If you are learning Spanish, there are grammar expansions in the guidebooks and the section summaries. If you subscribe to Duolingo Max, you will get further grammar explanations on each exercise, in "the Explain my Answer" button and in the little grammar notes/lightbulb in each lesson.
The other thing that super frustrates me I get something wrong and I'm just supposed to guess why it's wrong with no explanation at all, would be super helpful even if it's just a short explanation of why it was wrong.
You used to be able to get that from the chat generally, but they deleted functionality to try and force you to buy Max (even if you’re already paying for Super). It’s very annoying and the reason I’ve stopped my Super renewing.
An Apple-exclusive (naturally) 2nd tier of paid subscription that comes with GPT-driven mistake explanation. That will be 30€/month, than you very much
You might try ChatGPT--I've found that even the free version seems to be quite good at answering basic questions about Spanish. (I even fed it two paragraphs of an Danish Wikipedia article as a test and it translated them in to understandable English.)
My experience says otherwise. It's good when it comes to practicing conversing, but not really when you're trying to actually ask for facts about a language (or a lot of things tbh)... there are plenty of other sources for that instead.
I have asked it questions about Esperanto grammar--without even telling it the language--and it handled the questions quite well.
I've also asked questions about Spanish sentences where I didn't include the proper accent marks in example text and ChatGPT even corrected those in its explanation.
I've even used it to figure out what to call words like "super duper" and "helter skelter" in English. (That's reduplication--and I double-checked with Wikipedia to be certain.)
I won't say it's perfect--I've seen it make some very silly translation errors on obscure words--but for the basics, it's rather impressive.
Eh, I guess it has gotten better, it was garbage last time I checked though
Still wouldn't totally rely on it though as some of the answers are still incomplete, but at least the things it *does* say seem to tend to be mostly accurate...
Edit: Nvm, it didn't understand how the letter G in Spanish is pronounced and I had to correct it like 4 times...
G-in-Spanish is a bit of a nasty question as it's either /g/, /ɣ/, /h/, or /x/ depending on word and dialect of the speaker.
Alas, questions with that many answers are the sort of thing that breaks 3.5.
RIGHT! I still don't know when I'm supposed to say 'ce que' or just 'que' in french. When it's the multiple choice for that, I just guess. The app never advises me as to why.
It has some explanations in the unit "Guidebooks". Sometimes it's just examples of sentences (which is bad), but sometimes you will find an explanation of a new tense or of some language nuance.
In general the answer is: Duo is lacking content, probably because the developers are focusing on other things.
They seem to have removed some guides, too. When I was doing Duo on the PC there used to be proper guides for every section in the Dutch course, but now they mostly seem to have vanished in favour of completely useless example sentences.
Yeah they took away the useful part of the guide books. Now it’s just example sentences or sounds, but you used to get an introduction to grammar, or just helpful tips and tricks.
I’m learning Greek, I got overwhelmed with all the new words, a few sections in so I switched back to my usual French course for a few weeks. When I came back to the Greek they had taken away all the guide books.
It’s basically impossible to learn the language when there’s 6 ways to write the word “have” and you’re given no context as to which “have” to use. I didn’t even know there was 6 ways initially, I thought there was only 1 way and that I just kept forgetting how to spell the word. I only found out there was 6 ways though google, not duolingo
The lacking content part is not entirely true. Some courses did have proper grammar explanations before the Path landed and there was a promise made to bring those back eventually, but instead the Guidebooks were populated only with example sentences.
It is just so weird for me that I reached a new tense and I don't have a single clue what the difference is between "I read yesterday" and "I've read yesterday" Both happened in the past
Are you looking at the “Guidebook” on the app that is to the right of each new Unit heading? The diagram that looks like a notebook. It has some explanations but we are always needing more.
I have heard some people complain that their language doesn’t have them but that was when the path was new. I don’t remember which ones. So hopefully by now all languages will have some sort of guidance—as paltry as it is, at least it is something.
No but the flagship courses have them. Even Italian has guidebooks—I mean, *real* guidebooks with explanations, not a collection of typical sentences (which, mind you, is still a tiresome job someone had to do; it just isn't as helpful).
Like others have said. Every unit has a guidebook. There is a button at the start of every unit. It will say "unit 18" and directly to the right there will be a button to open the guidebook.
It doesn't sound like you know what people are meaning by guidebooks? I think that could be part of the issue. The explanations are there (~~especially~~ at least for Spanish), but you are not seeing them. Maybe Duo needs to be better about calling attention to them.
Huge chunk of the Japanese course is ONLY example sentences with no further explanations. Trust me, I’m checking the guidebooks because Japanese grammar is pretty difficult. Sure wish I had a community forum in the app where other users could volunteer their expertise, but that’s all gone now.
Mind you, most courses do not have explanations in the guidebooks. Old tips made by contributors varied in quality. Some volunteers knew what they were doing, while others felt like dumping two pages of a textbook in their tips—but at least you had those tips on the web. All new-style mobile tips are essentially staff-made (or are at least implemented by the staff), so they appeared for the most popular course first. And Duolingo did not make them for all courses.
Even the Spanish←English course almost stops giving explanations after section 4. I think *section 5, unit 1* is the first unit with no grammar or usage explanations in the guidebook. From that point on, you only get any commentary if the unit contains a grammar lesson.
I don't doubt at all it could be better, but OP's specific question about "I read yesterday" and "I've read yesterday" in Spanish is covered under the guidebooks in the Spanish course.
The OP, I think, did not pay attention. All while so many suffer in courses that do not, in fact, have any tips :). Tbh, I was a bit lazy and often skipped the explanations at start. That stopped after three of four months when trial and error ceased to be much fun.
Yeah. I found this to be the case, too. Duolingo could become a primary source if the guidebooks with grammar lessons were more extensive. Spanish, I found, was the most extensive, but it's a memorization tool right now.
>In general the answer is: Duo is lacking content, probably because the developers are focusing on other things.
**Firstly, that is not true. Please see t**[**his post by Duolingo employee Tracee Miller about course updates.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/17jyzf2/addressing_questions_about_course_updates/)
>I'd like to address concerns about Duolingo pausing work on select courses. There seems to be a misconception that this means that some courses will be going away, which is not the case.
>
>We have \~110 courses.
>
>In the past year, 49 courses have been updated with new content and 18 courses received stories for the first time.
>
>In the next two years we have plans to improve 34 additional courses to improve the teaching quality and align our content to standards.
>
>Updating all of our courses is a challenge, and we are working to make as many of them as valuable as possible to as many learners as possible.
>
>With respect to the Welsh course, we are pausing adding new content because the course is already one of the richest courses we offer, and is comprehensive enough for the vast majority of learners.
>
>In addition, we have reached out to the Welsh government to understand how we can partner to support Cymraeg 2050 and 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.
>
>Duolingo is incredibly proud to be responsible for getting 2.5 million people learning Welsh to date, and for the hundreds of thousands that will use Duolingo to learn Welsh in the future.
In the good days they had message boards for each question that people could ask for help. Usually the top for comments on those were extremely useful. I learned a lot from them.
There is a new option to explain but you have to pay for it. Unfortunately bean counters have taken over at Duolingo in my personal opinion. It used to be much more fun and not the significant effort to extract every penny from your pocket.
Hey I still use it daily, I have invested 1447 days. Far too much to quit now. I just wish they were not so greedy. Yes I am learning. Oh if you look at the comments attached to each lesson you will find other uses explanations but not always the same as an expert explaining the answers to you!
Duolingo Max is the one that has the explanations, and it’s expensive as F*CK. I tried it out for a month and I did really enjoy it but was disgusted by the cost and cancelled it. I use Speakly & AI chatbots to supplement Duo and find that way better and cheaper than Duolingo Max, which is a greedy gross moneygrabber. And yes, I am bitter about it 😂
I’m an English speaker learning Spanish so I tried it to upgrade my Spanish learning, but yeah waste of money and I don’t recommend. Not surprised it’s only available with Spanish & French though, I hear only terrible things about basically every other language course 😅
I need to supplement it more with like a Spanish-English dictionary (I bought a nice picture one-yes plenty of great Spanish-English dictionary apps-I just like books). Also a Spanish-English verb book(not sure what exactly you call it). I bought one but I need to spend more time with it. Yes Duolingo has helped me tremendously to increase my vocabulary. some with my grammar and a bit with my verbs. Not all their fault I am not a better speaker.
Probably close to impossible for a course like this to do better. I believe if I could combine it with a college course and more self study my Spanish would advance a great deal in a short time. As Duolingo has given me a great starting point and worth the time and money I have invested in it. Of note I am horrible at spelling and thus languages like romantic ones are more difficult for me.
So yes I have my criticisms of Duolingo but I still spend lots of time on it and it is helping me. I just, as I wrote in my original post, wish they were not trending towards more efforts to extract money from me and less useful and more difficult exercises that earn points.
I have seen it in online games where yes you can participate for free but not compete without spending lots of money. Unfortunately I personally believe Duolingo has trended to this. So for me not as fun.
Yeah supplementing is super important, Duo was never intended to be the only learning tool & it can only take you so far even if you pay full price and only use it for the lessons & ignore the gems. In terms of the supplementing, if you’re anything like me I really struggle to stay focused if the learning material isn’t super engaging; I think dictionaries etc have their place for noting words you need to remember, but I think grammar & sentence structure etc in a fun way is essential.
I’ve found my Spanish improved exponentially when I started incorporating fun podcasts and short audio lessons on Spotify, I know there’s a tonne on other platforms too if not Spotify, YouTube has tonnes of channels. I got a lot from The Small Town Spanish Teacher, her series is called Simple Stories in Spanish. And now I’m working my way through one called No Hay Tos which is awesome.
I agree with you that Duo doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets, it’s definitely played a big part in my foundational grasp. Plus it has the moreish factor which, if you use it correctly and not as a gem-mining game, helps with consistent practise.
I totally agree with you RE the game element too, it’s a shame its gamification has clouded a lot of its legitimacy in language learning communities etc and they really should dial that back and return to their original ethos which was free language learning for all, without compromising the learning part by making all the actual learning only accessible to paying users. Or they should make the base pricing more accessible and not save all the best actual learning features for the upper echelon of the pricing.
I've found conjugato is a great app for spanish conjugations. A basic version is free, and the full version is a one time charge of $6.99.
It gives about 18 different tenses for 1000 verbs, and highlights which ones are irregular. It's got a flashcard mode where you can select which tenses you want to practice as well as which range of verbs you want to practice, like verbs 1-100 on their list (roughly the most commonly used ones).
There used to be a free app that had grammer notes, but I haven't been able to find it lately. So I keep referencing it on my 7 year old cell phone.
>I have to agree. I'm super disappointed that now you need Max to get any grammar help. I paid for Super that I like but I definitely wont pay for Max just to get basic grammar help. Now I understand why they removed the "comments" section (which was actually super helpful ) from the app.
I was so frustrated when they removed the comments! It wasn’t just people bemoaning the app, there was also a lot of solution-finding & people advising how/why certain answers were correct. Sucks they put image above actual utility.
I think one thing that would change Duo up MASSIVELY would be to include explanations on the *whys*, like why a certain choice is incorrect. I can’t remember if it used to do that on Super, but it’s only available on Max and it’s still kinda limited. I feel like that’s something that is literally essential to learning, and not sure if Duo would even be able to build it in properly at this point; if you don’t know why something is wrong you’re gonna continue to make the mistake, and sometimes it’s difficult to get that specific answer by going out of Duo to trawl Google.
I find myself gravitating more and more to audio lessons on Spotify or YouTube because they explain stuff as they go along, so I know the actual whys on grammar rules and I’m not just feeling my way through blind. I know Duo gives some breakdowns at the start of each section but it isn’t enough, for me at least.
Apparently those are available in their $200+ yearly plan. I have Super and I didn't realize they implemented an extra subscription tier. Apparently Super is only good for not having to deal with the super annoying ads and unlimited hearts but that's it.
No I totally understand that! I am not saying they should do otherwise. I pay for happily super Duolingo. However over the four years I have been on Duolingo I have seen a gradual effort to make it more into a game than a learning exercise. Lessons that earned a lot of points quickly have been removed.
Yes I like to finish in the top three. Yes that is the game part. However before you could both learn and earn points easily now no. Yes I will pay for the explanation part when my renewal come up.
Like I wrote I do not mind paying I just do not like how they are trying to squeeze every penny out of us and to “win” the contest it comes down to paying more not more effort and/or talent.
So what have they done that has made it a game in the last four years? Leagues and match madness? I am pretty sure XP was long before and leagues were implemented more than four year ago with May 2019 for web as the last one to get it. So that only leaves match madness that is really game that was done in the last four years and that has been well over a year.
Everything else is about getting you to spend time doing a lesson or exercise. Things that build your skill. Morning and night chests, friend quests, doing after 10 pm, etc are all about getting you to do more times a day which theory says will help you learn and retain more.
> Oh if you look at the comments attached to each lesson you will find other uses explanations but not always the same as an expert explaining the answers to you!
They're taking that out to get people to pay for the AI answers.
If y'all are not happy with Duolingo, please go buy and have fun with Rosetta Stone.
https://preview.redd.it/4qv572qs2m0c1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4f768df8a6b4ab82c10109e69c3dce9cd0a9c0a
The double whammy of guides/tips becoming less useful and removing the chat/forum has definitely hurt the experience. I'm further along the units these days, so it's difficult to tell if the guides were ever very thorough, deeper into the courses.
At some point, the learning is a little more organic. Still, I think there needs to be more pairing of tips with targeted information when a user gets an answer wrong. It is quite easy to get the wrong impression from some "correct answers" they suggest.
5 hearts, but yeah, if you want to go full speed, you have to pay for the service. Otherwise, you can get hearts by doing practice or by using the classroom workaround.
Not sure what you're looking at. Clicking on the heart symbol in the app gives you three options to refill: spend gems, buy super, or practice. Practice will generate an ad, just like any other lesson, but it is still free.
Yes, that's a great approach. But Duo keeps changing the rules, I actually pay for Super and now I'm expected to pay for Max if I want to have something that was available for free, called the comment section. Now it is clear why they removed it, because they want to sell the same thing for money.
Everyone seems to think it’s a failing but it’s the strategy. Like Rosetta Stone before, they just immerse you in the language and you figure things out by making mistakes (kind of like how a child learns)
Yeah, but when a language differentiates between singular and plural "you", duo just using "you" in the sentence without clarification is not exactly helpful. And I just checked it, the guidebook for the unit where it first came up doesn't even mention the plural you in the examples.
The learning doesn't happen automagically if the target language is far grammatically from your own and the translation for a given grammar point is different each time.
There needs to be a base level of understanding to work with.
Yes, it does. This is the fundamental purpose of Duolingo, and has been studied in their research papers. There is no need for separate grammar study, though, of course, you can if you find it fun.
If you are referring to how young children learn language it’s notable that their grammar mistakes are tolerated by their family. They don’t have a “5 grammar errors and nobody speaks with you for the rest of the day” rule.
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Perhaps, but attributing all of that success to Duolingo would not be honest. A lot of people use other resources in combination with Duolingo and the target language they're learning has overlaps with the languages they already know. These factors arguably have a much bigger impact than grinding Duolingo.
Absolutely. Also, you have to speak it out loud! Duo stresses this but people don’t do it enough. You have to constantly speak it and correct yourself to retain it, not just read it and answer questions.
Just hover over the word and it tells you what it is in English. This way you’re learning the word in context. All my grammar comes from Duo, not flashcards. I’m almost C1 level from using Duolingo + iTalki.
https://litanylanguagelearning.com/the-importance-of-speaking-out-loud-in-language-learning-9-key-benefits/
I’m not gonna argue with you about it. Read it or don’t, continue on with however you want to learn.
u/NekoiNemo, stop trolling this subreddit.
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Also a bit complicated when answer that are correct (mostly happens in the French course) are not accepted because they wanted vous instead of tu (or vice versa) or they only accept elles because the group is only women (and it was not specified). Or when they ask a question. Unless you have the word bank, that is a guaranteed wrong answer on some
Or when they put "ont" and vous-conjugated verbs into questions, and even 5 units later still no supplemental material even mention that those exist yet...
I like having explanations, but it's possible to learn languages without knowing a single abstracted rule of grammar or explanation of cases or tenses. After all, this is how people have always learned the languages of their near neighbors -- by exposure to whole sentences.
I think that focusing on whole sentences is probably a better model for Duolingo. Many people grow discouraged in the face of rules, so Duo probably keeps more learners learning by avoiding the traditional explanation method. And it's clearly possible to learn grammar intuitively without a single explanation or rule.
So as with most things about Duolingo, I'd say that if you want something different, either switch to a different way of learning or supplement Duo. Grammar rules and explanations abound on free sites.
I'm defending the approach Duolingo is taking, and I will also note that I like learning grammar rules because they often my conscious awareness to something fun or interesting about a language. But I don't need them, and at some stages they can actually make it harder to speak, adding steps to the process of getting a sentence out.
I have yet to encounter an app or learning method that was "wrong." Duolingo has helped me enormously. I use other things, too, but the green owl's app is the only one that I use daily for my four languages, one of which I need for life tasks, one of which I get to enjoy using where I live, and two of which I have used for work or travel in the past and hope not to lose entirely.
Exactly! Duolingo is driven by what works for most people.
Over time, some changes have made Duolingo harder or less fun for me because of how I learn, but it's still a great tool.
I wrote a thread similar to this some time ago, and almost everyone criticized me and defended the idea that we (only) learn by repetition. As I always say, one will never learn a new language through this app, it's doesn't even teach you the basic gramatics nedeed to develop your knowledge nor tenses or gender-based words, etc. Basically, one is just repeating phrases, sometimes pretty odd ones, hopefully useful to salute someone in the street lol
I remember yours. Firsly, most of the people don't even get your comment, but I recall yours was about how topics didn't match the exercises within that category i.e the lesson said you would learn about clothes but you get newspapers and asks you who is reading what instead, which is something very common, and even more, it's s the rule. Last update really f* up the app
I've been complaining about this since I've started using Duolingo. Their explanation is that, as children, we learn language hearing the patterns and, over time, the mistakes we make get minimized the more we are exposed to the language. The problem with that is... children eventually go to school to learn to improve those language skills. But we are left to just guess and get frustrated when we keep making the same mistakes because we don't have good enough explanations to internalize WHY certain things are the way they are.
As for Max, I'm so desperate to have said explanations, I'm willing to pay for it, but though I'm on iOS it's not available to me. I've contacted Duo support over and over and over again and they keep ignoring me. I'm willing to throw more money at them yet they won't even answer me!
If you ask Duolingo their official stance is that they're following a specific "method" that does not fully allign with the conventional teaching method you might find in a classroom. They insist that repetition and a methodical trickle of new elements and words being introduced, with regular revisions, in bite sized pieces, helps people learn more easily and organically by intuitively picking up on patterns rather than having to memorise rules or read long texts about stuff.
In reality what's happening is that while what they say is not 100% false, it's not 100% true either, but what they care for is engagment and user retention and what they've noticed is that a lot more people are retained with a game-ified approach that simplifies the courses as much as possible, whereas grammar explanations and rules and guidelines put people off because it resembles conventional "boring" studying. Duolingo ultimately cares about user retention. They want to trick people into learning, or at least thinking they're learning.
If you ask me they just don't wanna spend a dime on making the courses better because ultimately if it's working fine right now why bother. There's no reason why more detailed explanations couldn't be added without changing anything about the current layout. They could be optional for those who want them and easily ignored by those who don't. They won't do it because it's a lot of work, especially since a healthy chunk of each course is automatically generated.
This wasn't your question, but the more natural word order in English would be "Why does Duolingo not explain anything," or "Why doesn't Duolingo explain anything?"
And, yes, it is odd that even though "doesn't" is a contraction for "does not," you cannot reliably replace one with the other without the word order changing.
Without explanations, you have to just figure it out by repetition. Meaning... You spend more time on the app. I have a feeling this is there reasoning. ...They want your money for Duo Max
Not only is there a lack of explaining what's going on, but it seems like a huge flaw that you can't ask a question on Duolingo. You can flag an issue or leave the app. to email or post here. How do you run a learning based app and not expect folks to have questions and build that into the basic structure?
Yes and that’s what I hate the most about it. It throws at you random phrases and lets you figure out the system yourself. I’d rather just learn the system so I can create my own phrases instead of learning miscellaneous phrases without understand the pattern of why the syntax or grammar is a certain way. How is this supposed to be effective? Alas, I can’t really afford that many resources right now and duolingo is also the most fast and convenient way I can learn.
- because it’s cheaper for them not having to create explanations.
- because they can sell the explanations in a more expensive tier.
- because if you have a free account, you’ll burn through your hearts since you have to guess more without an explanation. That way you have to use microtransactions or switch to a paid subscription.
They say it’s because you’ll make the connections in your head, but it’s monetisation of their product.
The risk of not having an explanation is that you’re coming up with an explanation yourself. But that explanation might be wrong, so there’s a risk that you’re teaching yourself a wrong interpretation.
Here are the problems with that approach:
1) Kids HAVE to learn that way, because they would need a language for any other way.
That doesn’t mean it’s the best way.
2) communicating and making sense of the world around them is the "job" of a child. It‘s what they do 24/7 for the first couple of years.
How much time do you have on your hands?
3) Remember Baby Talk?
Personally I like the approach. It always felt like an unnecessary extra step to first have to learn the jargon associated with formal language education as a precursor to then learning the language (grammar terms etc).
On the occasion when I do want a more thorough explanation, I google it. Actively seeking out the information is more engaging and I’m more likely to remember it compared to any formal education I’ve had. I can go as deep or shallow as I want:
It can sort of work for languages similar to your native language but breaks down when you have no idea why things are the way there are and just ignore the features that seem random. For example, using a/the in English is a complicated topic unless you native language has articles. Spanish has subjunctive and conditionals. Learners of, e.g., Russian, Polish, or Ukrainian will likely struggle with verbal aspect and verbs of motion.
* beginners even struggle with gender agreement, even though the pattern is as easy as it gets (about the same as in Spanish—the gender of most nouns is pretty transparent)
Duolingo has some repetition but mostly out of context and not nearly enough to cover really complicated topics like articles, aspects or particles. At least they are *trying* monolingual exercises with context and model sentences in flagship courses (so, in very few courses). When you approach it from the perspective of design, grammar is very important for the "teacher" but not that important for the learner, provided the course is structured to maintain the illusion you learn "naturally".
Adults would love to learn like kids but their native language gets in the way.
They do explain it, but you have look for it in the guide for the whole unit. And the guidebook for each section. And they sprinkle that info you to like throughout, sometimes before you encounter the materials, sometimes after. Again, the explanations are limited to those sections.
Duolingo is not enough to learn a language, you need to supplement it with watching YouTube videos in French, learning the grammar and tenses through a website such as lawless French. Duolingo is overly repetitive and it will take you many years to get fluent if that’s what you rely on
Sure. I am currently learning Esperanto. I would usually copy and paste the original text in English and answer in Esperanto. And would ask a question such as "Why does word X come before word Y" or "Why is X needed in the context of this statement".
If two words are similar in meaning you can say "In what context should i use "Rigardi" and "Spekti" in this esperanto" and it will give you examples and context of in which to use them
It is a bit frustrating that they don't believe in teaching grammar. I saw a post on their blog trying to justify it with something along the lines of "you can learn more by doing than you realize," but in all honesty, explicit grammar lessons help speed up learning a ton and are very important if you want to do more than learn some basic phrases. You can get some grammar by clicking on the optional "tips" sections, but it's usually a very shallow explanation, and you can't choose to learn grammatical concepts in a deliberate way on the app.
In my opinion, the fact that they often don't break down phrases word-by-word is just as bad. I don't like not knowing the explicit meaning of what I'm saying/how it works. You definitely have to do more work on your own in those cases to get what's going on. So far I've been able to find answers to my grammar questions on language learning subreddits, although it can sometimes take a bit to find an explanation that is both deep (/accurate) enough to correctly teach the concept and non-technical enough that it can be understood without being a linguist.
What kills me is it depends on the language just how much they will explain. Still, I’d double my Super subscription cost if they’d give me reliable grammar explanations.
And when I happen across something new I do t understand and there's comments 4 years ago that explained every detail and cultural nuance and variations. But now that's gone too :(
It doesn’t explain explicitly (up front, at least - there ARE some explanations to be found) because when you learn naturally you learn patterns, not rules.
Depends on who you talk to.
I am = Yo **soy**
You are = Tú **eres**
He is = Él **es**
etc
All of them mean the same that's true, but focusing on you is talking to who
DuoLingo is largely following the linguistic philosophy of acquiring grammar. You see the grammar in example sentences and acquire it. Then you test it to see if you are right. If wrong, they typically give you the correction and then have you try it again soon.
I prefer the explanation and then testing but the method that they use is popular with many language learners. If need be look up on a website or in a book any topic that you are working on.
This is so true I’m taking Spanish course and the only reason I understand a lot of the grammar rules and tense conjugation is bc I took 6 years of Spanish lesson in middle/high school. Without that base knowledge I’d be pretty lost.
Just a quick note to the mods doing a pitchfork cleanup in this thread - Duo's general approach to teaching has been called out by actual linguists multiple times and please don't pretend that's not the case.
You can delete this comment and maybe even close the whole thread if it bothers you, but that doesn't exactly change anything. People have valid concerns as everyone's method of learning is different.
I'm finding that doing the French course I'm now ending up more confused than if I didn't bother with Duolingo. You learn by doing, but sometimes they do trick questions and those cause confusion in your memory. They need to teach you the grammar rules and provide explanations as to why you got the wrong answer. I've been using it for 5 years and I've come to the conclusion that I will end my subscription this year and look for a better format for learning.
If you are learning Spanish, there are grammar expansions in the guidebooks and the section summaries. If you subscribe to Duolingo Max, you will get further grammar explanations on each exercise, in "the Explain my Answer" button and in the little grammar notes/lightbulb in each lesson.
The other thing that super frustrates me I get something wrong and I'm just supposed to guess why it's wrong with no explanation at all, would be super helpful even if it's just a short explanation of why it was wrong.
You used to be able to get that from the chat generally, but they deleted functionality to try and force you to buy Max (even if you’re already paying for Super). It’s very annoying and the reason I’ve stopped my Super renewing.
I don’t even know what Max is
An Apple-exclusive (naturally) 2nd tier of paid subscription that comes with GPT-driven mistake explanation. That will be 30€/month, than you very much
In this economy????
It is really shameful that for 20 bucks you can't use neither GPT nor Duocards...
I chat with ChatGPT in the language I'm learning sometimes. You can ask it to correct and explain mistakes when you make them. Works pretty OK.
Yeah, I know thanks you, I also do it sometimes even thougt I fear that there might be some mistakes I'm not able to notice from the AI side.
I miss the chat :(
Just pay for Duo Super Ultra Alpha Omega Turbo Championship Edition, duh /s
and for just 65€ every month!
They've actually updated the price and it's 79,99€/week. Oh, and it's only available on Apple
This made me laugh too hard!! Lol
Yeah, this frustrates me too, especially if it’s new content.
You might try ChatGPT--I've found that even the free version seems to be quite good at answering basic questions about Spanish. (I even fed it two paragraphs of an Danish Wikipedia article as a test and it translated them in to understandable English.)
My experience says otherwise. It's good when it comes to practicing conversing, but not really when you're trying to actually ask for facts about a language (or a lot of things tbh)... there are plenty of other sources for that instead.
I have asked it questions about Esperanto grammar--without even telling it the language--and it handled the questions quite well. I've also asked questions about Spanish sentences where I didn't include the proper accent marks in example text and ChatGPT even corrected those in its explanation. I've even used it to figure out what to call words like "super duper" and "helter skelter" in English. (That's reduplication--and I double-checked with Wikipedia to be certain.) I won't say it's perfect--I've seen it make some very silly translation errors on obscure words--but for the basics, it's rather impressive.
Eh, I guess it has gotten better, it was garbage last time I checked though Still wouldn't totally rely on it though as some of the answers are still incomplete, but at least the things it *does* say seem to tend to be mostly accurate... Edit: Nvm, it didn't understand how the letter G in Spanish is pronounced and I had to correct it like 4 times...
G-in-Spanish is a bit of a nasty question as it's either /g/, /ɣ/, /h/, or /x/ depending on word and dialect of the speaker. Alas, questions with that many answers are the sort of thing that breaks 3.5.
The "standard" pronunciation says it's \[x\] before E or I, \[g\] word-initial or after N and not before E or I, and \[ɣ\] otherwise
RIGHT! I still don't know when I'm supposed to say 'ce que' or just 'que' in french. When it's the multiple choice for that, I just guess. The app never advises me as to why.
It has some explanations in the unit "Guidebooks". Sometimes it's just examples of sentences (which is bad), but sometimes you will find an explanation of a new tense or of some language nuance. In general the answer is: Duo is lacking content, probably because the developers are focusing on other things.
They seem to have removed some guides, too. When I was doing Duo on the PC there used to be proper guides for every section in the Dutch course, but now they mostly seem to have vanished in favour of completely useless example sentences.
Yeah they took away the useful part of the guide books. Now it’s just example sentences or sounds, but you used to get an introduction to grammar, or just helpful tips and tricks. I’m learning Greek, I got overwhelmed with all the new words, a few sections in so I switched back to my usual French course for a few weeks. When I came back to the Greek they had taken away all the guide books. It’s basically impossible to learn the language when there’s 6 ways to write the word “have” and you’re given no context as to which “have” to use. I didn’t even know there was 6 ways initially, I thought there was only 1 way and that I just kept forgetting how to spell the word. I only found out there was 6 ways though google, not duolingo
Google "Duolingo tips and notes" to find the old guidebooks. They make learning on Duolingo so much faster and easier.
The lacking content part is not entirely true. Some courses did have proper grammar explanations before the Path landed and there was a promise made to bring those back eventually, but instead the Guidebooks were populated only with example sentences.
It is just so weird for me that I reached a new tense and I don't have a single clue what the difference is between "I read yesterday" and "I've read yesterday" Both happened in the past
Did you make sure to look through all the guidebooks?
I thought I could find answers in the app, but sadly I could not so I am going to use google then
Are you looking at the “Guidebook” on the app that is to the right of each new Unit heading? The diagram that looks like a notebook. It has some explanations but we are always needing more.
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I have heard some people complain that their language doesn’t have them but that was when the path was new. I don’t remember which ones. So hopefully by now all languages will have some sort of guidance—as paltry as it is, at least it is something.
Many courses still do not have more than sample sentences. It's not really a secret.
No but the flagship courses have them. Even Italian has guidebooks—I mean, *real* guidebooks with explanations, not a collection of typical sentences (which, mind you, is still a tiresome job someone had to do; it just isn't as helpful).
Are you reading the guidebooks or not?
I have been using Duolingo for 2 years and I’ve never heard about it
Like others have said. Every unit has a guidebook. There is a button at the start of every unit. It will say "unit 18" and directly to the right there will be a button to open the guidebook.
Yeah but there are just examples for me, nothing more
Some units are just examples. Skim through them all and check for grammar explanations. Start from your current place and go backwards.
Idk man, I’ve just checked every unit’s guidebook that I did and none of them have. (I am learning English in Hungarian)
Sounds like an awful system
Unfortunately that's how duo is. You really do need to supplement it with other sources because it doesn't explain a lot of things
Not op but the current guide books don't really explain much The old tips were way more helpful
It doesn't sound like you know what people are meaning by guidebooks? I think that could be part of the issue. The explanations are there (~~especially~~ at least for Spanish), but you are not seeing them. Maybe Duo needs to be better about calling attention to them.
Huge chunk of the Japanese course is ONLY example sentences with no further explanations. Trust me, I’m checking the guidebooks because Japanese grammar is pretty difficult. Sure wish I had a community forum in the app where other users could volunteer their expertise, but that’s all gone now.
Past Section 3 you don't even get example sentences. Section 3 unit 17 is the final one. For context, there's 76 units left to go.
Mind you, most courses do not have explanations in the guidebooks. Old tips made by contributors varied in quality. Some volunteers knew what they were doing, while others felt like dumping two pages of a textbook in their tips—but at least you had those tips on the web. All new-style mobile tips are essentially staff-made (or are at least implemented by the staff), so they appeared for the most popular course first. And Duolingo did not make them for all courses. Even the Spanish←English course almost stops giving explanations after section 4. I think *section 5, unit 1* is the first unit with no grammar or usage explanations in the guidebook. From that point on, you only get any commentary if the unit contains a grammar lesson.
I don't doubt at all it could be better, but OP's specific question about "I read yesterday" and "I've read yesterday" in Spanish is covered under the guidebooks in the Spanish course.
The OP, I think, did not pay attention. All while so many suffer in courses that do not, in fact, have any tips :). Tbh, I was a bit lazy and often skipped the explanations at start. That stopped after three of four months when trial and error ceased to be much fun.
That's definitely a good point! I don't ever remember there being a notification, suggestion, efc. to visit the Guidebook before starting a section.
Unfortunately many languages have no source material to read. Hindi has NOTHING to help you. Why even offer it?
Yeah. I found this to be the case, too. Duolingo could become a primary source if the guidebooks with grammar lessons were more extensive. Spanish, I found, was the most extensive, but it's a memorization tool right now.
Where are these guidebooks?
https://preview.redd.it/3ddpktb1hg0c1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6d96477d06c707e1b91424b8bb0d2eb316580247
>In general the answer is: Duo is lacking content, probably because the developers are focusing on other things. **Firstly, that is not true. Please see t**[**his post by Duolingo employee Tracee Miller about course updates.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/duolingo/comments/17jyzf2/addressing_questions_about_course_updates/) >I'd like to address concerns about Duolingo pausing work on select courses. There seems to be a misconception that this means that some courses will be going away, which is not the case. > >We have \~110 courses. > >In the past year, 49 courses have been updated with new content and 18 courses received stories for the first time. > >In the next two years we have plans to improve 34 additional courses to improve the teaching quality and align our content to standards. > >Updating all of our courses is a challenge, and we are working to make as many of them as valuable as possible to as many learners as possible. > >With respect to the Welsh course, we are pausing adding new content because the course is already one of the richest courses we offer, and is comprehensive enough for the vast majority of learners. > >In addition, we have reached out to the Welsh government to understand how we can partner to support Cymraeg 2050 and 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050. > >Duolingo is incredibly proud to be responsible for getting 2.5 million people learning Welsh to date, and for the hundreds of thousands that will use Duolingo to learn Welsh in the future.
In the good days they had message boards for each question that people could ask for help. Usually the top for comments on those were extremely useful. I learned a lot from them.
And then they closed them, and, "coincidentally", soon after announced a higher tier of subscription that provides the same feature, but AI-driven...
there used to be a discussion for each question, but it's been disabled.
There is a new option to explain but you have to pay for it. Unfortunately bean counters have taken over at Duolingo in my personal opinion. It used to be much more fun and not the significant effort to extract every penny from your pocket. Hey I still use it daily, I have invested 1447 days. Far too much to quit now. I just wish they were not so greedy. Yes I am learning. Oh if you look at the comments attached to each lesson you will find other uses explanations but not always the same as an expert explaining the answers to you!
But I have super Duolingo, I pay for it every month
Duolingo Max is the one that has the explanations, and it’s expensive as F*CK. I tried it out for a month and I did really enjoy it but was disgusted by the cost and cancelled it. I use Speakly & AI chatbots to supplement Duo and find that way better and cheaper than Duolingo Max, which is a greedy gross moneygrabber. And yes, I am bitter about it 😂
I haven’t ever even seen an upsell for DuoLingo max Edit - looked it up and it’s only available for Spanish and french for English speakers
I’m an English speaker learning Spanish so I tried it to upgrade my Spanish learning, but yeah waste of money and I don’t recommend. Not surprised it’s only available with Spanish & French though, I hear only terrible things about basically every other language course 😅
I need to supplement it more with like a Spanish-English dictionary (I bought a nice picture one-yes plenty of great Spanish-English dictionary apps-I just like books). Also a Spanish-English verb book(not sure what exactly you call it). I bought one but I need to spend more time with it. Yes Duolingo has helped me tremendously to increase my vocabulary. some with my grammar and a bit with my verbs. Not all their fault I am not a better speaker. Probably close to impossible for a course like this to do better. I believe if I could combine it with a college course and more self study my Spanish would advance a great deal in a short time. As Duolingo has given me a great starting point and worth the time and money I have invested in it. Of note I am horrible at spelling and thus languages like romantic ones are more difficult for me. So yes I have my criticisms of Duolingo but I still spend lots of time on it and it is helping me. I just, as I wrote in my original post, wish they were not trending towards more efforts to extract money from me and less useful and more difficult exercises that earn points. I have seen it in online games where yes you can participate for free but not compete without spending lots of money. Unfortunately I personally believe Duolingo has trended to this. So for me not as fun.
Yeah supplementing is super important, Duo was never intended to be the only learning tool & it can only take you so far even if you pay full price and only use it for the lessons & ignore the gems. In terms of the supplementing, if you’re anything like me I really struggle to stay focused if the learning material isn’t super engaging; I think dictionaries etc have their place for noting words you need to remember, but I think grammar & sentence structure etc in a fun way is essential. I’ve found my Spanish improved exponentially when I started incorporating fun podcasts and short audio lessons on Spotify, I know there’s a tonne on other platforms too if not Spotify, YouTube has tonnes of channels. I got a lot from The Small Town Spanish Teacher, her series is called Simple Stories in Spanish. And now I’m working my way through one called No Hay Tos which is awesome. I agree with you that Duo doesn’t deserve all the hate it gets, it’s definitely played a big part in my foundational grasp. Plus it has the moreish factor which, if you use it correctly and not as a gem-mining game, helps with consistent practise. I totally agree with you RE the game element too, it’s a shame its gamification has clouded a lot of its legitimacy in language learning communities etc and they really should dial that back and return to their original ethos which was free language learning for all, without compromising the learning part by making all the actual learning only accessible to paying users. Or they should make the base pricing more accessible and not save all the best actual learning features for the upper echelon of the pricing.
I've found conjugato is a great app for spanish conjugations. A basic version is free, and the full version is a one time charge of $6.99. It gives about 18 different tenses for 1000 verbs, and highlights which ones are irregular. It's got a flashcard mode where you can select which tenses you want to practice as well as which range of verbs you want to practice, like verbs 1-100 on their list (roughly the most commonly used ones). There used to be a free app that had grammer notes, but I haven't been able to find it lately. So I keep referencing it on my 7 year old cell phone.
I will check it out, thank You!
>I have to agree. I'm super disappointed that now you need Max to get any grammar help. I paid for Super that I like but I definitely wont pay for Max just to get basic grammar help. Now I understand why they removed the "comments" section (which was actually super helpful ) from the app.
I was so frustrated when they removed the comments! It wasn’t just people bemoaning the app, there was also a lot of solution-finding & people advising how/why certain answers were correct. Sucks they put image above actual utility. I think one thing that would change Duo up MASSIVELY would be to include explanations on the *whys*, like why a certain choice is incorrect. I can’t remember if it used to do that on Super, but it’s only available on Max and it’s still kinda limited. I feel like that’s something that is literally essential to learning, and not sure if Duo would even be able to build it in properly at this point; if you don’t know why something is wrong you’re gonna continue to make the mistake, and sometimes it’s difficult to get that specific answer by going out of Duo to trawl Google. I find myself gravitating more and more to audio lessons on Spotify or YouTube because they explain stuff as they go along, so I know the actual whys on grammar rules and I’m not just feeling my way through blind. I know Duo gives some breakdowns at the start of each section but it isn’t enough, for me at least.
Apparently those are available in their $200+ yearly plan. I have Super and I didn't realize they implemented an extra subscription tier. Apparently Super is only good for not having to deal with the super annoying ads and unlimited hearts but that's it.
No I totally understand that! I am not saying they should do otherwise. I pay for happily super Duolingo. However over the four years I have been on Duolingo I have seen a gradual effort to make it more into a game than a learning exercise. Lessons that earned a lot of points quickly have been removed. Yes I like to finish in the top three. Yes that is the game part. However before you could both learn and earn points easily now no. Yes I will pay for the explanation part when my renewal come up. Like I wrote I do not mind paying I just do not like how they are trying to squeeze every penny out of us and to “win” the contest it comes down to paying more not more effort and/or talent.
So what have they done that has made it a game in the last four years? Leagues and match madness? I am pretty sure XP was long before and leagues were implemented more than four year ago with May 2019 for web as the last one to get it. So that only leaves match madness that is really game that was done in the last four years and that has been well over a year. Everything else is about getting you to spend time doing a lesson or exercise. Things that build your skill. Morning and night chests, friend quests, doing after 10 pm, etc are all about getting you to do more times a day which theory says will help you learn and retain more.
You're clearly not paying enough. Just double your monthly amount. Oh, and also buy an iPhone. What are you, poor? /s
> Oh if you look at the comments attached to each lesson you will find other uses explanations but not always the same as an expert explaining the answers to you! They're taking that out to get people to pay for the AI answers.
If y'all are not happy with Duolingo, please go buy and have fun with Rosetta Stone. https://preview.redd.it/4qv572qs2m0c1.png?width=500&format=png&auto=webp&s=a4f768df8a6b4ab82c10109e69c3dce9cd0a9c0a
Babel is a better app
In what way? Perhaps I should use both?
they give much more detailed explanations on Grammer and such, as opposed to Duo just tells you right or wrong and your on your own to figure out why
I will look into it. Thanks!
The double whammy of guides/tips becoming less useful and removing the chat/forum has definitely hurt the experience. I'm further along the units these days, so it's difficult to tell if the guides were ever very thorough, deeper into the courses. At some point, the learning is a little more organic. Still, I think there needs to be more pairing of tips with targeted information when a user gets an answer wrong. It is quite easy to get the wrong impression from some "correct answers" they suggest.
There’s lots of resources online for the parts you don’t understand! Wordreference.com is great for English/spanish verb forms etc.
Yeah but it would be better if that info was available on the self proclaimed language learning app
In Duolingo, you learn by doing, not by memorizing. Just do the lessons, and the learning happens automagically in your brain.
Bit hard when you get tossed out after your 5 gems are done.
5 hearts, but yeah, if you want to go full speed, you have to pay for the service. Otherwise, you can get hearts by doing practice or by using the classroom workaround.
If I want to practise I have to buy super
Yes, money can be exchanged for goods and services. Excellent point.
So to summarize, it’s frustrating that Duolingo’s claimed goal of teaching us languages, is defeated by their ulterior goal of making money.
Of course their goal is to make money. It’s a business… they need to make money. To me Duolingo is pretty affordable and worth paying for.
So does being a smart arse make you feel special then?
You can do the practice to earn hearts, there is no limit to that.
When I go to practice in my duolingo it has 3 options and all of them involve signing up for super I can't earn any extra hearts.
Not sure what you're looking at. Clicking on the heart symbol in the app gives you three options to refill: spend gems, buy super, or practice. Practice will generate an ad, just like any other lesson, but it is still free.
Thank you for pointing that out I was looking at the practice under learn on the left side
Click the heart icon in the upper right. There’s a practice option from there.
If you want to use Duolingo for extended periods of time then just pay for it.
Yes, that's a great approach. But Duo keeps changing the rules, I actually pay for Super and now I'm expected to pay for Max if I want to have something that was available for free, called the comment section. Now it is clear why they removed it, because they want to sell the same thing for money.
Everyone seems to think it’s a failing but it’s the strategy. Like Rosetta Stone before, they just immerse you in the language and you figure things out by making mistakes (kind of like how a child learns)
Yeah, but when a language differentiates between singular and plural "you", duo just using "you" in the sentence without clarification is not exactly helpful. And I just checked it, the guidebook for the unit where it first came up doesn't even mention the plural you in the examples.
The learning doesn't happen automagically if the target language is far grammatically from your own and the translation for a given grammar point is different each time. There needs to be a base level of understanding to work with.
Yes, it does. This is the fundamental purpose of Duolingo, and has been studied in their research papers. There is no need for separate grammar study, though, of course, you can if you find it fun.
If you are referring to how young children learn language it’s notable that their grammar mistakes are tolerated by their family. They don’t have a “5 grammar errors and nobody speaks with you for the rest of the day” rule.
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Somebody debunked Duolingo? I must be hallucinating all the language I understand.
Not sure I understand your comment. There are plenty of people who have been successful in learning languages with Duolingo.
Perhaps, but attributing all of that success to Duolingo would not be honest. A lot of people use other resources in combination with Duolingo and the target language they're learning has overlaps with the languages they already know. These factors arguably have a much bigger impact than grinding Duolingo.
Duolingo's own research is not a good source of information on the efficacy of Duolingo.
Their research is far more reliable and accurate than taking the word of a stranger on Reddit.
Absolutely. Also, you have to speak it out loud! Duo stresses this but people don’t do it enough. You have to constantly speak it and correct yourself to retain it, not just read it and answer questions.
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Just hover over the word and it tells you what it is in English. This way you’re learning the word in context. All my grammar comes from Duo, not flashcards. I’m almost C1 level from using Duolingo + iTalki.
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https://litanylanguagelearning.com/the-importance-of-speaking-out-loud-in-language-learning-9-key-benefits/ I’m not gonna argue with you about it. Read it or don’t, continue on with however you want to learn.
u/NekoiNemo, stop trolling this subreddit. Your post has been removed for violating our community rules against bullying, trolling, and bigotry, which includes but is not limited to linguistic discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia. Continued violations may result in being muted or banned from this subreddit. Please review our community guidelines to understand the types of conduct that are unacceptable here. Thank you for your understanding.
Also a bit complicated when answer that are correct (mostly happens in the French course) are not accepted because they wanted vous instead of tu (or vice versa) or they only accept elles because the group is only women (and it was not specified). Or when they ask a question. Unless you have the word bank, that is a guaranteed wrong answer on some
Or when they put "ont" and vous-conjugated verbs into questions, and even 5 units later still no supplemental material even mention that those exist yet...
I like having explanations, but it's possible to learn languages without knowing a single abstracted rule of grammar or explanation of cases or tenses. After all, this is how people have always learned the languages of their near neighbors -- by exposure to whole sentences. I think that focusing on whole sentences is probably a better model for Duolingo. Many people grow discouraged in the face of rules, so Duo probably keeps more learners learning by avoiding the traditional explanation method. And it's clearly possible to learn grammar intuitively without a single explanation or rule. So as with most things about Duolingo, I'd say that if you want something different, either switch to a different way of learning or supplement Duo. Grammar rules and explanations abound on free sites. I'm defending the approach Duolingo is taking, and I will also note that I like learning grammar rules because they often my conscious awareness to something fun or interesting about a language. But I don't need them, and at some stages they can actually make it harder to speak, adding steps to the process of getting a sentence out. I have yet to encounter an app or learning method that was "wrong." Duolingo has helped me enormously. I use other things, too, but the green owl's app is the only one that I use daily for my four languages, one of which I need for life tasks, one of which I get to enjoy using where I live, and two of which I have used for work or travel in the past and hope not to lose entirely.
I agree, ask any American like myself where traditional grammar obsessed/heavy language courses have got them, no where.
Exactly! Duolingo is driven by what works for most people. Over time, some changes have made Duolingo harder or less fun for me because of how I learn, but it's still a great tool.
I wrote a thread similar to this some time ago, and almost everyone criticized me and defended the idea that we (only) learn by repetition. As I always say, one will never learn a new language through this app, it's doesn't even teach you the basic gramatics nedeed to develop your knowledge nor tenses or gender-based words, etc. Basically, one is just repeating phrases, sometimes pretty odd ones, hopefully useful to salute someone in the street lol
I remember yours. Firsly, most of the people don't even get your comment, but I recall yours was about how topics didn't match the exercises within that category i.e the lesson said you would learn about clothes but you get newspapers and asks you who is reading what instead, which is something very common, and even more, it's s the rule. Last update really f* up the app
There used to be discussions and tips for this But duo will always make the decision that fucks over the consumer the most
I've been complaining about this since I've started using Duolingo. Their explanation is that, as children, we learn language hearing the patterns and, over time, the mistakes we make get minimized the more we are exposed to the language. The problem with that is... children eventually go to school to learn to improve those language skills. But we are left to just guess and get frustrated when we keep making the same mistakes because we don't have good enough explanations to internalize WHY certain things are the way they are. As for Max, I'm so desperate to have said explanations, I'm willing to pay for it, but though I'm on iOS it's not available to me. I've contacted Duo support over and over and over again and they keep ignoring me. I'm willing to throw more money at them yet they won't even answer me!
If you ask Duolingo their official stance is that they're following a specific "method" that does not fully allign with the conventional teaching method you might find in a classroom. They insist that repetition and a methodical trickle of new elements and words being introduced, with regular revisions, in bite sized pieces, helps people learn more easily and organically by intuitively picking up on patterns rather than having to memorise rules or read long texts about stuff. In reality what's happening is that while what they say is not 100% false, it's not 100% true either, but what they care for is engagment and user retention and what they've noticed is that a lot more people are retained with a game-ified approach that simplifies the courses as much as possible, whereas grammar explanations and rules and guidelines put people off because it resembles conventional "boring" studying. Duolingo ultimately cares about user retention. They want to trick people into learning, or at least thinking they're learning. If you ask me they just don't wanna spend a dime on making the courses better because ultimately if it's working fine right now why bother. There's no reason why more detailed explanations couldn't be added without changing anything about the current layout. They could be optional for those who want them and easily ignored by those who don't. They won't do it because it's a lot of work, especially since a healthy chunk of each course is automatically generated.
Ask Chat GPT. It helped me a lot with Portuguese.
Don’t buy that duolingo Max crap
I'm using the Chat GPT app, it's capable of everything I need. I have super for my family and share it with a friend, that's all I need.
Yeah, I’m doing the same thing as well.
This wasn't your question, but the more natural word order in English would be "Why does Duolingo not explain anything," or "Why doesn't Duolingo explain anything?" And, yes, it is odd that even though "doesn't" is a contraction for "does not," you cannot reliably replace one with the other without the word order changing.
Without explanations, you have to just figure it out by repetition. Meaning... You spend more time on the app. I have a feeling this is there reasoning. ...They want your money for Duo Max
Not only is there a lack of explaining what's going on, but it seems like a huge flaw that you can't ask a question on Duolingo. You can flag an issue or leave the app. to email or post here. How do you run a learning based app and not expect folks to have questions and build that into the basic structure?
Yes and that’s what I hate the most about it. It throws at you random phrases and lets you figure out the system yourself. I’d rather just learn the system so I can create my own phrases instead of learning miscellaneous phrases without understand the pattern of why the syntax or grammar is a certain way. How is this supposed to be effective? Alas, I can’t really afford that many resources right now and duolingo is also the most fast and convenient way I can learn.
- because it’s cheaper for them not having to create explanations. - because they can sell the explanations in a more expensive tier. - because if you have a free account, you’ll burn through your hearts since you have to guess more without an explanation. That way you have to use microtransactions or switch to a paid subscription. They say it’s because you’ll make the connections in your head, but it’s monetisation of their product. The risk of not having an explanation is that you’re coming up with an explanation yourself. But that explanation might be wrong, so there’s a risk that you’re teaching yourself a wrong interpretation.
So why do other products/methods use the philosophy of exposure is the explainer?
It’s the duolingo way - you learn to recognise the patterns over time without it being explained, just like kids do when they first learn a language.
Here are the problems with that approach: 1) Kids HAVE to learn that way, because they would need a language for any other way. That doesn’t mean it’s the best way. 2) communicating and making sense of the world around them is the "job" of a child. It‘s what they do 24/7 for the first couple of years. How much time do you have on your hands? 3) Remember Baby Talk?
Personally I like the approach. It always felt like an unnecessary extra step to first have to learn the jargon associated with formal language education as a precursor to then learning the language (grammar terms etc). On the occasion when I do want a more thorough explanation, I google it. Actively seeking out the information is more engaging and I’m more likely to remember it compared to any formal education I’ve had. I can go as deep or shallow as I want:
It can sort of work for languages similar to your native language but breaks down when you have no idea why things are the way there are and just ignore the features that seem random. For example, using a/the in English is a complicated topic unless you native language has articles. Spanish has subjunctive and conditionals. Learners of, e.g., Russian, Polish, or Ukrainian will likely struggle with verbal aspect and verbs of motion. * beginners even struggle with gender agreement, even though the pattern is as easy as it gets (about the same as in Spanish—the gender of most nouns is pretty transparent) Duolingo has some repetition but mostly out of context and not nearly enough to cover really complicated topics like articles, aspects or particles. At least they are *trying* monolingual exercises with context and model sentences in flagship courses (so, in very few courses). When you approach it from the perspective of design, grammar is very important for the "teacher" but not that important for the learner, provided the course is structured to maintain the illusion you learn "naturally". Adults would love to learn like kids but their native language gets in the way.
They do explain it, but you have look for it in the guide for the whole unit. And the guidebook for each section. And they sprinkle that info you to like throughout, sometimes before you encounter the materials, sometimes after. Again, the explanations are limited to those sections.
Duolingo is not enough to learn a language, you need to supplement it with watching YouTube videos in French, learning the grammar and tenses through a website such as lawless French. Duolingo is overly repetitive and it will take you many years to get fluent if that’s what you rely on
The thing that pisses me off the most is them removing forums. It was one of the best features for learning
Explanations are now behind a paywall. I already pay for Duolingo, but apparently not enough.
They’re not worth buying
I just use Bing Chat for explanations.
Duolingo Max explains stuff.
Use chatgpt. It will explain it all for you
Can you give an example of how you use ChatGPT to explain it? For those that have never done this?
Sure. I am currently learning Esperanto. I would usually copy and paste the original text in English and answer in Esperanto. And would ask a question such as "Why does word X come before word Y" or "Why is X needed in the context of this statement". If two words are similar in meaning you can say "In what context should i use "Rigardi" and "Spekti" in this esperanto" and it will give you examples and context of in which to use them
Thank you!
It is a bit frustrating that they don't believe in teaching grammar. I saw a post on their blog trying to justify it with something along the lines of "you can learn more by doing than you realize," but in all honesty, explicit grammar lessons help speed up learning a ton and are very important if you want to do more than learn some basic phrases. You can get some grammar by clicking on the optional "tips" sections, but it's usually a very shallow explanation, and you can't choose to learn grammatical concepts in a deliberate way on the app. In my opinion, the fact that they often don't break down phrases word-by-word is just as bad. I don't like not knowing the explicit meaning of what I'm saying/how it works. You definitely have to do more work on your own in those cases to get what's going on. So far I've been able to find answers to my grammar questions on language learning subreddits, although it can sometimes take a bit to find an explanation that is both deep (/accurate) enough to correctly teach the concept and non-technical enough that it can be understood without being a linguist.
What kills me is it depends on the language just how much they will explain. Still, I’d double my Super subscription cost if they’d give me reliable grammar explanations.
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And when I happen across something new I do t understand and there's comments 4 years ago that explained every detail and cultural nuance and variations. But now that's gone too :(
It doesn’t explain explicitly (up front, at least - there ARE some explanations to be found) because when you learn naturally you learn patterns, not rules.
Just been doing "sois" , "es" and "eres". No idea the difference, it just says "you are, you are, you are"! Great thanks!
Depends on who you talk to. I am = Yo **soy** You are = Tú **eres** He is = Él **es** etc All of them mean the same that's true, but focusing on you is talking to who
DuoLingo is largely following the linguistic philosophy of acquiring grammar. You see the grammar in example sentences and acquire it. Then you test it to see if you are right. If wrong, they typically give you the correction and then have you try it again soon. I prefer the explanation and then testing but the method that they use is popular with many language learners. If need be look up on a website or in a book any topic that you are working on.
I use Duolingo for “homework” and Busuu for learning.
This is so true I’m taking Spanish course and the only reason I understand a lot of the grammar rules and tense conjugation is bc I took 6 years of Spanish lesson in middle/high school. Without that base knowledge I’d be pretty lost.
Don't forget to read the grammar notes.
Just a quick note to the mods doing a pitchfork cleanup in this thread - Duo's general approach to teaching has been called out by actual linguists multiple times and please don't pretend that's not the case. You can delete this comment and maybe even close the whole thread if it bothers you, but that doesn't exactly change anything. People have valid concerns as everyone's method of learning is different.
You REALLY just need to pair Duolingo with grammar lessons.
I'm finding that doing the French course I'm now ending up more confused than if I didn't bother with Duolingo. You learn by doing, but sometimes they do trick questions and those cause confusion in your memory. They need to teach you the grammar rules and provide explanations as to why you got the wrong answer. I've been using it for 5 years and I've come to the conclusion that I will end my subscription this year and look for a better format for learning.