Have you used Cudoo?

[Lianne]

Has anyone taken a language course on the website Cudoo?

I'd never heard of it before today, but saw a Facebook ad for their new ASL courses. (ASL level 1 is here.) Right now, their courses appear to be on sale, for $9.99 (US probably?) marked down from $29.99, and I got a popup with a coupon code for 20% off one course.

I'm just wondering whether it's worth it. It's not a very big investment, so I might give level 1 a go at least! I've always wanted to learn ASL. There are courses locally but each level (40 hours of class time) is over $300, and I'd have to get to them. So I've never gotten around to doing those.

[Speakeasy]

@Lianne, thank you for bringing this online language-learning tool to our collective attention. Yes, the prices are low; however, as an experienced language learner, you have already learned that your greatest investment will be the time that you allocate to studying.

Having taken the briefest-of-brief tours of Cudoo’s website, I have already invested all of the time that I would ever want to put into this service. I found the constantly-shifting pop-up messages promoting world-inclusiveness, the making of a difference, of lifestyle changes, and a strong social mission, not to mention the multiple images of carefree, wholesome, smiling people who are waiting breathlessly to make contact with me so irritating that I chose not to investigate their courses. Should the owner offer to pay me a substantial sum of money to participate in a one-month trial, I would decline. In fact, I’m not sure that I would respond for fear of having my computer populated with undeletable visuals such as those which spoil Cudoo’s website. Ya, I know, it’s a generational thing.

In addition to the above, I conducted a superficial Google Search using “reviews of cudoo” as my search criterion. Not surprisingly, the rent-a-positive-review websites popped up, glowing reviews in hand.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=reviews+of+cudoo&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IESR4A&pc=EUPP_

PS: Should you wish to learn ASL (American Sign Language), you might wish to know that there is a very large inventory of professionally-prepared course manuals for self-instruction that are available for purchase via the major online booksellers’ websites. In addition, classroom instruction by a qualified teacher can be arranged, often for a nominal fee, in one of several thousand communities throughout the United States and Canada. Finally, a quick search of the internet reveals the existence of several smartphone applications for learning ASL.

EDITED:
Postscript.

[eido]

I tried Cudoo without looking at reviews. I knew the course quality would be low, because I have experience™ with knowing what courses are good or not -- at least for me.

They offer some "exotic" languages. One that caught my eye was Greenlandic, since I've always been curious about that language.

However, looking at their other products on offer, I was disappointed. Their courses were very basic and didn't seem to treat the languages well, just giving a cursory look into how they work. Nothing more than phrasebook stuff, if that.

I did buy the Greenlandic course. It was very odd. I can't remember it well now, but it consisted of repeating the same phrases over and over again in short clips, I believe, with different gendered narrators. Greenlandic doesn't inflect for gender, but they were just trying to use up time I think as opposed to showing how the language sounds with different people.

They had some interesting phrases, like some relating to text messaging and modern technology usage. But I never got past that. I don't know how accurate their translations were, and I wouldn't rate the way they taught the material highly -- it was basically a slideshow with fancy graphics and audio, and no breakdown of the language so people could understand how it worked.

These two ASL resources look promising, but I can't rate their validity or usefulness:
- Lifeprint
- Start ASL

[joeyaghi]

I have used Cudoo recently due to being referred to it by a colleague of mine. He took a course in Arabic and found the experience to be pleasant and effective. Based on his review I decided to invest some time into learning French, and I found the platform to be very friendly and attractive. Regarding the content of the French course, I have practised and studied intensively everything in the provided course. Now, I can take part in French conversations, understand what is being said, and even reply easily. I say you give them a try

[Stefan]

I'm always skeptical when a new account show up to vouch for an unknown site.

[Lianne]

I forgot to follow up with this thread after starting it. Thank you, Speakeasy and eido, for your responses. I did not end up trying Cudoo, and did end up looking further into Lifeprint (ASLU). Lifeprint turned out to be awesome, so that's what I've been using.

I know there are lots of books on ASL, but I've always had trouble turning a picture of a sign into an understanding of the fluid, 3D movement. The combination of text, videos, and gifs on Lifeprint has been just the ticket. I will not hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking to learn ASL from home.

[john.hellmann]

I had a negative experience with CUDOO ASL class. First, the video demonstrations are from a left handed person, so it doesn't match most people. Second, the motions of the videos don't match the simplistic views depicted in the sketches, sometimes outright disagreeing! And finally, they seem to require you to know SOME ASL before you start their FIRST lesson. Truly a worthless piece of software. Their REFUND policy is 'no refund if you started the first lesson! So I'm out the money but able to warn others of this bad software. BE VERY WARY. I seriously doubt I'll try ANY OTHER CUDOO class, based on this one.