Late night message…angry face emoji…might be time to think about a restraining order.
The Five Stages of DuoLingo.
DuoLingo isn’t really that great for learning languages anyway
This is kind of the hot take going around right now but honestly duo has a lot of advantages. Huge selection of languages, gameified lessons, and the app is really streamlined and responsive.
Im not sure if its better or worse for learning than other apps, but i suspect “learning” a language has a lot more to do with personal drive and dedication than whatever app you chose to learn with
I mean yes a ton of it has to do with motivation, but the “gamification” is hugely overstated. It is incredibly, unbearably, repetitive and bland. Most people start with a lot of desire and determination, see little result for the time they put in, get bored of the same three formats of questions, then quit or just do the absolute bare minimum to keep their streak for a while before eventually missing that. The way they present the questions makes it so easy to guess that you hardly have to think a lot of times. The larger courses are so dauntingly long that once you realize how much time you’re going to have to spend selecting words from a bank, clicking the corresponding icon, or typing what you hear, you become severely unmotivated.
I’ve tried many times. Many people I’ve known have been through the same cycle. I don’t think I’ve seen it work.
This time around I wanted to learn Spanish, and tried the Comprehensible Input method. Man, for me at least, it has worked so so much better that it’s not even comparable. In terms of progress, fun, and motivation it’s been great for me. It basically boils down to listening to a ton of the language, but at a level you can at least follow along even if you don’t know every word. You start with really simple stuff with lots of visual aids, hand gestures, repetition. After a while you move on to content with a little less aids, and shows for young children, etc. No translation or teaching of grammar.
I’ve been at it for about four months and have listened to over 300 hours of content in Spanish. The beginning is absolutely a slog still because at that level you can’t understand much that’s actually interesting, but the moment you get to the point that you can follow some simpler dubbed content and easier stuff like travel/lifestyle vlogs on YouTube it becomes ridiculously easy. You become more focused on the CONTENT than the language. Reading comes later when you’ve really got the sounds of the language ingrained in your brain, so you don’t practice/reinforce bad pronunciation as you read.
Admittedly though, in most languages you will find it incredibly hard to find content for the very beginner level like this. Spanish has Dreaming Spanish which is a godsend, English has plenty of resources. Perhaps for most languages you’ll have to use more traditional methods to work your way up to the point that you can understand. Or have a patient one on one teacher (friend) that can do what’s called “crosstalk” in which you speak your language to them, and they respond to you in the language you’re learning. (With as much visual aid as necessary for your level). There’s been effort to create more beginner content for languages other than Spanish, but I don’t think anything has touched the library of content Dreaming Spanish has yet.
At this point, I can follow most day to day conversations if they don’t stray into odd topics. I can watch dubbed shows for kids/young adults (just finished Avatar: The Last Airbender) and follow enough to be more than enjoyable. News and simpler unscripted content is no issue as well. Native media, especially scripted media, is still too hard. I notice I struggle far less with abstract things other learners seem to have problems with like “ser vs estar”, “por vs para”, etc. One just feels more right in whatever situation but I couldn’t tell you why. For only four months self-directed learning for a few hours a day I think that’s pretty incredible. I can tell week by week that I’m improving.
For a more thorough explanation check out this playlist (turn on subtitles it’s in Spanish.) https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlpPf-YgbU7GrtxQ9yde-J2tfxJDvReNf
For me, the gameification of Duolingo pushed me away. The fact that if I fail 3 times I had to wait to generate more “chances” is absurd when it comes to learning a new language; especially if that new language is a whole new character set, like Mandarin or any Cyrillic language.
is there a better app?
i’m not really in a situation where i can live among natives until i have the basics down
real in-person courses are also nothing i wanna do right now 😅
The best course of action is to consume as much content in the target language as possible, tv shows, music, YouTube videos… Your brain will eventually pick up on certain parts of the language naturally. Also the best thing you can do is to not force yourself to speak or write in that language until you are comfortable doing so (this is one of the biggest things doulingo does wrong).
I can attest to this method working as I went from barely knowing a couple of English words to speaking it in about 4 months (you could probably do less if you stick to what I outlined above). To back up this method I suggest you look at antimoon which is written by people who have used this to learn English as well.
Exactly this worked best for me back in the day ;) I’m German and while we have some mandatory English classes, they’re …well … not good. Blunt, boring, 1:1 translations of German sentences, and at least the teacher I had first also had a VERY thick German accent, pronouncing stuff WAY too harsh (“Zis is nott how yoo shoold zound when zpeeking inglish for forks zake!”) so other than learning a few basics, the lessons weren’t at all useful to me.
…but I’ve been an avid fan of the Zelda franchise even back then so I decided to play Ocarina of Time in English after a first German playthrough. Barely understood the dialogue at first, started to recognize certain keywords after a few days, and once I was halfway through the game my brain kinda switched to “English mode” and I actually learned words and grammar in a natural way instead of trying to force myself to understand what the hell a “singular past tense adverb” is.
Long story short, school tried to teach me how to translate German thoughts into English sentences before speaking them out loud. Games, movies, books and music taught me to THINK in English so I wouldn’t need to translate my thoughts first.
The same way I’m currently trying to learn Spanish by the way, which already works way better than any classes ever did.
For me, Duolingo plus middle school and highschool spanish has helped me tremendously. It does get repetitive and daunting at points but that’s honestly a good thing as it reinforces and reminds you of certain things you may forget or get wrong.
The gamification of it actually helped me push harder than i would have thought being competitive for the weekly rankings as well as with my ADHD.
Of course I’m still not amazing at spanish but I can hold a very simple conversation, follow along with conversations people are speaking and pick up on context, speak to spanish speakers where they compliment it and say it’s perfect, and I can read it and write it very well.
It could very well just be me and my dedication to it but with a 61 day streak and at minimum of 15 minutes a day while using a journal to write down any and everything I can and practicing Spanish at work, while watching spanish cartoons, I would say Duolingo has been absolutely worth it for me
Except it works, I’ve seen people learn a language with it to the point they’re capable of quite good communication in about 2 years.
I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I’ve absolutely loved it. I’ve tried learning Japanese many times in my life, but this is the first time where I feel like I’m really beginning to understand it. I’m using the pro version, though, so maybe it’s less annoying than the free version.
Spanish or vanish, bendeho
I think you may have an abusive relationship with this app…
