Duolingo app - waste of time?

[MorkTheFiddle]

Does Clozemaster have an app?

Clozemaster apps are available on GooglePlay https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.clozemaster.v2
and iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clozemaster/id1149199075?ls=1&mt=8

Although I use Clozemaster, I do not use the app.

[galaxyrocker]

I wouldn't recommend Duolingo for beginners pretty much at all, and I would never recommend the app, though I think the web version could have some benefit for upper-beginners/lower-intermediate people.

Personally, I think DL's pedagogy just fails in general. You're not really practicing anything truly language-related. You're asked to translate a sentence, usually from TL into NL, and that's it. Given whether it's right or wrong, a correct translation, and then you move on. On the app, it's worse, since, as cainntear said, there's a lot more of just picking the correct words...which are often obvious given capitalization patterns, etc. But, you don't really get any true reading practice, or speaking, or writing (apart from the really rare NL -> TL question). You also don't, in my opinion, get any good listening practice (note: mainly for courses with robotic voice, or which don't have complete audio, like Irish). Sure, the robotic voice might help when you speak with others who have a bad accent, but first you need to be able to understand the native speakers. Anecdotally, I've had plenty of people tell me they understood Dl's audio just fine (Spanish), yet couldn't understand a single thing a native speaker said to them. I think it hinders you a lot in that regard. Plus, there's no questions related to actually using the skills, apart from translation/transcribing. No reading comprehension, no listening comprehension, no writing and no speaking.

But, the web version could have some benefit for those who understand the basics of the grammar and vocabulary and just want drills to practice. It does have to be the web, because the apps almost give it away too easily. It could also help you pick up a bit more vocab, too, though I'd be hesitant to do the lessons that you haven't covered in a more thorough manner already, lest you get confused by the lack of explanation or incorrect answers being accepted as correct.

All of this doesn't make DL high on my list of recommended apps, especially because it highly inflates its ability, with their 'most effective' and 'best' language tool, and their fluency score and word count. The word count is especially misleading, as it doesn't count lemmas, but instead counts all morphological forms as a separate word.

Apparently early versions of the app had typing too, but users didn't like it, so they cut it out.

I get the feeling that most decisions made by the Duolingo dev team are made on very shallow criteria.

Luis van Ahn's reason for the decision is "every time we try to give more recall exercises (where you translate from the language you know to the new language), people use the website less!"


My suspicion about the repeated prompts is that they've either found the same thing as with translation (a drop-off in users) or they've noted that people apparently "learn quicker" that way, in the sense that it's often easier to memorise something than to try and see how it's built... which brings me back to the way Duolingo presents grammar notes.

My personal hypothesis is that the majority of users are finding it difficult to learn in the absence of programmed instruction, and thus fail to generalise. Because of this, fail to answer questions right if they haven't seen the exact example before. Repeating the same example hides the symptoms (low scores) but doesn' deal with the core problem (failure to generalise).

I agree with all these points, and it's one of my biggest criticisms of Duolingo as a company (actually, perhaps the biggest), and, sadly, it impacts their courses in negative ways. I think the big one is, as you mentioned, if they see a drop in users they instantly change something. To them, keeping their userbase is the number one priority. This has generally led to a 'dumbing-down' of the app, to make it easier, thus making people more likely to stay. That's one of the reasons they don't have the tips and notes on the app, as far as I can tell; they feel it doesn't help people because it just exposes them to that instead of allowing them to intuit everything on their own (which their founder says is the best way to learn, because that's how we learn as kids; I don't think need to talk about the differences between children learning and adult learning here). But this leads to memorization, which just covers up the problems, and doesn't actually benefit the user at all. So, with the app, where you just practice memorized settings, or problems that the answer gives it away if you know one word, due to capitalization, punctuation, etc., it doesn't help a learner at all. Doubly so given that the only real practice you seem to get is translation.

Something missing between the apps and the web version, besides the notes, is the ability to discuss sentences and ask questions. This was a huge boon for users, as it allowed more advanced/native speakers to find them easily enough (especially when the 'new' tab existed on the forums). The 'new' tab, previously mentioned, that showed sentences that had just had their first comment is now gone from the web version, and I fear the discussions themselves are soon to follow; right now they can only be accessed by doing the lessons, though I don't know how long that'll last.

Really, though, this all boils down to what I think DL's main mistake is: they're a for-profit organization trying to offer the most 'effective', 'best', 'language learning' for free. So, they've got to find a way to make money. Their original scheme failed, in part due to the fact that EU laws excluded all of Europe from legally working on the translations; in part because who would buy crowd-sourced translations made by learners who aren't even fluent? Now, they're trying to keep a huge userbase, thus dumbing down the app where the majority of their users are, and still try to find a way to make money. It'll be interesting to see how it goes for them; looks like it's already turned into pretty much an ad-based model, where you can subscribe to remove ads. Now we just need to see what actually helpful features they remove next to keep their revenue high!

[Cainntear]

Personally, I think DL's pedagogy just fails in general. You're not really practicing anything truly language-related. You're asked to translate a sentence, usually from TL into NL, and that's it. Given whether it's right or wrong, a correct translation, and then you move on. On the app, it's worse, since, as cainntear said, there's a lot more of just picking the correct words...which are often obvious given capitalization patterns, etc. But, you don't really get any true reading practice, or speaking, or writing (apart from the really rare NL -> TL question).

I think there's a lot that can be achieved with well thought-out translation exercises -- the problem with Duolingo is that the exercises aren't well thought out. Comparing the translation in Duolingo with Michel Thomas, there's a clear difference that you don't often think "what the hell is that supposed to mean???" when doing MT. "I want it, but I don't have it" may not have an unambiguous independent meaning, but you immediately get it as a sentence -- you can imagine saying it. Duolingo, on the other hand gives you things you could never imagine saying, whether it's telling someone "you are a girl" or "I am a man/woman" when you're the other one, or saying that "I have X and Y" for weird combinations of X and Y. OK, so there are circumstances where you might say "you are a girl", and if you think about it you could imagine telling that to a little girl, but you shouldn't have to think about it -- the prompt should immediately have a sensible meaning, otherwise you're thinking about the words and rules, rather than the meaning.

The algorithm also has a tendency to switch arbitrarily between synonyms and alternative forms. For example, I just did the first lesson of Dutch for the first time, and the prompt for "she is a girl" used "ze" while "she is a woman" used "zij". Similarly, I've seen random inconsistency with the alternation between "Führer" and "Leiter" for "leader" in the German course.

Then there's also the fact that the prompts don't respect common orderings of co-ocurring words in languages. When I get asked to translate "a woman and a man" or "butter and bread", I know that this is something I would never say in English (the phrases are "a man and a woman" and "bread and butter" in English) so I'm left unsure as to whether the target language version is equally wrong, or actually the normal ordering in the language. While there is an argument for challenging the inherent sexism in the way we put men first, that is not the responsibility of a language course (teach the language as it is spoken, not the language you want it to be) the fact that it happens with things like "bread and butter"/"butter and bread" shows that this isn't even an ideological decision anyway -- just poor course design.

The most serious example of non-language in Duolingo that I can remember is "El menino da seu tigre" (or similar). The discussion of the sentence is full of people giving contorted explanations of where the sentence may be used, but the English translation is "the boy gives his tiger", and from the number of people who comment "the boy gives his tiger what?" it is clear that the default interpretation of the incomplete, ambiguous sentence is the wrong one for this case (the missing information in the Portuguese was who he gives it to).

Of course, you do need to start doing more stuff after translations, but in principle, I don't see a problem with a course the length of Duolingo being based primarily on translation, if done right.

You also don't, in my opinion, get any good listening practice (note: mainly for courses with robotic voice, or which don't have complete audio, like Irish). Sure, the robotic voice might help when you speak with others who have a bad accent, but first you need to be able to understand the native speakers. Anecdotally, I've had plenty of people tell me they understood Dl's audio just fine (Spanish), yet couldn't understand a single thing a native speaker said to them. I think it hinders you a lot in that regard. Plus, there's no questions related to actually using the skills, apart from translation/transcribing. No reading comprehension, no listening comprehension, no writing and no speaking.

For one, the Irish audio is terrible, recorded by a non-native and really not worth listening to. (Unless they rerecorded it after all the complaints.)
On a deeper level, there is an argument that text-to-speech might be better for low-level learners than any other type of audio input. One of the lesser discussed concepts in language learning is that of "salient features" -- the features of language that stick out and are most obvious to native speakers. As non-natives, it is very difficult to reprogram our ideas of what is "salient", so we often look in the wrong place out of habit, and phonology is an area which is very often affected by this.

In phonology, one of the salient features is the "primary distinction" between two related phonemes.
For example, English has a primary distinction of voicing between B and P, G and K, and D and T. (There is a secondary distinction of aspiration.)
Some other languages will have a primary distinction of aspiration. (Possibly accompanied by a secondary distinction of voicing.)

Where languages have two distinctions, it's very easy to check while is primary (high salience) and secondary (low salience). If you take the voicing from your D and add the aspiration from your T, what does a native hear? If they hear T, then aspiration is the primary distinction; if D, voicing. similarly, you can take the unaspirated characteristic of D and add the unvoiced characteristic of T and do the same test.

Secondary characteristics are unreliable, and sometimes disappear in relaxed speech, so non-native speaker who is working from the salience model of their own language will struggle with natural speech in the L2.

There have been studies (no references to hand, sorry) suggesting that exaggerated salience is effective in helping learners notice the salient features of a new language. As was discussed recently in a thread on exaggerated teacher pronunciation, the problem with teacher pronunciations is that they mispronounce rather than exaggerate salient features. However, I recall years ago reading that a principle of voice synthesis is that salient features should be subtly exaggerated in the voice model, as this makes them easier to understand, particularly when delivered in a noisy environment (phone lines, public announcements, on your mobile phone). As voice technology has improved, I'm sure the salient features are exaggerated less, but they are still very clear, and I think that makes it an excellent pronunciation model for beginner learners.

Where it doesn't work so well is when you have a fully grown man saying "je suis une fille". Sounds very, very creepy.

Really, though, this all boils down to what I think DL's main mistake is: they're a for-profit organization trying to offer the most 'effective', 'best', 'language learning' for free. So, they've got to find a way to make money. Their original scheme failed, in part due to the fact that EU laws excluded all of Europe from legally working on the translations; in part because who would buy crowd-sourced translations made by learners who aren't even fluent? Now, they're trying to keep a huge userbase, thus dumbing down the app where the majority of their users are, and still try to find a way to make money. It'll be interesting to see how it goes for them; looks like it's already turned into pretty much an ad-based model, where you can subscribe to remove ads. Now we just need to see what actually helpful features they remove next to keep their revenue high!

They're doing ads now? I hadn't seen any (but I hardly ever log in).

[neofight78]

I tried Duolingo a little and it didn't really work for me. The gamification works too well, and my brain orientates on making progress in the "game", and not on absorption of the language. But then I'm weird. I have a related problem with grammar exercises, my mathematical brain makes it an exercise in symbolic manipulation and the linguistic value is lost.

[galaxyrocker]

I think there's a lot that can be achieved with well thought-out translation exercises -- the problem with Duolingo is that the exercises aren't well thought out. Comparing the translation in Duolingo with Michel Thomas, there's a clear difference that you don't often think "what the hell is that supposed to mean???" when doing MT. "I want it, but I don't have it" may not have an unambiguous independent meaning, but you immediately get it as a sentence -- you can imagine saying it. Duolingo, on the other hand gives you things you could never imagine saying, whether it's telling someone "you are a girl" or "I am a man/woman" when you're the other one, or saying that "I have X and Y" for weird combinations of X and Y. OK, so there are circumstances where you might say "you are a girl", and if you think about it you could imagine telling that to a little girl, but you shouldn't have to think about it -- the prompt should immediately have a sensible meaning, otherwise you're thinking about the words and rules, rather than the meaning.

The algorithm also has a tendency to switch arbitrarily between synonyms and alternative forms. For example, I just did the first lesson of Dutch for the first time, and the prompt for "she is a girl" used "ze" while "she is a woman" used "zij". Similarly, I've seen random inconsistency with the alternation between "Führer" and "Leiter" for "leader" in the German course.

Then there's also the fact that the prompts don't respect common orderings of co-ocurring words in languages. When I get asked to translate "a woman and a man" or "butter and bread", I know that this is something I would never say in English (the phrases are "a man and a woman" and "bread and butter" in English) so I'm left unsure as to whether the target language version is equally wrong, or actually the normal ordering in the language. While there is an argument for challenging the inherent sexism in the way we put men first, that is not the responsibility of a language course (teach the language as it is spoken, not the language you want it to be) the fact that it happens with things like "bread and butter"/"butter and bread" shows that this isn't even an ideological decision anyway -- just poor course design.

The most serious example of non-language in Duolingo that I can remember is "El menino da seu tigre" (or similar). The discussion of the sentence is full of people giving contorted explanations of where the sentence may be used, but the English translation is "the boy gives his tiger", and from the number of people who comment "the boy gives his tiger what?" it is clear that the default interpretation of the incomplete, ambiguous sentence is the wrong one for this case (the missing information in the Portuguese was who he gives it to).

Of course, you do need to start doing more stuff after translations, but in principle, I don't see a problem with a course the length of Duolingo being based primarily on translation, if done right.

Those are good points, and perhaps my issue isn't necessarily the translations themselves but the content. Because, even in an introductory textbook/class you're likely to be translating at the very beginning. But, as you mentioned, it's always stuff that's relevant. Which, funnily, goes against DL's method: they claim that weird sentences help you remember the grammar and words better.

For one, the Irish audio is terrible, recorded by a non-native and really not worth listening to. (Unless they rerecorded it after all the complaints.)
On a deeper level, there is an argument that text-to-speech might be better for low-level learners than any other type of audio input. One of the lesser discussed concepts in language learning is that of "salient features" -- the features of language that stick out and are most obvious to native speakers. As non-natives, it is very difficult to reprogram our ideas of what is "salient", so we often look in the wrong place out of habit, and phonology is an area which is very often affected by this.

In phonology, one of the salient features is the "primary distinction" between two related phonemes.
For example, English has a primary distinction of voicing between B and P, G and K, and D and T. (There is a secondary distinction of aspiration.)
Some other languages will have a primary distinction of aspiration. (Possibly accompanied by a secondary distinction of voicing.)

Where languages have two distinctions, it's very easy to check while is primary (high salience) and secondary (low salience). If you take the voicing from your D and add the aspiration from your T, what does a native hear? If they hear T, then aspiration is the primary distinction; if D, voicing. similarly, you can take the unaspirated characteristic of D and add the unvoiced characteristic of T and do the same test.

Secondary characteristics are unreliable, and sometimes disappear in relaxed speech, so non-native speaker who is working from the salience model of their own language will struggle with natural speech in the L2.

There have been studies (no references to hand, sorry) suggesting that exaggerated salience is effective in helping learners notice the salient features of a new language. As was discussed recently in a thread on exaggerated teacher pronunciation, the problem with teacher pronunciations is that they mispronounce rather than exaggerate salient features. However, I recall years ago reading that a principle of voice synthesis is that salient features should be subtly exaggerated in the voice model, as this makes them easier to understand, particularly when delivered in a noisy environment (phone lines, public announcements, on your mobile phone). As voice technology has improved, I'm sure the salient features are exaggerated less, but they are still very clear, and I think that makes it an excellent pronunciation model for beginner learners.

Where it doesn't work so well is when you have a fully grown man saying "je suis une fille". Sounds very, very creepy.

The Irish course did eventually get rerecorded, though it took the contributors a while to admit that she wasn't a native and wasn't just speaking a different 'dialect'. The sad part is now you get people on the forums complaining she talks like a native! Some say she shouldn't use the distinctions that her native dialect uses, and others complain she doesn't talk like they were taught in school (...). But, it's still a plus.

As for the others, that's honestly a good point. Do you know of any place I might be able to read up on that? I was just going from assumptions, which I know is never a good thing, and personal experience/various anecdotes. But, it would still seem that, to me, perhaps a mixture of the two is better, and I would still advise learners to lean towards native speech. I believe it was the LIE thread, but I think hearing native speech at native speeds as soon as possible is a good thing for listening, though it might not be good for pronunciation help. Doubly so if you can get a short clip and a transcript and can train yourself to hear the differences between the words, match up sounds to writing, etc.

They're doing ads now? I hadn't seen any (but I hardly ever log in).

On the app only, afaik. And maybe even then only some of them in their "A/B" test (which is their justification for changing things), but it seems likely they'll be moving that way to monetize.

[Cainntear]

Because, even in an introductory textbook/class you're likely to be translating at the very beginning. But, as you mentioned, it's always stuff that's relevant. Which, funnily, goes against DL's method: they claim that weird sentences help you remember the grammar and words better.

I'm not sure even "relevant" is important -- it just has to be something that the brain's capable of processing easily.

One of my pet hates in discrete translation items is definite articles. "The swan is on the lake." Because if the lack of context, my brain screams out "Which swan? Which lake?" -- with no shared reference, the definite article is out of place. The exercise is less useful because it doesn't tie into my internal representations of meaning. "We have hats and bears" (an invented example, but representative of Duolingo's sentences) is grammatically OK, but again doesn't connect with any internal representation.

But if you can get something bizarre, unexpected or funny that can be processed by the brain easily, I'm sure it will stick. I mean, imagine:
Both my ex-wives are men now.
On hearing or reading the sentence, you can immediately reconstruct a skeleton of the back-story. You get a sense of the intended tone, and you have a rough sequence of events. Even if you might start wondering about the details, as a sentence it is self-complete, and as a mini-story, it's memorable.

Consider that the most prolific users of comedy in language learning are Assimil, and they use stories and anecdotes, not incoherent surrealism. I think Duolingo are just trying to make a virtue out of necessity.
.

As for the others, that's honestly a good point. Do you know of any place I might be able to read up on that?

All too far in the past for me to have any references, sadly. And I've been hunting for papers on voice synthesis and phonemic salience, but there's very little out there. The academic field has narrowed significantly as the tech has been commercialised.

I believe it was the LIE thread, but I think hearing native speech at native speeds as soon as possible is a good thing for listening, though it might not be good for pronunciation help. Doubly so if you can get a short clip and a transcript and can train yourself to hear the differences between the words, match up sounds to writing, etc

If by "native speech" you mean "natural speech", I'm against early focus. I've heard too many people dropping phonemes and even entire morphemes because they don't notice them in a natural model (Spanish people saying "I doing" can't be explained by reference to Spanish grammar, so it must be a phonological phenomenon, for example). However, where the transcript is available, it becomes acceptable, because the written form can be used to indicate the presence of the element they fail to hear.

[Cavesa]

There are huge differences in the individual courses. The German one can be great for a newbie, who wants to learn a bit and taste learning German before investing in real resources (I actually learned quite a lot years ago from the first half of the course. But after that, I stopped progressing as it was just pure memorisation without true logical understanding of the grammar). The Spanish and French one are not too good, in my opinion, and the computer voice is just one of the many reasons. Just like you point out issues like the articles, there is overuse of personal pronoun in the Spanish course. A lot of things like this.

That is totally ok in a supplement to normal resources. But not in a tool marketed as the best, great, complete, and whatever else we've read about it.

I am curious, when will the adds start. After all, I can see no reason why the company would invest in Duolingo (and try so hard to keep as many users as possible, as you pointed out really well) without any vision of making money with it.

It is very true that the dumbing down is the worst part of their progress. Coupled with the overall opinions on their "forums". The forums are so badly organized, that people as the same several questions over and over again. And the few serious language learners cannot therefore answer all the time, even if we wanted to waste time like that. Duolingo has simply build a very self-sufficient marketing community, where people repeat to each other "Duo is the best", "after Duo, you'll be ready to just use the langauge", or "Duo is better than normal boring courses" or the evergreen conversation: "How to progress after finishing my tree? Keep it golden and do the reverse tree!".

Yes, Duolingo is great at making thousands and thousands people try learning a langauge and find out it doesn't hurt as much as they had expected. But the presentation and the community is actually keeping the individual members (as I doubt many will look for tons of alternative opinions, as they already have their group of "experts") from progressing further. I have found there a few great threads, yes. But those are buried under tons of crap, so it is not worth it to visit the forum at all, it can be actually detrimental (in more ways than just wasting time), in my opinion.

A part of the dumbing down process seems to be Duolingo's focus on schools. Don't get me wrong, I am the last person on earth who would underestimate children (and I've hated dumbing down stuff too much since my own childhood. Expect the kids to be undisciplined and slow learners, treat them like this, and they will actually fulfill the prophecy). But I've read opinions, that some of the changes were made to cater to crowds of young learners forced to use Duolingo, who prefer to spend a lot of time downgrading the forum even lower (as chatting is still easier than even Duo way of learning).

[Cainntear]

A part of the dumbing down process seems to be Duolingo's focus on schools. Don't get me wrong, I am the last person on earth who would underestimate children (and I've hated dumbing down stuff too much since my own childhood. Expect the kids to be undisciplined and slow learners, treat them like this, and they will actually fulfill the prophecy). But I've read opinions, that some of the changes were made to cater to crowds of young learners forced to use Duolingo, who prefer to spend a lot of time downgrading the forum even lower (as chatting is still easier than even Duo way of learning).

Duolingo for schools is purely pointless. There is nothing in the dashboard to allow a teacher to control the content presented to kids or to support the teacher in building lessons around the Duolingo content (although I have to admit I haven't looked at it in 6 months). All the niggles and nuisances that the independent learner working of their own volition has to put up with are only amplified for a child with no particular motivation to study languages.

Duolingo for schools is an afterthought.

[roni]

Update from me as topic starter
I read an opinions in this thread and it really looks like that Duolingo steer in the direction of dumbing down their program. When I just started couple of days ago I mistakenly thought that the mobile application mirrors web site functionality. It seems that native mobile application was made after web version and took into account an inclination of the most of learners (let's just say that people are lazy I'm not against inducting grammar rules or acquiring a language through an exposition to it. I actually use something like multitrack approach myself with my L2 and L3. But I really doubt if it is possible on this small set on examples which Duo gives.
Also, fridge magnet type of composing sentences from my point of view if not fully pointless but definitely much less efficient than typing. Swedish seems to have a fixed structures for sentences, so it is easy to figure out that the first right word is the one starting from a capital letter, then verb, then object or conjunction etc...
For now I decided to continue with Duolingo but use web version. I think it is functional equivalent of the desktop web version. I went through one lesson and got much better impression from it than from the app.
I don't want to bet everything on Duolingo but since I'm not in hurry to learn the language right now I will try to continue with it for another couple of months and then consider switching to some audio course.

[ddich]

I occasionally go back to Duolingo, but then quit after less than 5 tries and remember why I quit it in the first place.

- The sentences are stupid like already mentioned. I don't think learning to say stuff like "it is my people" is very important. Unless you want to start writing King's speeches.

- When translating a sentence and it gives you a bunch of words to choose the words from, you'll always know which one is the first one because the first letter is in capitals. Even my girlfriend could do a few of them because of this. And for me, there really is no difficulty because the other options are in no way related to the correct ones. So if the sentence was "I will go eat now" (although that kinda sentence would be too sensible for Duolingo) the rest of the options would probably be "politics", "an axe", "a bookshelf" and "an engine".

- It translated "a coffee shop" in Italian as "un negozio di caffè" and I've never ever heard anybody call them that. Maybe I'm wrong and I've somehow completely missed that translation, but stuff shouldn't be just directly translated. It might work in some languages, but not all. If you said that in Finnish, people would just think you're talking about a shop where you can buy some coffee for your coffee machine. But even they're so rare and people buy their coffee's from normal shops, nobody would call them that.

- I did some Norwegian for the fun of it, and like 2 seconds in it asked me to spell something. Maybe it's just me, but I can't spell anything in a new language that quickly.

I guess that's all. I'll go ahead and delete it from my tablet now.