Do you like Duolingo?

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Cavesa
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby Cavesa » Sun Jan 27, 2019 5:58 am

Eves wrote: In fact, based on how the lessons are progressing, I'm not sure if I will eventually be able to formulate basic sentences when completed with the tree. However, I am beginning to realize that I can pick out certain parts of German conversation when I hear it, at least understand and pick out some words. I think it's a good beginner's resource. I plan to stick with it and complete the German tree before moving on to other things (Clozemaster, News in Slow German, etc.)


I had learnt quite a lot from the first third or so of the German tree. The not too complicated things were clicking well and I was using them while speaking (Duolingo was my first German resource, I was unsure whether I'd want to continue).

But there came a point, after which I was unable to really learn anything from it, due to to lack of explanation and too few examples. Instead of real practice and thinking about the grammar, I suddenly caught myself memorising the few examples, to be rid of the exercise I was stuck on. That was not real learning.

To me, it was like two separate things.

Cainntear wrote:
First up, it's great that Duolingo encourages people to keep at it, but it's a squandered opportunity. Once you've got the habit, you should be upping the complexity.
Von Ahn says that upping the learning means upping the drop-out rates... in that case he's doing it wrong -- both teaching and gamification.

Very true. The problem is that Duolingo (based on all the articles about it that I have read) thinks the goal is to keep people using Duolingo eternally. In one article, they were clearly dividing learners into the "successful" ones, who kept using Duolingo, and the "unsuccessful" ones, who stopped. No sign of the idea that the people leaving Duolingo may have actually been the successful ones, who had learnt the content and moved on.

And when eternal reviewing is the goal (I guess ads being an important source of income for Duolingo has a lot to do with that), you don't actually need people to learn much.

Also, people are more likely to stay and stick to your product, if you make them feel as if they were awesome at language learning. Upping the complexity might not be flattering enough for a part of the public.

Gamification:
The single biggest mistake Duolingo has suffered since day one is that they've totally misunderstood XP.
...
A related problem with XP is that they've copied the idea from RPGs that "levels" need progressively more XP the higher you get... but that's done explicitly to encourage taking on harder, higher-risk fights, which is not an option in Duolingo.
..
This means that the difficult questions not only aren't getting a fair reward, but end up being an obstacle that stops you getting rewarded for what you did do right. It triggers problems of "loss aversion", so yeah, of course people are going to dislike difficult tasks (you know, the ones that lead to actual learning).


Yes, this is extremely true. Duolingo missed out on the opportunity to use the crown levels or exp levels meaningfully. Neither lead to harder exercises. And it supports the mentality that the eternal reviewing of Duolingo is the goal, not actually learning.

And I don't think Duolingo have opened up the market for language apps either, because by running for years on a $0.00 price tag funded by immense amounts of venture capital, they've killed the value of language apps in the public imagination. There have been people trying to do interesting things with language technology, but who's really got anywhere? Babbel is actually pretty old-school when you look at it -- it's just a slick version of the sort of language course that's been around since the 90s. Anyone who has tried to make an incremental improvement on Duolingo is killed by being too small and invisible, and not being able to charge enough money to stay alive.

As I say, I reckon Duolingo is a squandered opportunity that has actually hampered innovation.

[Edit: fixed unclosed [I] tag.]


I don't think that it being free is the main problem. The high quality products with an appropriate price can definitely succeed. But there are actually few of them.

Kwiziq is great, but it is actually quite expensive and only two languages are available. The price may reflect the investments, but doesn't reflect the fact its competition is not DL, the competitor are the normal grammar workbooks with a fixed price for which you get the book and keep it forever.
Lingodeer annoyed the userbase by changing the prices like a dozen times in the first month of becoming paid (and the changes were in a range from 20 to 99 dollars for the same subscription) , with payment related bugs, and with lack of official communication about the issues.
Babbel and similar ones offer absolutely nothing better than the paper based resources, in my opinion, compared to the two examples above.
Lingvist (which I have tried and I had concerns about the content) has bad paid functions and little new content for the money. The users complain about it online and not many see a reason to pay for something not that much better than other services. If you offer too little to the paying customers compared to the free users, it is not Duolingo's fault.

DL has too good PR, true. I would say the biggest blow to the rest of the market is not the 0.00 pricetag, it is the attack on the schools. There is no better PR than forcing lots of people to use it through the schools. Becoming that program the official institutions trust has been a very important step.

But I think that thes zero price you dislike so much will be "fixed", as DL is gonna be more and more paid. The ads are already rather numerous. The "Duolingo Plus" offers no good service and the paying customers are annoyed they are being treated just like the non paying users (for example their language tree is being upgraded and their progress seemingly lost without the DL having asked them or at least announced it before). The hated "health system" in a part of the mobile apps is punishing people for making mistakes and feels too greedy, and it might be spreading to the rest.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby MacGyver » Tue Jan 29, 2019 5:22 am

Cavesa wrote:Very true. The problem is that Duolingo (based on all the articles about it that I have read) thinks the goal is to keep people using Duolingo eternally. In one article, they were clearly dividing learners into the "successful" ones, who kept using Duolingo, and the "unsuccessful" ones, who stopped. No sign of the idea that the people leaving Duolingo may have actually been the successful ones, who had learnt the content and moved on.


Thats really it in a nutshell for me. Every update seems to be a new gimmick to keep people at it. No real improvements to how a language is taught or extra content.

Then theres the strange sentences. "The bed is food." Thats not funny, or helpful when I am trying to figure out what a word could mean. Just counterproductive in my opinion.

Their advertising irks me too. Getting political is not cool, whatever "side" you are on. Just stay out of it.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby lavengro » Tue Jan 29, 2019 5:43 am

MacGyver wrote:.... . No real improvements to how a language is taught or extra content.


I believe this depends on the language at issue. The English to Spanish tree has recently (within the last month) been very substantially revised and the content considerably increased, and Duolingo is always tinkering with and beta testing new features and increased content - for example, there are four versions of the French tree currently rolled out to users for testing purposes, and I understand French V.4 will be issued soon as the standard tree, and that has dozens of additional skill units and quite a bit more content that its earlier French trees.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby MacGyver » Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:55 am

lavengro wrote:
MacGyver wrote:.... . No real improvements to how a language is taught or extra content.


I believe this depends on the language at issue. The English to Spanish tree has recently (within the last month) been very substantially revised and the content considerably increased, and Duolingo is always tinkering with and beta testing new features and increased content - for example, there are four versions of the French tree currently rolled out to users for testing purposes, and I understand French V.4 will be issued soon as the standard tree, and that has dozens of additional skill units and quite a bit more content that its earlier French trees.



Fair enough. Then, in my experience, the language i am learning doesn't get much love at all. Probably about as much as Klingon and the Game of Thrones language. :roll:

It seems like Spanish is their most important language.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby WildGinger10 » Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:46 pm

On the subject of Duolingo's free platform "killing the value" of other language learning materials, I'm actually a little okay with that. One of the biggest roadblocks in education is cost, and most language learning programs are WAYYY too expensive for someone like me. In the past there's a possibility I may have, uh, "borrowed" a few language programs when I was working on French, because f-king hell I couldn't afford $200-$300 for Rosetta Stone. I certainly couldn't have afforded to invest in any NEW ones when I got my job in Germany, but I needed something to learn with. Duolingo being free was easily its best feature, because that made it accessible. Now that I've done a ton more research on how to learn a language outside of a classroom (again, $$$$ - but also a time commitment I can't make), I'm REALLY glad I didn't drop $250 on Rosetta Stone or something for German, because I'm not sure how much more effective than Duolingo they would have been and I didn't find Duolingo very effective.

Anki being free is a HUGE advantage. Gabriel Wyner talks a LOT about the advantage of free resources in his book, but his App that he's releasing is $100/y for 1 language (I think $300 for unlimited time with 1 language or $1000 for all languages unlimited) and, again, that's just too expensive for me and 90% of the people I know who want to learn a foreign language. I'm currently using LingQ, which is $10/m, but billed monthly, which is the only way I can afford it.

I get that funding for education is a tricky business, and good resources are expensive to create, but if Duolingo starts a trend in making language learning programming free/inexpensive, then I am in favor of it. Without a free program, I wouldn't have been able to study at all in Germany, and that was really key for me. I know it's a key factor for a LOT of others as well. Education, across the board, should be as free as humanly possible.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby WildGinger10 » Tue Jan 29, 2019 10:51 pm

MacGyver wrote:It seems like Spanish is their most important language.
English is actually the most-learned language on Duolingo - which makes sense to me as it is becoming, more and more, THE global language. If you count ESL speakers, English is the most widely spoken language in the entire world.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby MacGyver » Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:07 am

WildGinger10 wrote:
MacGyver wrote:It seems like Spanish is their most important language.
English is actually the most-learned language on Duolingo - which makes sense to me as it is becoming, more and more, THE global language. If you count ESL speakers, English is the most widely spoken language in the entire world.


English for Spanish speakers is no. 1 with 27 million learners, Spanish for English speakers is no. 2 with 21 million learners. Hence why I said Spanish seems to be their most important (and best supported language).
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby Cainntear » Fri Feb 01, 2019 5:43 pm

WildGinger10 wrote:I get that funding for education is a tricky business, and good resources are expensive to create, but if Duolingo starts a trend in making language learning programming free/inexpensive, then I am in favor of it.

But how can it? It hasn't revolutionised the production of language materials in a way that will remove the high cost of creating high quality materials, they've just burned through thick wodges of investors' dollar bills making mediocre materials, as well as getting untrained volunteers to make much of the material for them.

Making high quality materials is already difficult enough to justify in terms of cost, due to the way well-marketed rubbish tends to dominate the sales charts -- while a certain big yellow box could be made much cheaper without cutting into the budget for R&D (I recall someone saying that 95% of the yellow box's budget goes on marketing) that's not true of good and/or genuinely innovative material. You wouldn't get anyone to fund 26 hour of video à la French in Action or Destinos if you were just going to put it on YouTube and hope to make the budget back through per-click advertising, for example.

Without a free program, I wouldn't have been able to study at all in Germany, and that was really key for me. I know it's a key factor for a LOT of others as well. Education, across the board, should be as free as humanly possible.

I agree, but it still relies on somebody paying for it. There are lots of courses funded by government bodies, for example. The problem with DuoLingo is that it said language lessons should be free, shouted it from the rooftops for years, then finally came to the conclusion that they actually can't be -- but they've set up unrealistic expectations of price for their customers.

DuoLingo was never sustainably free, so it still seems unlikely that there will ever be a way to make language education absolutely free.
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby lavengro » Fri Feb 01, 2019 6:34 pm

Cainntear wrote:
WildGinger10 wrote:I get that funding for education is a tricky business, and good resources are expensive to create, but if Duolingo starts a trend in making language learning programming free/inexpensive, then I am in favor of it.

But how can it? It hasn't revolutionised the production of language materials in a way that will remove the high cost of creating high quality materials, they've just burned through thick wodges of investors' dollar bills making mediocre materials, as well as getting untrained volunteers to make much of the material for them.

Making high quality materials is already difficult enough to justify in terms of cost, due to the way well-marketed rubbish tends to dominate the sales charts -- while a certain big yellow box could be made much cheaper without cutting into the budget for R&D (I recall someone saying that 95% of the yellow box's budget goes on marketing) that's not true of good and/or genuinely innovative material. You wouldn't get anyone to fund 26 hour of video à la French in Action or Destinos if you were just going to put it on YouTube and hope to make the budget back through per-click advertising, for example.

Without a free program, I wouldn't have been able to study at all in Germany, and that was really key for me. I know it's a key factor for a LOT of others as well. Education, across the board, should be as free as humanly possible.

I agree, but it still relies on somebody paying for it. There are lots of courses funded by government bodies, for example. The problem with DuoLingo is that it said language lessons should be free, shouted it from the rooftops for years, then finally came to the conclusion that they actually can't be -- but they've set up unrealistic expectations of price for their customers.

DuoLingo was never sustainably free, so it still seems unlikely that there will ever be a way to make language education absolutely free.


I do not share your views concerning Duolingo Cainntear, but I am always interested in reading them, and even when they do not correspond with my own, I am interested in understanding them.

I am not sure I properly understand your comment "Duolingo was never sustainably free" - do you mean only that there were and still are costs (to the company) involved in setting it up, continuing to maintain/modify/expand it, host it, advertise it, populate a staff beyond the legion of volunteers? If so, for sure. More than for sure: very obviously true.

If by Duolingo not ever being "sustainably free" you intend to mean that Duolingo has proven unable to continue to offer full access to its language programs for free (for those who would like to access them for free), I don't with respect think that is at all correct, at least at present.

I expect that Duolingo, or whatever the parent company may be, has found that it needs to offset expenses by accepting advertisements and providing an option for members to become paying members (and I understand in addition to their PLUS membership, they are introducing a Live Review option for a higher subscription rate), but it has not to my knowledge forced learners to become paying members, nor to restrict access to portions of it only to paying members. The current full approach, still sustainably viable as far as I am aware, allows language instruction of a particular type to those who would like to engage with it completely for free. Count me strongly in favour of this.

For the last couple of months, I decided to become a paying PLUS member of Duolingo - it was a symbolic gesture of support. I likely will not continue with it, but given how much I use Duolingo, I was more than happy to throw it a few bucks. But practically no else is a paying member as far as I can tell (from looking at signatures in the comments sections), and accordingly, to rephrase your sentence a bit, "Duolingo appears at present to remain sustainably free for language learners."
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Re: Do you like Duolingo?

Postby Beli Tsar » Sat Feb 02, 2019 5:09 pm

Cainntear wrote:
WildGinger10 wrote:I get that funding for education is a tricky business, and good resources are expensive to create, but if Duolingo starts a trend in making language learning programming free/inexpensive, then I am in favor of it.

But how can it? It hasn't revolutionised the production of language materials in a way that will remove the high cost of creating high quality materials, they've just burned through thick wodges of investors' dollar bills making mediocre materials, as well as getting untrained volunteers to make much of the material for them.

Making high quality materials is already difficult enough to justify in terms of cost, due to the way well-marketed rubbish tends to dominate the sales charts -- while a certain big yellow box could be made much cheaper without cutting into the budget for R&D (I recall someone saying that 95% of the yellow box's budget goes on marketing) that's not true of good and/or genuinely innovative material. You wouldn't get anyone to fund 26 hour of video à la French in Action or Destinos if you were just going to put it on YouTube and hope to make the budget back through per-click advertising, for example.

This is absolutely true. As an ex-publisher, even if not of language materials, I can vouch for the fact that free resources and big discounts are not helping produce cheap resources. There's a lot free on the internet, and there's a lot discounted by Amazon and others.

The result is that publishers' margins are horribly tight. And what gets cut is good editing, good planning, all the care and love of producing a great resource. The great language-learning series, like most good things, are as much labor of love as they are profit-making. There is a reason no big publishing house produces anything like Assimil.

And free resources directly impact sales themselves, of course. So authors don't make money, and publishers cut those smaller-seeking but excellent series we love.

It's true that giant publishers are often profit-hungry sharks. But that is not the same as saying that the industry is awash with too much easy cash. Rather, hard times give the sharks plenty other fish to gobble.

I love free resources, and use them a lot. But they come with a long-term cost to us all, and that cost is investment in quality resources.
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