Is Duolingo Max worth the money?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- Duolingo was never a particularly good language learning app, but now on Duolingo Max, you get to pay for it to not work.
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Evan's video about Duolingo removing the sentence discussion's tab:
• Duolingo just removed ...
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Diverse opinions on Duolingo
02:41 Duolingo now has Arabic (which I've been told many times)
04:38 What a weird experience
06:16 The 3 Schools of Thought
10:12 Was Duolingo ever good?
15:08 Duolingo removed sentence discussions
19:50 Should you buy something else instead?
21:10 Why Duolingo doesn't want you to learn a language
24:00 People THINK Duolingo works (but it doesn't)
30:16 We all learn languages in the same way
If you like using Duolingo, that's fine. Some of my most frequent viewers like using Duolingo. But it's the point that Duolingo and language learning part ways that I am talking about here. - Навчання та стиль
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No app on earth and no book on earth will make you fluent...You just have to use multiple apps and books and actually talk with people and watch videos...
I'll never get tired of duolingo slander
It's not slander if it's true.
I'd argue that watching TikTok is actually way better than using Duolingo, as long as you do it exclusively in your target language.
Yeah that's a conversation for another video too.
Although TikTok almost has its own language in every language. I've mainly seen TikTok in Swedish UA-camr's responses to it.
I live in Poland and I would like to have my tik tok in Italian, is it possibile to do? Is there some way to change language/localization?
@@videogamerka0009 I just followed lots of tiktokers in my target language, and only those, and after a while it fed me only content in that language.
@videogamerka0009 I don't have TikTok, but the way I do it in UA-cam is :
by searching videos I would like to watch with the language I want.
So if I like heavy metal music I would search for "Le migliori canzoni heavy metal", instead of "Best heavy metal songs", or "documentario su ____" and then I watch some videos that are in italian and save them in a folder like "italian videos".
UA-cam just learns that you search, view and want to keep videos in Italian so it starts to offer you videos in that language really soon, maybe the next day...
I hope this approach also works in Tiktok!
@@videogamerka0009just create a new account and follow some Italian creators. Then quickly scroll past any non-Italian video.
Skill-building grammar is like medicine. You take a little bit when you have a specific problem, to cure that problem.
But medicine is not food! Massive amounts of input is the food.
That's a phenomenal analogy!
Well said!
Love this analogy!
I first read that from Benny Lewis but I'm not sure if he was the original writer of it... But he was a SESAL guy (speak early speak a lot) and the problem with that is it hits a wall after about A2.
German I think skill building helps early on. Knowing the e, st, t and en verb endings in German is so hopefully.
I think you're right about Evan, I didn't feel your video was targeted at him or whatever, I think he took it too personally when it wasn't meant to be a personal attack on him.
Great video!
Evan is a prime example of how you will speak a foreign language if the majority of your learning is 'conscious', as is the case with Duolingo. He's essentially speaking English and just subbing in German vocabulary as if all languages share a core framework. It sounds less and less natural the further removed the language is from your native one. Intonation, rhythm and natural phrasing can only be acquired from mass input.
I first got into duolingo when it was at its best. Stopped after the first update, as I didn't like the direction & having looked back a handful of times, I don't regret abandoning it.
Absolutely.
It was never GREAT, but it was once ok. I mean, I don't think I was an idiot for using it for the first year or two of Swedish.
But that was paradise compared to what it is now.
Me too, that update is still the worst thing that ever happened to that app. I'm glad I stopped using it, even if I have a 500 days streak.
Duolingo continually habituates you to be uncomfortable when you don’t know something. You don’t know a word, you get the whole exercise wrong, too many wrong and you can’t learn any more 😂
And then they make it too easy when you get it right. The worst of both worlds.
Yoooo-great point! “I’ve never heard of anyone leaving the comprehensible input camp” (me paraphrasing you). That’s legit. Well done. Damn-I’m kinda floored because it’s so obvious but I never noticed it myself.
One of my favourite comments was something like "Duolinguo can make you fluent, you just have to supplement it with a good book and online lessons". But... but... but... if that is the case, then what is making you fluent is the textbook and the lessons, not Duolinguo.
Yeah I may or may not have a rant video about that in the works. 😂
@@daysandwordsI think of it as the stone soup justification
@@87advilI had to look that up. Great analogy!
No doubt if I were to point it out to *cough* SOME Duolingo fanboys, they would say "WELL HOW ARE YOU GONNA MAKE SOUP WITHOUT A STONE!?"
The point is that for some people the things you learn in duolingo become like anchor points. I had learned english since elementary school but I was never particularly good at it. During my teen years I started watching hour long lets plays, chatting with online friends, and consuming exclusively english media. That was when my english radically improved. So I agree fundamentally that if you want to become fluent in a given language you have to deep dive into it. The problem is just the barrier of entry. Had I not known basic english from years of school those lets plays and other things would have done nothing for me. How would one even quantify this. Duolingo might only teach me 5% of a given language if I do it regularly but that 5% enables me to grasp onto words, recognize phrases and makes it way easier to understand sentences. I wouldn't say my formal english education was useless because it was slow and didn't teach me much since that gave me the tools to understand the media I consumed. It's like the tutorial in a videogame. You won't get good from the tutorial, but if you never even learn the basics its gonna be much harder to get a grip when everything starts. Imagine playing Tekken and your very first introduction is competitive online mode. Maybe I'm missing something, I'd be curious to hear how you are able to start with 0 knowledge and suddenly begin to know stuff from consuming media. Sorry for the long ass comment
@@-jg9pi The way I see it is that Duolingo works just as well as any vocabulary builder app. It's way too repetitive, but you have to remember that most users spend less than 15 minutes on it a day so the constant reinforcement is more useful. It is also more structured than those vocabulary apps although there are Anki Decks that come with sample sentences (The problem with Anki is that there is a learning curve especially if you want to use it on your phone). Another positive for Duolingo is the ability to read and listen at the same time. However, that's more of a disadvantage when you are trying to immerse yourself in a language if you rely more on reading than listening.
There are serious negatives to Duolingo for the dedicated language learner. Too much repetition, not enough accents, speech recognition is bad, not enough help with sentence construction, etc. However, the thing that blows my mind is for an app that integrates AI, it's still surprising that in 2024 there is still so much focus on translation and nothing at all with prompts. You'd think that by now, they could not only have more accurate speech recognition but should be able to simulate open ended conversations.
$30 a month!? That's mental, literally paying for Netflix, HBO or Prime (or even UA-cam) is more worthy than that to learn a language.
I'd wouldn't say it's more worthy than learning another language, after all it's a good skill to have. But 30$ a month for an app of questionable quality really does sound like a waste of money.
@@Cat_With_A_LampThis person is saying that Netflix/HBO etc is more effective AT LANGUAGE LEARNING... which I agree with.
You can absolutely learn languages with a content streaming service.
@@daysandwords Oh, I guess I need to get some sleep :) On that I completely agree, as I did it in a very similar way.
Not going to lie I had Netflix only to learn Spanish and Italki to talk to the professors. learn base grammar, useful situations, and culture. I wasn't always consistent but I learned quickly within 3months. A lot of these apps like Duolingo seem really robotic to me.
Free version of Duolingo is working for me.
I think a huge problem with assessing what method works is false attribution - people learn a language, but they themselves don't fully understand how they do it. So they focus on what was most difficult or vivid in their minds. So they decide that it was all the hours studying hard, or playing with an app, or hours of Anki, but they don't attribute it to the 'easier' stuff, like watching movies, etc. I've a friend who spends a lot of time using duo lingo, but she herself learned English by spending hours watching US soap operas in her teens. I've no idea why she doesn't see that she could do the same thing for her Spanish studies.
Exactly, I learned English because I was a fan of mangas but didn't want to spend any money on it. And the mangas uploaded illegally were either on spanish or english so I kind of had to learn.
Wow, that Surfshark ad was like slipping into a fever dream!
I love books and reading and it took me a stupidly long time to realize I could literally use my love of reading to help me acquire my target language. I really wish immersion (besides just moving to the country) was talked about more outside of the internet
Teachers are the culprits
Um, the stuffed animals in the ad read were my favorite part.
I was a little bit of a defender years ago. I did think it provided an excellent start for several languages. Keeping with it was a bad idea, but I found that the earlier stages worked well with the fast paced clicking. Nowadays though, it seems awful for anything. The biggest advantage I think it had, it's fast pace, is now totally gone. It's so long winded and takes so long to get through very simple concepts.
If you're watching this in your native language, use the auto-translate function for subtitles to get some practice in your target language while you're at it.
Surfshark ad was the bomb. You made us watch and not skip it, fantastic job. Wish all ads could be so entertaining and deliver a surprise or chuckle 😅
Ikr.
Props for having an ad spot that was actually entertaining enough not to skip through lol
Evan sounded to me exactly like an A2 student of German sounds. I've known enough of them, and he was very typical.
When you get to A2, you feel as if you have made a breakthrough.
And you have! It is not surprising he was quite proud of his achievement.
Same for B2. It is a breakthrough. It is the B1 level where you feel that you are standing still.
The only Evan video I've seen is the one where he said he tried to learn German on Duolingo via Spanish, realised he didn't know enough Spanish to go through with it, but still didn't realise learning Spanish through Duolingo was the issue
Does that mean I'm B1 in Korean????? Because man-oh-man the past 5 months have felt like I'm gaining no ground but seeing more and more of what I don't know every day. Objectively, I'm better now than I was 5 months ago. But it feels like I'm going backward and I'll never be able to have reasonable conversations, or even be good at reading. For the two years before now I always felt like I was moving forward.
Hi Lamont from Minneapolis, MN. I hope you are well. I really enjoy your lead in puppets/ Muppets for surf shark ad. Keep up the acerbic wit.
I'm from Brazil and 30 dollars would be about 12% of the minimum wage here
To use Duolingo
That's just crazy
Yeah, although to give Duolingo the benefit of the doubt, it IS region specific. For example it's actually cheaper in Australia. It's not available in Brazil yet but it will be something more in line with the economy there, but still massively overpriced.
@@daysandwords everything here is massively overpriced, it just makes me sad. But I have australian citizenship tho, I'm willing to move to Sydney or Brisbane within the next few years
Honestly you'll probably be wanting to look at the smaller satellite cities unless you are absolutely LOADED with cash.
Newcastle is an absolutely lovely city and about 60% of the price of Sydney. Wollongong (where I live) is also nice although it's basically a suburb of Sydney by this point.
If you don't need a big city job or you can work remotely or something, definitely don't look at the state capitals, unless it's Adelaide/Hobart. The rest are too expensive.
@@daysandwords I would go to Sydney because I have 2 brothers and a father there, so I would already have somewhere to live.. But they are thinking about moving out to Brisbane, specifically because it is cheaper.
I've been talking to a guy from Perth, he's a native so it is great to improve my speaking and get used to the accent at the same time
I did improve A LOT of my speaking in the last few months, just by talking to him. That's an interest thing, my vocabulary grew maybe 20 words or less in 3 months, my grammar still basically the same, but my speaking improved 100%, just by talking to a native. We talk about every kind of subject, I send him like audios with 5 minutes each and he understands everything. I just needed that practice and that confidence you know, to think with myself "I'm actually doing this, I am comprehending and being comprehended in english"
I have found the vast majority of courses on Duolingo to be free.
This is one of your best!
I disagree but I'm glad you like it. 😂
Someone from Norway decided to argue with me once about Duolingo. I had suggested to a third party that they should stop using Duolingo after 90 days in favor of something else, and said my 1.000 days on Duolingo were mostly wasted. The Norwegian butted in claiming that them learning Spanish was because of Duolingo. They then said that they had been using Duolingo for 7 years and could finally understand things in conversations, while living in Spain that entire time.
When I said I don't really care if they want to use Duolingo, but that might not be the whole truth, they called me a "mjølkass uten livserfaring" and that I had no idea what I was talking about. When I pointed out that them saying this all på norsk to me might not be proving their point ... they did not like that very much.
Yeah, I've also kind of had that, except the Swedes I've spoken to have have generally, after a few lines back and forth said something like "Ja men, jag ska inte berätta för DIG hur man lär sig språk..."
To me, it's weird that the good ESL speaking countries (Netherlands, Scandinavia etc.) ever have ANY faith in Duolingo when they should know how it is they speak English themselves.
@@daysandwords most of the people I've talked to hear what I did and then take it seriously, but it's pretty clear they're not going to get 4 hours of immersion a day for years.
I don't know what it is about Duolingo, but its apologists can be rabid. I think some of it might be similar to people who get mad at video game reviews. They have invested a lot in Duolingo, time and money, and want critics to validate their investment. When critics don't do that, anger is a normal response.
The esl people from Germanic speaking countries I think forget they got 10+ years of education, and that learning English from Swedish is very different than say learning Finnish or Sámi from English.
@@daysandwordsSometimes it's even worse: I know more than one kid who learned English by themselves watching UA-cam and whatnot, to near-native pronunciation and perfect grammar at age 10 or so (probably true for all kids nowadays). Then they want to learn another language, and go to Duolingo? #tilt (And then give up after a while when they realize they don't actually understand anything of this new language.)
@DanielDrahneborg - I don't know why but that comment was filtered, so if you didn't see it after you entered it, that's why.
@@daysandwordssometimes when I write replies to a comment on my phone, they behave weirdly. Right now it says there are 3 replies to my comment, but when I expand it I see 6, and 3 are duplicates. My first reply was seemingly filtered, but I can see it by going to notifications where you liked it.
Lamont, am I doing the reading thing right? I have a book (that I like), I have it in English and in Spanish. I read a chapter in English and then read and listen to the same chapter in Spanish (so I can be confident that I pretty much know what I'm reading and listening to) daily. Rinse and repeat for chapter, after chapter, after chapter. I'm also doing lessons and flash cards in Spanish Dict to build vocabulary. I don't have access to any streaming services to watch movies and so far have found nothing of interest on UA-cam. Is what I'm currently doing enough, or do I need to do more?
I had French and Spanish classes at school and havent really touched either after that. I'm currently studying for my A-levels (a decade after my GCSEs). While I still understand a lot, speaking/writing has been a bit of a struggle. Due to time constraints (I have half a year left to get to B2 in Spanish and C1 in French, in addition to other subjects) and the way my language skills are being tested (lots of writing and grammar), I can't just focus on immersion.
Despite knowing that Duo doesn't work, I finally gave in a couple months ago and downloaded it because I figured "it'll help me stay consistent" (it didn't). It did help me find my footing in actually using the languages again, so I guess that's a plus. But really, there's no need to (attempt to) "stay consistent" at this point - I'm far from comfortable in either language but I'm able to express myself again. Duo isn't going to get me any further than that.
Seriously thank you. I feel like I'm crazy for being the only one around me that believes that Duolingo isn't worth anyone's time. I really really try to have my friends quit duolingo but it's an addiction for them.
I half feel like forcefeeding myself Dreaming Spanish to shut the Duolingo stans up.
The comment section was helpful in the Japanese course because Japanese is a bit odd, and there's a lot of etiquette mixed in that people would mention, like which words are appropriate in different situations.
People actually gave a lot of useful information in those comments, and there were also comments that were just people joking around. It was a fun comment section.
I wouldn't always read the comments, but if something seemed odd in one of the questions, there always seemed to be an explanation there.
It was nice to have that interactive section if you wanted to use it, and a bit of a break if you were getting bored answering questions.
I love your videos so much. Even the Surf Shark promo and i can't stand adds😂
Brilliant Surfshark bit. So entertaining that I didn’t skip ahead.
Hey man, you do have some great points. I started learning Mandarin Chinese and Dutch using Duolingo. I agree that it’s the additional efforts which really helps. For example, it was not until I discovered Yoyo Chinese with a native speaking teacher that my “learning” really started to take off. I felt like I’m cracking the code. Also I agree about the incomprehensible input, like listening to podcasts in Mandarin. At first I didn’t understand a word. Firstly the speakers were talking a mile a minute, but as I kept at it, I started to notice a rhythm, patterns and began to understand some words. So I think it’s a mixture of learning methods.
Thanks for your video! 🤗
Yoyo Chinese always seemed like one of the more legit things out there to me. I was considering learning it like 5 years ago when I was thinking of joining the Australian military.
I remember when I knew absolutely nothing about language learning, I just assumed Duolingo must be really good. Later I realized it was garbage. Lots of people are never exposed to the idea of comprehensible input, especially given how language classes are taught in school.
Good point that no one goes from immersion to the other methods. So true!!
I'm already a believer of mass immersion, but the way you explain it is so clear and simple. I'm definitely stealing your 3 schools of language learning to explain the hobby to curious people!
Omg i love your surfshark ad. And as always, hyped for a new video. SAMI is amazing, love it.
Nice vid, I like the longer content
Immersion is definitely the way to go. When I was learning Polish, I actually spent the time looking at tables and learned all 7 cases. Works well if you want to know why form a is used instead of form b, but that's about it. 99% of the grammar you're using is habitual, meaning you're just saying what "sounds right". I'd like to see someone try to speak Polish at a normal speed while analysing the grammar in their head while speaking. It's impossible.
I agree.
I feel like grammar study is useful when you either study a grammar point and then drill it with sentences - eg. Refold's Korean v2 deck is structured that way. You get a card that teaches you the grammar point and then just get cards that use the new grammar where the grammar isn't the card's target word.
The other instance is when something catches your eye during immersion and you check it out from a resource. That tends to stick better.
Just drilling without that sort of context is most likely a waste of time.
I don't know how anyone makes it past the tedium of Duolingo to do it long enough to say whether it IS effective.
Not to mention, they've never released any new courses that they've been promising for the last 5 years which only Finnish, Latin, Scots Gaelic, Haitian Creole and Zulu, while Xhosa, Tagalog, Bengali, Thai, Punjabi, Urdu, Maori and others are only offered as English courses to those who speak those languages while going the other way around, those courses have been in the back burner along with the incubator.
It always surprises me how quick some of the best non-native English speakers resort to Duolingo or skill building approaches. I knew someone with almost perfect English who sounded exactly native in accent. They had learned English through immersion growing up. But when it came to a new language they emphasized the grammar again. I guess it is because English was always a part of their life and grew up with it somewhat. We all learned our native languages unconsciously and when it comes to learn a new one we just do what the majority says to learn through skill building and apps like Duolingo. I remember my college Spanish teacher a capable woman from China in Spanish who likely learned from different means told me to use Duolingo for Chinese.
Exactly.
I remember speaking to some germans & their english was very good ( eventhough they had a bit of an accent ), i asked them how they learnt english & they said "school".
In my head I was thinking :no you didn't, you most likely had tons of immersion from various sources you just think it's school ie traditional learning.
I think people think they learn languages from school especially ppl from European countries that learn English & become good in it. Because it happens subconsciously they don't consider those english video games they played or english tik tok or english youtube videos etc.
Because I've also seen several comments on those UA-cam videos that explain immersion learning, people now realising that their good english wasn't from school & they remember doing A,B,C online,ytb,etc in english.
@@k.5425 Definitely I encountered the same meeting friends from Indonesia many of them had decent English. They always said school taught them but as you said it was most likely just repeated exposure to English where they picked up the bulk of their language skills.
Im using busuu to get started, because I am currently in Brazil, not speaking Portuguese and need some basic phrases to just function. That being said, im trying to spend way more time in immersion, and I'm basically speedrunning busuu so I can get those basic phrases and move into full immersion.
The ad read was very funny and well done
I always try to make the ad read as entertaining as possible, so I appreciate the comment.
My new video comes out in about 7 hours and has another funny ad read. 😉
I hate that Duolingo is most people’s default idea of effective language learning
What are your thoughts (if any) on the Assimil book series? Seeing as they incorporate comprehensive input from the start
Too dry for my liking. Anyone with that much focus can surely use almost anything and it will work.
You are always so reasonable, I like it
Does Duolingo even work on modern devices? I have a Pixel 7. It's a modern Android device, and the app doesn't even run (it opens and tries to do some stuff but gets stuck).
Bahahaha, I don't know.
It worked fine on my last phone, I haven't tried it on my current one but it's not new generation anyway so I don't know.
I have a Pixel 7 and Duo works for me.
Yes, it is the biggest language learning app in the world.
I will do a lesson for a quick dopamine hit. Basically, I accomplish some thing really easy, and that motivates me to start studying for real. Saying that, I’m probably only spending about five minutes on the app a day and fully acknowledge that it’s may be a drop in my language, learning bucket.
I would agree that SAMI is the best, most assured way to learn a language. The reason I attempt to use skills-based learning in conjunction with SAMI is the time requirement in mass immersion. It is convenient to believe I can make incremental progress with Busuu and keeping the experience fun has its own value. I don't really like watching tv shows or listening to podcasts much so it's definitely out of my way to immerse myself in these ways.
I've began converting to more content as my focus. I mainly use Busuu for the well-built SRS flashcards for my Russian study but I already use Anki for my Spanish study, which I'm much further in. I plan to phase out Busuu as I finish through the lessons since for all its faults, Busuu still does combine accent practice / writing / reading / auditory skills. If I were to dedicate more time to language learning like Lamont does, SAMI would be my best best to gain a high level of proficiency in a reasonable timeline. I guess I'm converted haha
That's still weird - it took me years of Swedish classes (taught in Swedish) to learn Swedish, and I'm way weaker than Lamont for twice the life-years invested. Like, sure, it works, the language has stuck with me through a decade of disuse, but being remotely good at Swedish took 4-5 years of having a Swedish class or two a week, which for sure is way more investment than some dabbling with Busuu is ever going to be. Do they think they'll maintain a Busuu habit for half a decade?
7:30 "Can seem ineffective in the initial stages"
I wouldn't even say that, unless you mean something like the first 3 weeks.
After getting the basics down and starting immersion, that initial rapid progress is like a drug. It's not until intermediate that it starts to feel like progress is really slow, but you also mention: "Difficult to track progress"
And on that I definitely agree. I prefer to track hours read/listened but it doesn't really give you a good sense of how much you've improved in the language.
Nah. The early stages are an awful time and I've had trouble sticking with immersion. I'm only just now getting anything out of it after a year.
It depends on the language and the learner. If you're not used to immersion, then understanding even 60% feels like you can't breathe, which obviously doesn't feel like progress.
On Duolingo or Busuu or something like that, you can score 100% and feel like you're making progress. The experienced immersion learner knows that understanding 60% is actually very good progress.
Ironically, I think skill building is really only useful for people who are already pretty advanced in a language. In schools, people take classes in the grammar and the academic usage of their native language. For someone who wants to catch up to a highly educated native speaker when it comes to in depth mechanical knowledge of how the language works, that's when diving into grammar and style is most helpful. Before that, spending time memorizing a grammar book is just a way to procrastinate actually being exposed to the language.
At the end of the day, people are just hesitant to admit they are scared of the ambiguity of trying to comprehend another language. Reading about the grammar rules of another language or just sitting in a language class is way easier to do and gives the illusion of progress. When they go to actually use the language, they don't have any intuitive sense of what sounds natural as they've barely heard any real use of the language outside of an app or classroom example sentences.
It's estimated it takes about 540 hours to reach B2 in Spanish, but an average intro Spanish class might have 14 hours of Spanish actually being spoken or read during an entire semester. That's barely a fifth to get to the 80 hours needed for A1 the lowest level. It's no wonder that people who take these classes come out feeling like they've barely learned anything. 14 hours of language exposure in 4 months is terribly inefficient progress. Most people are likely for forget 90% of what they learned as soon as they finish the class anyway.
Then there're any language learning apps that just drag on forever. They'll just drill the same words over and over and use these horrible AI generated sentences. The apps are designed to keep people using them forever. They do just enough to make people think they are learning something, but drag out the process so they stay subscribed or watch ads for years. They have no reason to teach people how to actually learn a language because then nobody would use their dumb app.
Just watching UA-cam in the target language and making sentence cards for Anki would be a 10x better use of their time than all of these commercial language learning products combined.
"people are just hesitant to admit they are scared of the ambiguity of trying to comprehend another language. Reading about the grammar rules of another language or just sitting in a language class is way easier to do and gives the illusion of progress."
YES.
Even though Duolingo Arabic is garbage, I found it a pretty useful tool to speedrun the alphabet and learn how to read when I started learning 4 years ago.
Yeah foreign alphabets are a better use of it but I'm pretty sure they've throttled the speed running of those as well?
Not sure.
@@daysandwordsyup its clear enshittification, I did arabic on duolingo on and of about 2-1 years ago and after I learned like half the alphabet it ground to a halt and even doing the alphabet exercises (which are great for what they are) it only served me the letters I already knew, so basically I learned all the letters with direct latin equivalents (except q f) and then the difficult ones I had to watch yt videos (and I still havent learned very well because just hearing the alphabet listed isnt as effective as the exercises). If I was serious about learning it I would probably find a quizlet set with audio and that should give about the same value without all the headaches of ads and being locked behind artificial progression systems.
Haven't looked at it in years so I would also have to check it out again before recommending to anyone...
Duolingo is fine to start with or goof around with. I played a mobile game with someone from Norway and did the first 3 or 4 units just so I could say such interesting things as "my dog has cheese" it was just for fun. But I was able to watch a couple movies with subtitles, so it's not as horrible as some want it to be.
Ok so i have a massive goal to learn like 7 languages. French, Spanish, German, Dutch, Mandarin, Hebrew, Italian and Swedish, plus Japanese and Korean. So 10 basically and I've dabbled in all. I have used Duolingo for most of them but ironically, what i remember is what i watched or listened in shows.
I'm a culinary student currently on an internship at a 5 star hotel. Been there now for 7 weeks at one particular restaurant and now I'm basically able to hold my own at a few stations. Tonight for example I was transferred to a new kitchen today and had no time to learn the menu. All asain cuisine, all technical, with a lot of different elements to add to each dish and 70 hungry guests. I was confused and fumbled alot and I asked for a lot of help but by the end of the service, I for the most part, knew exactly what i was supposed to do. I had to get burned mess up and shouted at but when I asked the supervisor how i did, she said i did very good! Mind you at one point i was so lost and working of 6 checks at the same time.
Simply to say, immersion works fam☠️ The main restaurant i usually worked in was in they feelings cause i got sent away but i digress😂
Please do a review of pimsleur! Do you have any immediate thoughts on it?
I was using DL to practice writing hanzi... and then I just downloaded a hanzi writing dictionary. Now I can write onto that and look up words from my novel I am reading instead. I did have to fix the cracks in my phone screen to use the new dictionary, where as DL estimated if I did the strokes correctly. I was literally just barely swiping onto DL and it would guess that I did the stroke right. I have to write out the strokes for the dictionary to find the word. So... yeah, obviously reading my novels are more important that trying to pay for this app... I spent the monthly money for DL on buying books I want to read before someone tries to translate them.
this is a awesome method, i should use this. because chinese is so hard because you can't just type chinese letters into google translate, you have to somehow draw it
@Justinhulk I use Pleco a lot. They have a writing option. Then you can pick from the suggested. Click on them and they give a translation and pronunciation.
The way I think of it is, no matter what method you use to start with you need a lot of input/immersion to be fluent. Why? To learn how a native phrases things, what they say in each scenario, their intonation, their mannerisms and even their culture. Even if you start using a textbook or Duolingo you will need input eventually, so why delay it? You could memorize thousands of grammar structures and words before reading or watching anything, or you can start off watching and reading things and learn what is relevant to you immediately and enjoy the process much more. I have more fun watching movies and game let's plays in Korean than I ever did matching word bubbles by guess to make irrelevant sentences...
Honestly, I feel like relevance is one of the biggest keys to language learning. When you see a new word, you associate it with the rest of the sentence it is in and the context in which it was said (or written). Duolingo has none of that and it delays doing the core loop of language learning: spending time with the language.
Personally, I find immersion dreadful. It's undeniably effective, but I hate watching stuff I don't understand. For me, in order to even start immersing, I have to have a basis in the language or I will get frustrated and quite. So for me personally, jumping right into immersion, isn't skipping straight to the fun part, it's the opposite.
I am only asking
Do you view it differently for someone who using Duolingo as a refresher and then motivated by streaks.
Compare to a learn starting from zero.
I mean is there room for nuance on Duolingo and diverse goals a reason people use the app?
Also I would be interested if you have experience tall poppy syndrome while you learn Swedish and Spanish? Thanks
I never really understand Duolingo as a refresher because if you already know ANY of the language, then there are much better options to refresh than Duolingo.
Tall poppy... Can you explain what you mean by that because I know what tall poppy syndrome is but I can't really imagine that it's what you mean.
@@daysandwords see like in January 2020 before covid came to USA I started Duolingo.
I mean I was getting over some hard times. I would always say that I am going to learn something new and stick with it.
I found Duolingo but I was also doing several other things for Spanish. I followed your channel as well way back then haha and then the pandemic happens I was locked down but I still had the streak.
So that streak was enough of a motivator to help me stick with it and supplement my refresh.
But I was almost at a 1,000 day streak and I stopped for a while. But, I am just sharing how it was.
Tall poppy I mean maybe you answer before but just overall on your language journey did you get put down or discouraged by coworkers or anyone close to you?
@@daysandwords I just see that everyone has there own reasons to come to language learning apps. And for me I won’t renew my subscription to duo this year.
Tall poppy I just mean if you experience it during your language learning journey from coworkers or friends etc.
I’ve been following you since 2020 so I am a fan all the best.
Duolingo works on all the days that don't end in Y.
For some reason I balked at this, thinking that there were some exceptions. I think it's because of some languages where the pattern isn't consistent, e.g. German "Mittwoch" (midweek, Wednesday).
@@daysandwordsOr French, where all days end in i, and then comes dimanche.
When I was learning French, I would often forget the word "dimanche", which I would then feel silly about because literally 13 years before even wanting to learn French, I fell in love with "Un long dimance de fiançaille", known in English as "A Very Long Engagement".
@@daysandwordshaha my mind did the exact same thing as yours and jumped straight to Mittwoch
sick beat at the start
Yeah I switched to a different stock music service and I've been impressed by the offerings so far.
On duo teaching the wrong thing, I’ve reached the b2 level and I’m finding obvious mistakes. I’m comparing my translations with other sources to check them.
I usually skip ads.
Didn't skip this one, it was just so interesting that I just kept watching lol.
Please do a video on all the random crazy comments you’ve had over the years! I need this!!! 🤣
I think Duolingo can be an effective tool for the classes in school, as what duo is teaching you is similar to a school introductory course. That being said, while it can work to get good grades, it’s terrible for ACTUALLY learning a language. And unfortunately the school classes is just not the way to go and thus Duo isn’t either.
cool video mate
What impresses me most is that there seems to be enough German content on Duolingo to entertain you for 3000 days?!? Even if it's just the endgame/level to keep your skills fresh, doesn't Evan have that anyway on a daily basis living in Germany?
Imo this whole duolingo defending is just a giant sunken cost fallacy.
I think it’s fine for a quick practice everyday, but for me it’s a supplement to 4-5 other resources including online language school.
Another viewer called this the "Stone Soup Argument".
If you put a big stone in a soup, but then fill it with real food ingredients that actually taste good, and then remove the stone... then did the stone ever do anything at all?
@@daysandwords no clue what that means. Sorry. I agree with you about the total immersion. But the app is free and gives me some extra practice.
I think it's just a stone in your soup. It gets in the way of real practice.
I don’t disagree with anything that you said about Duolingo, but I have to disagree with the idea that rules are and explanations are unnecessary.
I think this really comes down to what your native language is and what the languages you learn and how fluent you already are. As a German I find it very helpful because the majority of our German literature courses in school are focused on our own grammar rules and exploring them. Learning the grammar first by heart is a good strategy for picking out overlapping patterns and it gives me the ability to correct myself which is invaluable when learning a language without any native speaker to help out. As an example I would have never ever found out that Ukrainian differentiates between soft and hard letters in a way German (for us soft and hard letters are equivalent to the idea behind the Kiki-Bouba, for Ukrainians it is a palatalization after I sounds) doesn’t because I would have never looked out for it. Saying Тітка in front of a Ukrainian without knowing this uhm could be funny.
If you know enough languages and what to look out for this might become unimportant but learning your fifth language is very different from learning your second.
I didn't say rules and explanations are unnecessary. I think you're missing some context there.
Their stocks went up 17% recently
Again? Because the day that they announced their partnership with OpenAI I think the stock rose by almost 100% (so it doubled).
Trump must have gotten a kick back and said good things about the app to his MAGA supporters.
32:00 Great point about Evan. Dualingo may be counter productive to Language learning and actually hinder other forms of learning.
Too bad Evan and about 20,000 other people completely missed that.
They improved some things (kanji drawing for Japanese), but grammar instructions became worse for many courses when they turned from tree to path, and the removal of sentence discussion forum is really annoying. It was one of the most useful features to me, as usually some others would have the same questions as me. Maybe it depends on the type of questions you have.
So for me... it got worse. Luckily MAX isn't available here, so I'm not even tempted. So overpriced, just the integration into the app would be nice.
There were a lot of helpful people in those comment sections. I can't believe that they just deleted all those helpful comments.
@@Primalxbeast From what I've heard those forums were only half implemented when they stopped development, so that iOS users would still see bad comments hidden by the (volunteer) forum moderators. And then the code was too outdated to fix it. So... Kind of with a history. Feels like a few things have worsened since they went public (not sure that's the reason, but feels like they are connected).
What about learning basic grammar at the beginning and then jumping to mass immersion?
I’m guessing start with drop or two of grammar then SAMI and so on and so on…
Im interested in seeing your review of busuu! I have it and speakly right now for french
Speakly is so good! J'adore!
You are right! I got a lifetime membership on speakly and heard about it from you
For me, I find pure immersion pretty difficult, but I’d say it depends a bit on the language. An English speaker learning a Germanic or Romance language would quickly learn to recognize a lot of cognates and that would make it much easier to understand even in the early stages. More distant languages are much harder to get started in. Easy immersion videos like Dreaming Spanish are great, but you usually can’t find enough of them outside of the most popular languages. So for me, a combination of immersion and some kind of textbook or app-based course is usually the best. Without some kind of explicit instruction, I can’t just jump into a movie or series for native speakers and get anything out of it. No matter how hard I try, my brain just tunes it out. Of course, proponents of the immersion method tell you to use comprehensible input, but it doesn’t always exist.
Learning Japanese and I maintain that immersion alone in such a distant language is just as useless as Duolingo. Especially if you subscribe to the "no native subtitles" school of thought.
In an ideal world good CI would exist for every language in copious amounts so that everyone can have access to it, but that’s not possible. The issue with pure CI is that it doesn’t align with everyone’s goals, most people are not patient enough (not an indictment not everyone wants to dedicate their life to this) and just want to progress quickly and feel like they’re active in the process of acquisition even though all the intuition is built without your conscious input. CI didn’t exist in my TL (Polish) until recently, so I just had to watch some cartoons and work my way up since I hit a hard wall with doing traditional study. It was pretty painful for a month or so but once I got in the habit of it, it kept getting easier and was really rewarding to see progress in the language and also get to enjoy using the language for something rather than just treating it like a school subject.
@@vanessathomas9641I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say it’s useless, it just would take a lot longer than most people would care to commit to.
@@skamiikaze I find that if you don’t have really basic CI, I mean like the channels where they start from zero, then it’s much more useful to spend a few weeks learning some basics, and then you can start watching something like Peppa Pig and you will catch on pretty quickly. I did an experiment with that in Croatian once and I was able to understand Peppa Pig surprisingly quickly. The same with Turkish, which is much more distant. But with Kurdish I really struggled. There have been more and more shows appearing on UA-cam in Kurdish (Kurmanji) recently, but it’s still very limited what you can find at a beginner level. And almost nothing has Kurdish subtitles or translated subtitles. There aren’t a lot of good learning materials either. And once when I tried to learn Setswana, it was even worse.
@@BrunUgle I agree with that, the smaller and or less supported your language is you just have to take what you can get even if it’s not the most ideal
I tried speedrunning the Czech course on Duolingo and got so many things wrong despite being a native speaker. The whole thing rubbed me the wrong way and while I don't remember any flat out mistakes, I don't think it's a good way to learn Czech. Same goes for Spanish, which I'm by no means fluent in, but even at my intermediate level, I felt like something was off about the course. But that may just be me.
It's not just you. There are lots of things off about it.
I remember this one discussion in the German course (I did German on it for about 6 days), where the direct translation of the German was something that couldn't actually be said in English, e.g. "I am doing it yesterday." and there were SO many comments in the sentence discussion about it, but it remained that way for 7 years before they just removed sentence discussions entirely.
People defend DL because they invested effort into it.
The reason it does "work" is because it gets them coming back. What i personally like is its sequential. Often i find myself paralyzed wondering which video to watch, what kind, what to read, what level, which online course to try. I often spend more time trying to decide what to do, than doing it. DL offers you bite size chunks in a sequence. You can jump into an exorcise where you left off.
If somebody made an immersion version of that puts clips in order for you to watch and rewatch, read and interact with so i wouldnt have choice paralysis, i'd love that.
Also, i think DL is making moves to be more immersive. They talked about moving into courses with no translated language (maybe in the upper levels?) so i think they are finding out what works, but will it be implemented and improved?
I do credit DL for getting me to a certain point like so many others but i am now seeing it slow me down. Should i grind it out so i complete it for satisfaction or break the streak?
ahh, this video is cathartic 😌
I used to use Duolingo for a long time, but after watching your videos i stopped but learning German and Korean became more sporadic and less frequent since I couldn't find any substitutes to keep me learning except for some UA-cam videos.
I'm moving from the mass immersion camp to the speak [late] speak often camp because I personally need to speak more to get my brain to pull out the language that's in my head faster, but yeah I just had a lecture with Professor Rob Waring (one of the world's most prolific TESOL researchers) and he told everyone in class "if you don't push your students towards getting mass input you should feel guilty" lmao. His reasoning for mass input is precisely the forgetting curve. People will start to forget what they learn in a lesson (and Duolingo is just a series of lessons) within an hour after the lesson is finished.
"I'm moving from the mass immersion camp to the speak [late] speak often camp"
But the "speak late" camp is just a variant of mass immersion and pretty much the main variant of it at that.
You agree with everything that 95% of immersion camp learners are saying: Mass immersion is THE must have thing. After that, speak a lot and refine your speaking.
Matt vs Japan agrees with that, I agree with that, Kaufmann and Luca Lampariello agree with that.
You say you're moving to a different camp but you haven't moved, you've just gone to the next phase of the same camp.
The SESAL (Speak Early Speak a Lot) camp play down the role of immersion because you're not producing, and in their minds, you're therefore not learning.
@@daysandwords I agree with that I was mostly being tongue-in-cheek. I had hoped the rest of my comment would have made that clear 😅.
Oh right sorry! 😂
Yeah... I mean the rest of your comment would have made it clear except that I do get actual comments like this quite often. I get a lot about all the 50 million other things that people do to become fluent, and then they celebrate Duolingo as though it were the key ingredient. They sound like jokes but I know for sure that most of them aren't.
@@daysandwords yeah no I'm sure your comments are filled with BS (as you elaborated on in the video) but I assure you I've been a fan of yours and an AJATTer for a long time I was just trying to make a comment about about how Prof. Waring said a lack of extensive reading (i.e. mass input) causes people to forget everything they learn very quickly and that was probably why you forgot all the stuff you did on Duolingo so quickly. Sorry to bother!
I knew someone who become fluent in Spanish with mass immersion and then felt guilty for not using speakearly, so they decided to use speakearly with their next language. They switched back to mass immersion pretty quickly
Can you actually do a video on weird comments though? I think that'd be pretty cool
I'm very seriously considering a channel that is just for the lower effort videos like that (and SORT of this one... although this one actually took longer than it was meant to).
Also I've got one in the works that is just me replying to ONE comment that I got on the Evan video. It is the most insane defence for Duo that I've ever seen and I passionately smashed out a script. It will probably be much more entertaining than this video haha.
@@daysandwords Looking forward to it
I’d be in favour of that if that means the other videos aren’t complaining about water being wet.
Do you have a video guide of ways to immerse in the language?
@@charityneverfaileth22 Thanks!
23:58 - it's "the blub paradox", in a different context. (Originally written about in terms of programming languages -- you can't tell how much better one language is than the one you know, but you can tell how much worse one is if you know both -- seems applicable to the learning models here, too, and I'd agree that SAMI is definitely a goodness.)
Also, I dunno how I'd failed to think about the perverse incentives thing, but yeah, that's totally the thing, isn't it? I've definitely felt like Duo was annoyingly slow, and now it clicks as to why, so thank you for that. (I feel I should have known that was it, but it somehow didn't click until you said it.) I paid for a year, but I definitely don't plan to renew.
32:40. I know exactly where this guy is coming from. When I first started learning Spanish, I had a Spanish girlfriend. I watched tv and picked up a lot of words talking to her. That being said, the only words I could ever understand were the words I learned on Duolingo. Whenever she’d speak it or I’d hear it on tv, it would reinforce what I’d learned. 90% of my vocabulary knowledge was found strictly from Duo, while my ability to utilize and hear vocab, was learned elsewhere.
Since your last video on Duolingo, I've been watching more TV shows in Spanish. Even with like 20 minutes a day, it's fun and engaging and I've never felt like I've had more of a grasp on the language so thank you for that lol
Millions of Europeans speak fluent English because they've casually consumed English content on the internet.
This is all that really needs to be said. The evidence is out there and I pity those that are still incapable of drawing the right conclusions from this.
My favorite thing is when people who can only speak English claim that this won’t work when they haven’t even tried to and millions of people’s experiences prove that mass immersion works
Yeah but they're foreigners who speak English weird so their opinions don't matter /s
@@alpacawithouthat987Who cares? It won't make a difference in anyone's life whether they learn a language or not, most people in North America don't have the time and should just keep a quick audio/AI voice translator. However, there is basically nobody in my country who can't speak English.
Language learning is a big phag hobby by the way. Earning money, being healthy, spiritual and family pursuits are all much better investments.
Can you give me a heads up next time you're going to mention Evan so I can invest in Kleenex stocks before the upload? Thanks.
Haha, I'm not sure of the implication here.
Is the idea that Evan will have a cry over it? Or am I having a cry?
I don't get it haha.
@@daysandwords I realise now it could be read the other way. I do mean Evan, he was a bit over the top in his response to the video you made calling it an attack and such.
I’m a recovering Duoholic. I do think the immersion method you suggest would be more effective, but I have a bit of trouble sticking with it. Duolingo is better at maintaining my interest and it does in fact provide input. I used the Spanish course and it had a fair amount of input. I agree that it’s too slow and they have lots of shady practices which is why I stopped, but soon after I stopped Duolingo I mostly stopped learning Spanish
I would just sign up for Dreaming Spanish and set a goal of 15 minutes a day. DS has the streak and everything too.
Exactly. Is it better to use a subpar method to practice language or do nothing at all? Duolingo is worse than other methods, but it’s obviously more effective than doing nothing.
@@daysandwords they have an app?
@@willdegra317 *marginally more effective than doing nothing.
No but their website is responsive, meaning that it essentially behaves like an app on the browser.
i wouldnt say duolingo dont work, i am learning dutch right now on duolingo, i watch some films and some learning videos. yes is speak german so its kinda easybut duolingo helps me to know the basics, so i wouldnt say duolingo is useless
It's great for 5 minutes during spare moments. Like waiting for food at a fast food place.
That's fair. But even for that, in 2017-2018 it was so much better. These days it's 50% watching their stupid animations.
Frankly? Cultivate a target language Twitter feed. Much more powerful.
@@daysandwordsYou can turn the animations off in the settings.
Duolingo is the homeopathy of language learning.
I think Duolingo has its time and place. It's a good place to start at when you're a complete beginner as it kinda softly introduces the writing system, the phonetics, some common words, a little bit of grammar, but that's as far as I'd dare say it goes. I used it a bit to get into Korean at the start and it did help with just getting an idea of what the language was about, but it quickly grew to a stop as Duolingo really encourages the "traditional" way of teaching through brute-force repetition and the idea of minor mistakes being completely unacceptable. It works for a start, but you need to find different sources when you want to go from knowing individual words to building more complex sentences with multiple grammar points. It's not bad, but it's far from efficient enough to be considered good in my opinion.
I like the yes it works, I also did: all the other activities that make you learn a language.
Personally, I think that no app is useful for learning a language anyway.
Speakly actually incorporates immersion, it's very good, but unfortunately a bit haphazard in its support/development.
@@daysandwords Maybe "useful" is not the right term, I already knew Speakly, it seems to be a good app indeed, and nothing is perfect.
But it is not free, and unfortunately, I don't spend enough time on learning.
What I mean is that apps are not "useful" for learning a language, grammar, structures, or vocabulary, but they are interesting for practice, speaking particularly, or being in contact with natives or people who know the language very well and can help us.
I booted up Duolingo two days ago to try to supplement some vocabulary, after quitting for who knows how long, and the "hard exercise" it gave me was to translate I am a banana. I'm sure this will come up a hundred times a day going forward! 🤣
I mean I was considering identifying as a banana from now on.
@@daysandwords Days of Banana and Swedish! 🤣
Do a level test
11:25 to 11:52 🤣. I simply cannot agree enough. I understand the necessity for grammar instruction up to a point. But like you, I agree that it's needless complication. Not even close to being a selling point for me. 🤣
I actually think a good thing with Dualingo compared to Busuu, is that Dualingo, dosen't have as much focus on explaining gramar. Instead you are supposed to learn it by repetition. I found this preferable to Busuus long explanations. I can't remember german grammatical rules. Maybe when writing slowly but not when speaking. But Duo made me go more "this feels correct".
Hmm, I can sort of agree, but to me, that's like saying that you prefer a school bus to a mining truck because the school bus feels "more like a racing car".
If you want a "this feels correct" approach, SAMI, or the app "Speakly" (if they have your language) are more like actual racing cars.
@@daysandwords Yeah, I've become a believer in SAMI, but I sort of lack the discipline to pull it off. I've been thinking about LingQ, since I think being able to read/watch things I actually find interesting would help. That is how I got fluent in English.
I tried readlang and sort of liked it, but it's clunky and obviously not well supported anymore.
But I haven't seen any large degree of online chatter about LingQ being actually good, it mostly seems to be pushed by Kaufman, who obviously has a self interest, so I'm sceptical.
Im in the A2 of Spanish. I plan to atleast finish the course then ill add some other stuff in
The thing is, unfortunately, you'll spend at least 6 more months finishing the course, and you'll still be A2 in Spanish. You could spend the same amount of time getting to B2 if you stop using Duolingo.
Lamont! Doesn’t that blue light bother your eyes‽
It's actually very very dim - the camera brought it out WAY more than expected, I didn't want it to look that blue.
I fall under the skill building and immersion camp. I believe you need to learn the foundational grammar if you want to meaningfully progress in your language studies. On the other hand, you also need immersion to see how the grammar you learn is used in real life and how natives will deviate and the reasons why. Technically, you can immerse 100% in the language without opening a grammar book, but you'd be shooting yourself in the foot. You could spend 10 hours watching videos just to figure out one grammatical rule that is generally followed...or spend 5 minutes reading the explanation of how said grammatical rule works. On the other hand, you also shouldn't obsess with skill building - that would be like missing the forest from the trees. Both immersion and skill building are important.
Perhaps an extreme example of skill building is learning individual kanji and their on-yomi and kunyomi readings...which might be useful if you are taking a test, but virtually a useless skill in real life (nobody is going to stop you on the streets and ask you the on-yomi or kun-yomi reading for a random kanji). Yet people still do this instead of just learning the vocabulary first, and only then learning how said vocabulary can be written with kanji. Knowing kanji is important to the extent that allows you to read native level material with ease as well as to be able to write messages using the right kanji.
I'm sloooowly working on a video that explains how they are different in their core philosophy and one cannot belong to both. You can DO both things but you can't be both things.
It'd be like being a Christian and an Atheist. As an Atheist, you can go to church and take part in communion, but that doesn't make you a Christian.
@@daysandwords It'd make you an excellent blasphemer 😬
I can imagine trying to learn all the kanji readings. I don't even see how that would be useful. You only know what reading to use when you learn the vocabulary.
Where's the Duolingo owl social profile with a snarky comment used to mask the fact that it doesn't work?
Duo has the most useless sentences to memorize for practice: "the elephant sneezes on top of the chimney". As a user since 2019, it's now Way worse. First, what happened to the dialogs? Best feature, gone. Next, now we can't choose what part of the language to work on, we have to follow its stupid path. I didn't use the discussion much, but it seemed like I might in the future - gone. Also, just to gripe, I have no idea what their point/gem/heart structure does. They stop letting you acquire accolades past a beginner's level, except with points: no word count anymore, nothing to measure yourself by like "fastest lesson completed", or "average time through this level". And the images are 1990's level. Don't mention the obsequiously pandering cartoons. But it's free, and at least provides some basics.
There are the duome forums. In some languages they took away stories, notes, volunteers etc.(because now they are public).
It's not reeeally free anymore. Freemium isn't free.
Good to know I was right to not return to Duolingo. Found myself being better at the gamification aspects instead of being able to interact with any sort of quality in Spanish or Mandarin.
The sheer tedium of repeated ridiculous phrases.
Madrigal's Magic and Integrated Chinese did more for me as core textbooks with regards to grammar while opening up to massive input in those languages ( Star Wars in Spanish or Mandarin 🤣 ) did far more for improving my recognition and basic fluency in both languages. Which is an ongoing process.
Minus the guilt tripping notifications from a cartoon owl about why I haven't ' checked in' in awhile 😅.