, i think a lot of it tries to come off as silly but there are times where it feels like there are much more important things i could be learning. I think the system has a lot of potential, especially since you have to actively be able to use what you learn. I do think it could use some grammar explanations here and there, they used to have them but it seems they've gotten rid of them, i'm not sure why. I'm also wondering what the new X for English Speakers courses are like, i think i read somewhere that "flipping" a course would be much easier than creating a new one, i'm hoping that doesn't mean that it's just a flipped version of the English for X Speakers courses. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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