Do you incorporate Duolingo as part of your learning approach?

[Cainntear]

I have heard people say that Duolingo Stories are supposed to be good, but I've never tried them.

They were good, so of course the company killed them, or rather made them a very minor part of the main learning path instead of a standalone feature as they originally were.

Not only that, but (I recently tested out of French so that I could see them for myself) the iteractivity is pretty shocking. It gives even more obviously wrong answers than the other exercises on the learning path. Quite often, you just have to look for one key word to know the answer, without even attempting to understand (or even simply parse!) the full sentence.

The whole PR debacle on Reddit (that galaxyrocker mentioned in the context of their lack of understanding of Irish, but most of the answers to common questions and concerns were of a similar tone) also did a lot of harm to my image of the company.

But did it? 0.46% might seem like a small number, but Duolingo are claiming to have 0.46% of the world's population (37 million)coming at least once a month -- how many people do you think are even aware of the AMA sh*tshow? And of those people, how many people didn't believe the hype they were getting thrown at them.

The people most likely to be hitting Reddit are the people who are easiest to lose and the most effort to keep. Duolingo has never, in its more-than-a-decade of existence, really put any great effort into aligning with the findings of language learning research, instead hiring qualified experts and getting them to put out PR press releases than try to claim the science supports the thing that they've been selling for yeeeeears, with little more than tinkering around the edges.

I would say that Duo gave me a somewhat faulty mental model of Japanese structure, but that's a common criticism of many beginner resources that try to explain it in English/Indo-European terms, or don't explain it and so leave the learner to infer it based on English/Indo-European terms. I'm not sure whether it's actually a big issue at all.

You know what the infuriating thing about that debate is? It completely ignored the possibility of explaining the grammar is terms that make sense based on the language itself. Or even explaining how English is just as weird (I witnessed someone objecting to Spanish's grammatical gender on adjectives, and saying "Why do I have to say I'm a lost woman? The other person can see I'm a woman!" I chipped in by asking why she told me she's a woman because I can see there's only one of her! I was trying to get the idea across that when we see something in another language that we don't do, we say it's unneeded... but we don't notice the unnecessary things that our own language does.

There seems to be an eternal debate over teaching a full correct model right from the beginning versus teaching a rough and not-quite-correct one that gets the learner started and will be corrected and refined as they continue to learn; I'll leave that debate to the learning experts who actually enjoy these kinds of arguments.

You rang, sir...?
No-one ever teaches a fully complete and correct model from day one -- it's pure self-deception. When you complain that their model includes unnecessary detail, they object that without it they wouldn't be giving an accurate description of the feature; and when you complain that they've left out an important detail, they object that that's unnecessary at this stage in the learning process.

This sort of cognitive dissonance is what holds language teaching back.

To me it seems like all roads lead to Rome, within reason, but Duo maybe doesn't ever do that correction and refinement: another reason to not use it as a main resource, and another problem with the way that it's marketed as a main resource.

Exactly. It gives you green when you've made a spelling mistake, so sometimes you won't even realise there was a mistake, and crucially: it always lets you repeat the same mistake. It doesn't say you'll only get away with it a handful of times then get strict on demanding you correct yourself. It'll always accept a particular typo till the end of time, or it will take one of your hearts the very first time you make that mistake.

edit: deleted text accidentally left in. Gary's words, not mine!

[PeterMollenburg]

I think I toyed around with the mobile app almost 10 years back out of curiosity. Since then, no, I haven't used it at all and had no intentions of doing so. However, I have considered that it might be useful from time to time with Norwegian in little stolen moments or downtime when nothing else is handy or particularly motivating for a short snippet of time.

[golyplot]

I used Duolingo from 2016-2019 (on the computer only, of course), but even by 2019 it was already going downhill. I wouldn't dream of going back now.

[Eternal Foreigner]

Duolingo's marketing is so strong. It's disappointing to see the vast majority of people choose their approach to language learning based on marketing. Especially the marketing of a corporation that's incentivized financially to drag the process out as much as possible.
People love to justify why they use it, but in my opinion the typical reasons they give aren't very compelling.

[emk]

I know someone who speaks several languages well, and who once had her Italian vaguely around B1. After many years of not using Italian, she decided to give Duolingo a try, in hopes of easily reactivating it. She put in 8 years worth of streaks with only a few breaks. She's still not back to where she was.

The verdict: No more Duolingo.

[Granrey]

Just to give an update on my Duolingo. I was doing about 5 to 6 lessons per day but it seems to me doing all these lessons per day makes you run quickly trough the material and not necessary memorizing it.

So, I decided to add more apps to the mix and just do one lesson or their recommended amount per day in each one of them.

In French and Portuguese I'm using per day:

-Duolingo: One lesson
-Memrise: One scenario (just Portuguese as I finished the French last year)
-Mondly: daily lesson, plus one course lesson
-Lingodeer: one lesson
-Rosseta: 3 to 4 Lessons (recommended amount by app).
-Babbel: one lesson.
-Anki (5000 most common words): Reviewing about 50 words.

[dubendorf]

Others may have had a different experience, but I feel like I gave Duolingo the old college try and didn't get much out of it. When I first started learning Norwegian, I did 30 minutes of Duolingo every day in two 15-minute sessions for about six months. (I tried to max out the Early Bird and Night Owl bonuses every day.) In that time... I didn't learn much. I learned some basic nouns (milk, woman, dog, etc.) and some present tense verbs (walk, eat, talk, etc.) and basic sentence structure (subject verb object), but it is so slow and repetitive.

About two weeks ago, I started the Linguaphone Norsk Kurs and I have learned so much more in two weeks than I did in 6 months of Duolingo. I shudder to think how much further along I would be now if I had spent six months using Linguaphone rather than Duolingo . That being said, I am starting Linguaphone with much more knowledge than I started Duolingo, I am a different person now, so it's hard to compare. That being said, I think shadowing a proper course book like Linguaphone is gonna be a much better use of one's 15 or 30 minutes a day. It's interesting to hear how other people use Duolingo, though!

[tiia]

Just to give an update on my Duolingo. I was doing about 5 to 6 lessons per day but it seems to me doing all these lessons per day makes you run quickly trough the material and not necessary memorizing it.

So, I decided to add more apps to the mix and just do one lesson or their recommended amount per day in each one of them.

In French and Portuguese I'm using per day:

-Duolingo: One lesson
-Memrise: One scenario (just Portuguese as I finished the French last year)
-Mondly: daily lesson, plus one course lesson
-Lingodeer: one lesson
-Rosseta: 3 to 4 Lessons (recommended amount by app).
-Babbel: one lesson.
-Anki (5000 most common words): Reviewing about 50 words.

Now the interesting question is: Which of these apps helps you making the most progress?

[iguanamon]

No. I've never used Duolinguo, nor do I intend to use it. Nowadays, most people surf the web on their phones. So, I understand the strong desire for a mobile app for language-learning. It's useless to tell a beginner to download a free FSI/DLI or an open-source course for language-learning because they are not mobile friendly; not shiny; not glitzy; not modern; not game-ified.

At present, in my opinion, I have yet to see an app that is up to the quality of what was available in analog 50-60 years ago. I think the platform of a mobile phone is more limited compared to what can be done on a computer or even a tablet- the small screen size seems to be a prime limiting factor. Combine this with the general trend these days of "dumbing-down" language-learning material for a modern audience because "heaven forbid they ever be challenged" for fear that it will be too difficult for them and they'll quit. We are where we are.

Duolinguo seems to be the default beginner course now for casual learners. In the analog past, not so long ago, people who thought it would "be nice to learn a language" went into a bookstore and browsed the language section. They'd buy a book or a course-book with audio, go through three or four chapters/units and then procede to let it fall by the wayside- which is why used courses are often in really good condition.

Duolinguo users probably do the same with the app. Do a few units and drop it. Some continue using it not knowing what to do to consolidate and advance beyond the basics. Still it fulfills a role now largely abdicated by the publishing industry. It's somewhere to start. Those serious about learning will see the limitations of the app and move on to more serious learning outside the app.

Until there is an app which can give me the opportunity to advance as well as what I can do now with analog material, I won't be using them. I can put pdf coursebooks on my tablet with audio and use them that way. I can annotate pdf format books with definitions and notes. I can review them easily. I can learn better this way than with an app like duolinguo designed to "teach me".

[galaxyrocker]

Combine this with the general trend these days of "dumbing-down" language-learning material for a modern audience because "heaven forbid they ever be challenged" for fear that it will be to difficult for them and they'll quit. We are where we are.

This is where I am with most analog materials even. I've been seriously thinking of dabbling in (modern) Welsh, and everything that halfway reflects the modern language is so dumbed down and basic that I just find it so boring. I want to be challenged, and have a lot of stuff presented to me. Thankfully older languages still generally have more intense stuff.