By the way -- this Youtube video also has some good tips, some of which overlap with mine, some of which don't. He is slightly more positive about what using Duolingo can achieve. So much depends on how much effort someone is willing to put in with supplementary work, I think.
Great post! Thank you! After the start of the full scale war with Russia, I began Ukrainian on Duo as I wanted to at least have a clue when watching videos from the various fronts. After more than a year I could hear differences and similarities with Russian, which told me I was getting somewhere. I have few opportunities to speak beyond a few in-store conversations, snippets really, with the Ukrainians in my Brooklyn neighborhood. I fully recognize the superficially of my knowledge, but the pure language-joy is profound. Then, ultimately, I married a German woman and I made the switch. In the month before we went to Germany to meet the family I POUNDED Duo for hours a day (and in the process won the Diamond league). This was the test. How would I do in Germany? How much could I follow a conversation at home, in a shop or restaurant? Say a few things?
The answer was that could beyond everyone’s expectations. It was AWESOME! And priceless: being able to follow dinner conversations with little translation felt amazing. To be honest, before Duo I figured my language-learning days were long over: never again would I spend a junior year in Italy and Spain. Knowing I couldn’t get that kind of learning meant I just took it off my endless aspirational lists. Obviously German would gain a foothold in my life now, but how much? Duo showed me it was possible to begin at 53. Yes, German is “easy” because of all it shares with English (compared with Ukrainian, for example) and I do have a history of learning languages, but I never imagined the progress I’ve made was possible.
To some of your insights: it’s not enough and parts do suck. Within a few weeks of German, I needed the classic dictionary and grammar textbook approach too: verb form lists, conjugation tables, actual understanding of cases, etc. The gaming approach works great to hold eyeballs, but limits are soon reached. Gaming the game offers the illusion of success (with help from capitalization of first word, correct words to choose from, “cheating” by seeing the word), but offers no guarantee of real learning. But even in those periods where I was using a “cheat” to gain quick points (“Speak” mode is awesome for this), I justified my learning mode saying, at least my mouth is making German words for two hours a day, with only Duo to disapprove of my pronunciation. Repetition, so essential to language learning, is the hardest thing for me to “schedule” into my over-scheduled life. But Duo has cracked that: NO WAY I’m losing my 650+ day streak!
I totally agree about filling your world with as much of the language as possible: we watch German TV news, a fun “Antiques Roadshow” type show “Rares für Rares,” and listen to Harry Potter in German. I also get to add a life goal every day: reading Kafka in the original. Some days it’s a paragraph in a short story or novel, other days it’s an aphorism. I take notes and expand a specific, singular vocabulary. I liken it to learning Italian by reading Dante - there will be tons of lacunae, but at least you know what you need to enter those realms.
My experience is echoed in your thoughtful analysis: it’s great, but with superable shortcomings.
Oh, full disclosure/fun fact: after both being Duo users for more than a year each, my wife now works for the Green Owl! She will be very interested to read your insights!
Thank you for a very interesting and informative post. I started with Duolingo during the pandemic when I had more time on my hands. I decided to try to learn Irish since that is part of my heritage, and I've made my way through the entire course and am on day 1675. Now I'm at a Daily Refresh stage, but I wouldn't say I was fluent at all. More knowledgeable about the language, yes -- conversant, not really. For a while I let the competition factor impel me to do more, but now it's more a brief daily habit. I'm 61 so it's also just a good way to exercise my mind. About a year ago, I added Spanish and Math to the mix and am working on them, too. Some days I do a lesson or two in all three. I will say I liked the old format of Duo better than the revised one. I do the lessons on my phone in the free mode so I can pop on and work on it when it's most convenient for me. If I had to really learn a new language, I agree it would be better to do a more traditional class, but Duo does offer a good way to expand your abilities.
I love Duo even as I recognize its limitations. It's much more interesting than, say, Candy Crush. I do actually learn something. It's a great refresher (a character in my novel-in-progress is a professor of classics, and Duo is bringing back some of my rusty Latin). But after 4 years of Duo Spanish I cannot speak Spanish...
I'm using Duo'o for Chinese (Mandarin)--once upon a time, long ago and far away, I took a year of it at Harvard. Of course, everything then and up to but not recent (that is, pre Duo'o) employed tapes for "listen and repeat" exercises. Duo'o surpasses that, especially on the iPhone (thank you Steve, wherever you are). So I strongly recommend Duo'o for S&L practice (repetitive speaking and listening). It remains to have real-life conversations (maybe a "Duo'o-AI" will provide that).
I got to about 60% in both Spanish and Italian with Duolingo and yes, it's good for getting some grounding in a language you're already sort of familiar with (I have undergraduate Latin, high-school French and a smattering of Romanian). What put me off was the constant nagging and the pressure to gamble. Also, gamification doesn't work for me; I like my learning to be learning and my games to be games.
I've got your e-mail and in a few minutes later I got another mail from duolingo with a subject of "Are you still there?", and now I'm starting to suspect that this one is a marketing or not?
I've been practising with Duolingo Arabic for the last few years. I already knew how to read and write Arabic script, but Duo (and especially the timed word-matching games) has massively increased my reading speed, and recognition of common written words. So in that respect it has been helpful. However, for spoken Arabic it has been more or less useless - mostly because the course is in Modern Standard Arabic rather than any real spoken dialect. It has probably helped my listening comprehension a little though, and helped me to internalise some level of verb conjugation.
I've also progressed some way through the Norwegian course, which is better-developed than the Arabic course, and that did get me to a point where I can exchange messages back and forth in Norwegian with Norwegian friends. But having some prior knowledge of German from school probably helped there.
Yeah, I think where there's some grounding from a course or cognates to connect to, it does better. But I find it incredibly hard to learn things from scratch with it.
I listen to the Duolingo Podcast in French, which provides a written transcript for those who like to read along. I’ve enjoyed the stories featuring places, events, and the people from all over the world, adding to France’s rich culture.
I've been using Duolingo for a few years now. I've played around with a few of the languages, but the ones I have spent most time on are Hindi and German. I already knew some Hindi script (devanagri) from having studied very basic Sanskrit, and duolingo really helped anchor what I knew and add more characters, but when I encounter written Hindi I find compound characters that aren't featured or even mentioned in Duolingo, which is kind of frustrating. The Hindi course is quite short - too short. In fact I've done it twice and wish it could be expanded.
I've spent a lot more time on German. It's interesting what you say about Duolingo being good for languages related to ones you know. I have reasonable Dutch and this has always enabled me to understand a lot more German than I actually know, but Duolingo has really worked well in terms of giving me a much more solid grounding in German. When I meet German speakers I am still half translating from Dutch, but Duolingo has given me the wherewithal to communicate more easily in German.
By the way -- this Youtube video also has some good tips, some of which overlap with mine, some of which don't. He is slightly more positive about what using Duolingo can achieve. So much depends on how much effort someone is willing to put in with supplementary work, I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXHtwQP9DnQ
Great post! Thank you! After the start of the full scale war with Russia, I began Ukrainian on Duo as I wanted to at least have a clue when watching videos from the various fronts. After more than a year I could hear differences and similarities with Russian, which told me I was getting somewhere. I have few opportunities to speak beyond a few in-store conversations, snippets really, with the Ukrainians in my Brooklyn neighborhood. I fully recognize the superficially of my knowledge, but the pure language-joy is profound. Then, ultimately, I married a German woman and I made the switch. In the month before we went to Germany to meet the family I POUNDED Duo for hours a day (and in the process won the Diamond league). This was the test. How would I do in Germany? How much could I follow a conversation at home, in a shop or restaurant? Say a few things?
The answer was that could beyond everyone’s expectations. It was AWESOME! And priceless: being able to follow dinner conversations with little translation felt amazing. To be honest, before Duo I figured my language-learning days were long over: never again would I spend a junior year in Italy and Spain. Knowing I couldn’t get that kind of learning meant I just took it off my endless aspirational lists. Obviously German would gain a foothold in my life now, but how much? Duo showed me it was possible to begin at 53. Yes, German is “easy” because of all it shares with English (compared with Ukrainian, for example) and I do have a history of learning languages, but I never imagined the progress I’ve made was possible.
To some of your insights: it’s not enough and parts do suck. Within a few weeks of German, I needed the classic dictionary and grammar textbook approach too: verb form lists, conjugation tables, actual understanding of cases, etc. The gaming approach works great to hold eyeballs, but limits are soon reached. Gaming the game offers the illusion of success (with help from capitalization of first word, correct words to choose from, “cheating” by seeing the word), but offers no guarantee of real learning. But even in those periods where I was using a “cheat” to gain quick points (“Speak” mode is awesome for this), I justified my learning mode saying, at least my mouth is making German words for two hours a day, with only Duo to disapprove of my pronunciation. Repetition, so essential to language learning, is the hardest thing for me to “schedule” into my over-scheduled life. But Duo has cracked that: NO WAY I’m losing my 650+ day streak!
I totally agree about filling your world with as much of the language as possible: we watch German TV news, a fun “Antiques Roadshow” type show “Rares für Rares,” and listen to Harry Potter in German. I also get to add a life goal every day: reading Kafka in the original. Some days it’s a paragraph in a short story or novel, other days it’s an aphorism. I take notes and expand a specific, singular vocabulary. I liken it to learning Italian by reading Dante - there will be tons of lacunae, but at least you know what you need to enter those realms.
My experience is echoed in your thoughtful analysis: it’s great, but with superable shortcomings.
Oh, full disclosure/fun fact: after both being Duo users for more than a year each, my wife now works for the Green Owl! She will be very interested to read your insights!
Thank you for a very interesting and informative post. I started with Duolingo during the pandemic when I had more time on my hands. I decided to try to learn Irish since that is part of my heritage, and I've made my way through the entire course and am on day 1675. Now I'm at a Daily Refresh stage, but I wouldn't say I was fluent at all. More knowledgeable about the language, yes -- conversant, not really. For a while I let the competition factor impel me to do more, but now it's more a brief daily habit. I'm 61 so it's also just a good way to exercise my mind. About a year ago, I added Spanish and Math to the mix and am working on them, too. Some days I do a lesson or two in all three. I will say I liked the old format of Duo better than the revised one. I do the lessons on my phone in the free mode so I can pop on and work on it when it's most convenient for me. If I had to really learn a new language, I agree it would be better to do a more traditional class, but Duo does offer a good way to expand your abilities.
I love Duo even as I recognize its limitations. It's much more interesting than, say, Candy Crush. I do actually learn something. It's a great refresher (a character in my novel-in-progress is a professor of classics, and Duo is bringing back some of my rusty Latin). But after 4 years of Duo Spanish I cannot speak Spanish...
This is a great article! I personally see Duolingo as a game app on my phone... that gives me more exposure to the languages I'm learning.
I think that's a perfect way to see it! Keeps the expectations realistic.
I'm using Duo'o for Chinese (Mandarin)--once upon a time, long ago and far away, I took a year of it at Harvard. Of course, everything then and up to but not recent (that is, pre Duo'o) employed tapes for "listen and repeat" exercises. Duo'o surpasses that, especially on the iPhone (thank you Steve, wherever you are). So I strongly recommend Duo'o for S&L practice (repetitive speaking and listening). It remains to have real-life conversations (maybe a "Duo'o-AI" will provide that).
My sister is self-taught in Mandarin, and she says the competitor app "Lingo deer" is better than Duo for Asian languages.
Only available in a few languages so far but I am really liking a different language app called Natulang. More speaking focused and time efficient.
Interesting, I'll check that out -- thank you!
I got to about 60% in both Spanish and Italian with Duolingo and yes, it's good for getting some grounding in a language you're already sort of familiar with (I have undergraduate Latin, high-school French and a smattering of Romanian). What put me off was the constant nagging and the pressure to gamble. Also, gamification doesn't work for me; I like my learning to be learning and my games to be games.
I hate the nagging, I don't need to be shamed by a cartoon owl!
I've got your e-mail and in a few minutes later I got another mail from duolingo with a subject of "Are you still there?", and now I'm starting to suspect that this one is a marketing or not?
This is definitely, 100% not marketing. The clue is in that I begin by saying it's not a very good way to learn languages.
I've been practising with Duolingo Arabic for the last few years. I already knew how to read and write Arabic script, but Duo (and especially the timed word-matching games) has massively increased my reading speed, and recognition of common written words. So in that respect it has been helpful. However, for spoken Arabic it has been more or less useless - mostly because the course is in Modern Standard Arabic rather than any real spoken dialect. It has probably helped my listening comprehension a little though, and helped me to internalise some level of verb conjugation.
I've also progressed some way through the Norwegian course, which is better-developed than the Arabic course, and that did get me to a point where I can exchange messages back and forth in Norwegian with Norwegian friends. But having some prior knowledge of German from school probably helped there.
Yeah, I think where there's some grounding from a course or cognates to connect to, it does better. But I find it incredibly hard to learn things from scratch with it.
I listen to the Duolingo Podcast in French, which provides a written transcript for those who like to read along. I’ve enjoyed the stories featuring places, events, and the people from all over the world, adding to France’s rich culture.
Good post. Thank you.
I've been using Duolingo for a few years now. I've played around with a few of the languages, but the ones I have spent most time on are Hindi and German. I already knew some Hindi script (devanagri) from having studied very basic Sanskrit, and duolingo really helped anchor what I knew and add more characters, but when I encounter written Hindi I find compound characters that aren't featured or even mentioned in Duolingo, which is kind of frustrating. The Hindi course is quite short - too short. In fact I've done it twice and wish it could be expanded.
I've spent a lot more time on German. It's interesting what you say about Duolingo being good for languages related to ones you know. I have reasonable Dutch and this has always enabled me to understand a lot more German than I actually know, but Duolingo has really worked well in terms of giving me a much more solid grounding in German. When I meet German speakers I am still half translating from Dutch, but Duolingo has given me the wherewithal to communicate more easily in German.
Eend