Worst language app, course...

[Yunus39]

What is the worst language app, course, method... you have tried ? And why ?

I tried just jumping straight into listening to the news and podcasts for about 50 hours to see if I picked up anything. I did not.

My language courses in high school and college were terribly inefficient, but I did learn.

I tried some hypnotism audio regimens, but I honestly don't know if they helped or not. There are some studies that found measurable improvement in students who did hypnotism in addition to their studies. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't. My guess is that it helps about as much as meditation.

[geribowens]

What is the worst language app, course, method... you have tried friday night funkin ? And why ?

Worst? Probably to just do old school style translations as a way to learn. Like, without other methods.

Most overrated is switching your phone language. You’ll learn a few new words but at least the way I use my phone most of the apps I use were still in English.

[birb school]

Something I didn't really try, but clicked on out of curiosity, knowing it would be terrible: a series of 3-hour Youtube videos that teach foreign languages by showing nothing but thousands of random sentences, one by one, each with a translation and pronunciation.

[Fuerza]

Through my library, I have access to a very exciting free language learning resource called Pronunciator which covers a massive amount of languages, including many rare languages that I haven't seen any other resources for. The only drawback is that it's terrible.

It's essentially just a series of phrase book flash cards, which would be tolerable if it didn't rely on the worst speech recognition software I've ever encountered. I even did a course on British English and couldn't get a single answer right! I swear that my British accent is actually pretty good! I ended up needing to say some things in my native American accent to be understood... which defeated the purpose!

I'm currently using Bluebird, the free version of Pronunciator available to the general public, as part of an intensive Galician study. It's a little boring and clunky, but the amount of content is massive, there are a ton of languages available, and with patience you can design yourself a fairly comprehensive course. I can't comment on the speech recognition because I don't use it, but in general I hate speech software.

Now to talk about programs I really dislike, I would have to put Transparent on the top. It's absurdly boring, though it gets points for having unusual languages, and I suppose it could be useful as a supplement. I also tend to dislike anything based on flash cards. I find I'm able to remember vocabulary very easily, and flash cards add no value.

[sporedandroid]

Duolingo I just don’t like how naggy it is. I don’t have too much trouble being consistent when I’m not nagged. I can see how this works for some people. I find Anki does a better job of keeping me consistent. It won’t nag me, but if I miss a day the reviews will pile up.

The Colloquial Courses I really didn’t enjoy Colloquial Hebrew. I felt like I was being talked down to and I didn’t like the role playing activities. One of them was some grocery shopping activity that made you remember a bunch of items on a grocery list for a sandwich. I can barely do that in English.

[Adrianslont]

Duolingo I just don’t like how naggy it is. I don’t have too much trouble being consistent when I’m not nagged. I can see how this works for some people. I find Anki does a better job of keeping me consistent. It won’t nag me, but if I miss a day the reviews will pile up.

You can turn off the nagging in settings. It really improves the experience.

This is true of many apps that flood you with notifications and or forms of “motivation”.

[kanewai]

The only popular course that I genuinely despise is LanguagePod 101. I've read that some of their courses are good (see threads here and on HTLAL), but the ones I tried were very expensive and poorly organized, with too much English and too much irritating banter. On top of that, their sign up is confusing (resulting in surprise charges on your credit card), and there seem to be a lot of "brutally honest" reviews that are written by people who are on their payroll.

There's courses that I don't find efficient (DuoLingo, Memrise), but that doesn't make them bad per se. There are others that frustrate me because they could be so much better (Living Language) but which have poor formatting and structure.

[jeff_lindqvist]

I've never subscribed to a premium feature - and I've never even considered it because not even the free content for beginners has been convincing enough. The [language]class101 format is a good example of this (as some of my posts from August and September 2017 show).

[Cainntear]

What is the worst language app, course, method... you have tried friday night funkin ? And why ?

Worst? Probably to just do old school style translations as a way to learn. Like, without other methods.

What's an "old school translation"? Old-school teaching only ever had translations as one element of the course, and translation isn't a different thing these days (although it isn't fashionable in the classroom).