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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 17 of 36 18 March 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I haven't used Duolingo in a while (waiting for German->French course to finish), but it used to be they had grammar explanations on the computer but not for phone apps. I don't know how things have changed recently, but it seems they update their computer app, iphone app, and android app completely separately, so changes in one don't always affect the others right away.
I think they've mentioned that some of their work in X for English speakers will transfer over to the reverse courses. But I believe each new language gets it's own tree built from scratch, so it will have its own grammar topic lessons and such. So my guess is that they'll re-use sentences whenever possible to save time, but that they'll re-arrange them and add/remove sentences to make things easier for the learner, rather than just simply flipping it. 1 person has 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 18 of 36 18 March 2014 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, that sounds better. I just came back to the site after a pretty long absence a week or two ago and i think it's now much clearer (you don't have to pick different paths, you just go down), but they seem to have removed the grammar explanations from the main site. The definition hints are much better now, though. I tried their Android app but just can't use it, lots of typos slip in and if i get one or two questions wrong it's almost certain i'll fail (and have to do it all over) since i generally get 2-3 questions wrong due to typos :P
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 19 of 36 08 April 2014 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Six Week Update
I've been playing with the phone apps quite a bit. My updated take: Babel Turkish - It went from useful to aggravating to very useful to painful. I wish I could map this out; think of a sine wave and you'll have an idea. In the beginning it was great for reinforcing basic concepts. Later it was useful for learning lots of basic vocabulary. The problem is that not all the vocabulary is useful, and there's no way to pick out the highlights of any given lesson. I skipped a couple days, and my review lessons exploded. I think it would take me fifteen to twenty hours just to clear the deck, and that would involve memorizing a lot of vocabulary that I just don't need at this point. DuoLingo Italian and French - This has been nice for me to "do something" on the days when I don't have time to do actual studying or reading. For that it's good. It's also been great for identifying holes in my learning. I thought my French was good, but I've managed to avoid learning adverbs all these years! Or rather, I understand them enough in context, but not enough to actually use them. Crush mentioned one big problem - it only takes a few typos to "fail" a lesson. Other times there are mistakes in the translations, or the computer-generated sentences don't make sense or are hard to hear. This can get tiring and time consuming, and it starts to offer diminishing returns. It makes me appreciate the more dynamic Anki platform. I'll still use DuoLingo, but I'll save it for when I'm bored or tired - it's not a good substitute for Assimil, FSI, or a good book! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 3881 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 20 of 36 10 April 2014 at 7:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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http://www.smartergerman.com/duolingo-learn-german/
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| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4688 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 21 of 36 11 April 2014 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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Nice article. I agree with all his critiques, though maybe not his conclusion: that
these programs harm your language learning, and that no one should use language learning software. For me they've been an undeniable help in improving my spelling, forcing me to pay better attention to pronouns, and helping me cement my awareness of those small but important details like gender or vowel harmony. However, I'm also seeing rapidly diminishing returns, even in the three days since my last post. For French I now have seven lessons on "around the house" to work through. At ten minutes a day, and with the review lessons piling up, it will take me weeks to get to the next section. I don't know if it's worth a long-term time investment. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5359 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 22 of 36 11 April 2014 at 3:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yup, fair comment. I think a lot of people feel afffection towards duolingo, because of
its ambitious and worthy objectives, but judging it by those objectives, it is actually a total failure. I found it fun and addictive, and probably learned quite a few new vocabulary items from it. The most serious problem with it, is that up to (say) 5% of its exercices are incorrect and 50% to 90% are really just unnatural, unpleasant, confusing, uncontextual, boring, or just weird. From the point of view of the creator, producing a course which is 95% to 99% correct probably feels like quite a satisfactory achievement, but from the point of view of a learner it completely undermines your faith in the material, i.e, say you get to the stage where you know 90% of the material, then 50% of the remaining new material may be totally incorrect. I don't think the creators ever really appreciated this. But as I said, it was a lot of fun, and I learned stuff. When you get to the stage that it becomes more irritating than useful, just stop. Edited by schoenewaelder on 11 April 2014 at 3:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5359 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 23 of 36 08 April 2015 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thread revived.
I may have seen this mentioned somewhere already, but a couple of useful minor changes have been made in the last year. The "three tries and your out" system for the exercises no longer applies. I think, if you make a mistake it simply adds to the number of questions you have to complete. Also when typing you are allowed to make a single letter mistake, as long as it doesn't result in a diferent word (this may have been inroduced a while ago, but whatever, the frustration quotient is definitely reduced) One thing I've been wondering about with regards the methodology, that I don't think has been addressed in all the threads we have had on duolingo, is that the vocab for each exercise is presented partly at the beginning with picture cards (usually 3 or 4 words) but also new and unfamilar words crop up in the course of the exercise that you have to "peek" at. I'm not sure if this is a deliberate methodology to keep things varied and prime your brain for accepting new vocab, or, given the other flaws in the course, it is just part of the randomness that is duolingo. And I'm not sure if it does keep me more alert, or if I find it slightly annoying. Edited by schoenewaelder on 08 April 2015 at 5:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4669 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 24 of 36 08 April 2015 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I gave Duolingo a try with Spanish a few weeks ago. I'll be diplomatic and say that I
hated it. I disliked the utter lack of *context *culture-specific stuff *actual human uses of language *inability to deal with linguistic ambiguity The extreme difficulty of testing out of skills was also discouraging. I'd guess I'm about a B1 in Spanish. But I couldn't test out of anything because I didn't know their target vocabulary and its Duolingo specific uses. For example, I know what "Él nunca ve la televisión." means. But if I enter "sees" for "ve", it's wrong. Well, no, it's not. The problem is that the meaning is ambiguous when stripped of context. In the end, I felt more like I was a rat working a Skinner box than a human learning a new way of communicating. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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