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Babbel and Duolingo | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4929 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 25 of 36 08 April 2015 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
I just started to go through the Turkish beta course this week, mainly out of curiosity, but also for some practice. In this time I've found that testing out of any particular skill is no faster than actually going through the lesson itself, so you're not saving any time by even trying to test out. As far as wrong or iffy translations, there are plenty, but, at least with the Turkish course, you're given an opportunity to suggest an alternate/better translation, and most the the translations I've suggested have been accepted into the course. I'm not sure if it works this way with non-beta courses, though. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4808 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 26 of 36 08 April 2015 at 8:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I used Duolingo for German and tried it out for Spanish. First thing that I believe
needs to be mentioned: The quality is really different. I wouldn't be surprised if the other courses were scattered everywhere on the scale between great-German and much worse-Spanish. I like the design, the app, I love the write in exercises (I believe those are the most useful ones in most such learning tools, Memrise uses them as well). The German Duolingo is nice practice, even though it cannot be a standalone course of course, the sentences are often fun but all the vocabulary is still normal (by which I mean it is vocabulary I found elsewhere as well. Nothing weird). I may return to it soon, it is not bad (I left somewhere in the middle). I like the speaking tool (even though sometimes I feel it refuses my better attempts while accepting the worse ones or those I try with another foreign accent out of curiosity). I found the Spanish one much worse. Overuse of personal pronouns is just the first thing that catches my attention. The speaker sounds much less natural than the German one in my opinion. The vocabulary is weird, there are words I never heard elsewhere. Sometimes it is a "basic" word but the program teaches you a rare synonyme instead. I gave up on Duolingo Spanish. But overall, Duolingo is a good project and looks like it gets better and better. I am only worried about the content as it wouldn't be the first time designers forgot the content is the single most important thing about any language learning tool, no matter how shiny and modern. I tried Babbel a few times and never liked it enough to keep using it. In my opinion, it is just one of many vocab apps or at least that was my impression any time I visited the website. If I am wrong, please correct me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4929 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 27 of 36 08 April 2015 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't know if there's any truth to this or not, but I've read in the Duolingo forums that the speaking tool will not be included in any new languages. It certainly isn't included in the Turkish course. I don't know how often the platform is updated, but my guess is fairly often. In just the week that I've been using the Turkish course, there have been two minor updates. I should also point out that the beta courses don't include everything the non-beta courses do, such as words learned and immersion (uploading text). Those will apparently be added once out of beta, from what I understand though. R. == 1 person has 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 28 of 36 08 April 2015 at 9:03pm | IP Logged | ||
Funny that everyone trashes RS for that reason, but I think that's the first time I've seen anyone mention it with respect to duolingo. It even has the problem that some of the images are barely identifiable. The soup looks more like a bowl of pasta and the pasta looks more like a bowl of tomatoes. Although it is less important with Duolingo. Also, the forum is unnavigable. I guess it's the influence of social media. The lingq forum has gone the same way. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 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 29 of 36 08 April 2015 at 11:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tried the Turkish beta, and went back to Italian while I was at it.
I appreciated the updates to the Italian course, especially the removal of that awful "three strikes" rule. And there seemed to be slightly less irritating and non- nonsensical sentences this round. There were still a lot, mind you ... just not as many. At the end, though, I still felt like I was wasting a lot of time doing simple vocabulary drills, and that it would have been much more fun and productive to spend an hour with Assimil, a novel, or ... anything else. I had the same experience as Cavesa with the speech recognition. There were times that I knew I messed up the pronunciation, and I passed. There were times where I thought I was on point, and I failed. I'm not sure what to think about the Turkish. I spent maybe an hour with it ... and I'm glad that I've studied the language before. I don't know how much sense any of it would have made if I was coming in raw. ________________ I want DuoLingo to work. I think it's a great idea. But I still find it more annoying than useful, although it does seem to be getting better as time goes by. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4708 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 30 of 36 09 April 2015 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've defended Duolingo a lot, but I do understand many of the criticisms and I don't actually use it often myself anymore. What I don't like are unfair criticisms, or criticisms which don't understand what Duolingo is trying to do. So here are a few points (with the caveat that I have only really used the French course):
* Duolingo is designed for beginners. If you are A2 you are bound to find some of it boring. If you are above A2, you might still get something out of it, but you will probably drop it quickly. If you can read novels in your target language, then of course Duolingo isn't targeted at you. * Some of the sentences are meant to be nonsensical and silly. The intention is to make them memorable and a bit fun. The silly sentences, however, teach useful vocabulary and grammar, just presented in an odd sentence. * Duolingo can be quite addictive, but if you use it a lot you can easily get sick of it in a few weeks. I wouldn't recommend doing more than 15-30 minutes a day on Duolingo. * Duolingo uses an SRS algorithm, and if you do too many lessons every day, you soon get a massive load of lessons needing revision, and it becomes a huge drag just to keep up. (Anyone ever done the same thing on Anki?) I have seen several people on HTLAL mention that they used it a lot for a few weeks and then quit and I've done the same myself. I think they probably experienced burnout due to too many review lessons and got bored. I could go on, but I think the main points I wanted to make are that it's really best for beginners, and if you overuse it you are bound to get sick of it quickly.
I totally agree. I despise "newsfeed" style forums. A revisit of an old discussion like we're having here would be impossible on those types of forums. Edited by Jeffers on 09 April 2015 at 4:24pm 3 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 31 of 36 09 April 2015 at 4:35pm | IP Logged | ||
I've just realised, that's it. You're not supposed to revisit old discussions, because the mass of users means the same conversations are being repeated every day, every week. If it was a old style forum, people would realise how boring and repetitive everyone was. 1 person has 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 32 of 36 10 April 2015 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Another improvement is, it can (sometimes) tell when you accidentally type the
wrong language, i.e. if you translate instead of transcribe. For some reason, it doesn't let you off if you do the opposite, transcribe when you should translate, although if you aren't an idiot, this should be less of a problem, as it should be obvious that you are typing exactly what is written. Unfortunately this catches me out quite a lot. Having to do so much typing in English is still pretty tedious, especially when you make silly errors. I guess there's no avoiding it, although memrise's system of clicking on words from a list to make a sentence, might be possible with more options. That said, at the moment I am getting away with 80% or 90% of my silly errors, making it all much more tolerable. Edited by schoenewaelder on 10 April 2015 at 2:04am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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