My boss stopped learning Spanish on Duolingo when he lost his streak. It's a powerful motivator even if it's not a "true streak" due to streak freezes and such. My streak is at 1436 and if I lost it, I wouldn't stop Duolingo because I actually like it to learn, but the streak does make me happier, haha. I think I've had 2 days in the last few years of streak freezes due to 1 day forgetting and 1 day the site not saving my exercise. Ah well, I still like my streak even if it's not 100% pure!
Same for me. I had a 800+ day streak and I remember that on the days I couldn't practice, I used to play Duolingo story #1 at 1am with half eyes open just to keep it going.
But as soon as my streak ended, my frequency of playing went from 6 days in a week, to 5 days.. and now I haven't played it in months. Fake or not, keeping the streak alive did help me learn a lot of French (well actually there is one more side to it.. even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff)
> even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff
This is the real problem with Duolingo: it doesn't actually teach you to communicate in the language. Rote memorization and communication are two different things, and Duolingo does very little aside from drilling memorization. Streaks and gamification don't contribute to communication, which has its own system of rewards: when you communicate successfully, you accomplish some real-world task like buying yourself bread or getting a date, and that accomplishment doesn't need game-level rewards. Gamification is only effective when trying to palliate some sort of otherwise boring "grinding" (to use a gaming term from RPGs).
Duolingo can absolutely get you reading and listening. Which is let's say half the battle.
I think it's too dramatic to say it's a "real problem" with it! Anybody who intends to become fluent in a language is going to need to practice actually speaking and writing.
Every tool has its use, but sometimes that use is pretty limited. I don't know if it's a "real problem" that Duolingo focuses on this stuff so much, but honestly, it's probably more about Duolingo's engagement numbers than it is about learning.
Is rote memorization essential to language learning? Absolutely. Should it be the focus of your learning after the very early stages? Probably not. It's just something you do, all the time. Memorize all you like, but true acquisition only comes after you've used your words in real conversation / listening, so that's should probably be where you place your effort. But that doesn't help Duolingo.
In the Japanese learning community, the seduction of this kind of rote, mechanistic, "streak-y" learning has been a trap for a long time -- so much so that there's a popular methodology that has people spend a great deal of time "memorizing kanji". It's appealing because Japanese has a big alphabet of complex characters and the methodology suggests that you can turn learning into a simple memorization exercise with discreet, measurable progress. The problem is, it's pretty much orthogonal to the act of speaking (or reading, or listening to) the language. Learn 2000 kanji and you might gain some ability to infer the meanings of words, but you're still essentially illiterate. The same thing applies at the level of words and sentences -- I have lots of words that I "know" on flashcards, but aren't available to me in actual conversation.
People get absolutely addicted to this stuff, spend years on it while gaining no meaningful level of language skill, then get frustrated and quit. The tragedy is that most people could put in a fraction of that time engaged in listening and speaking with a simple vocabulary, and end up in the kind of virtuous cycle that actually leads somewhere.
I’m not sure I would be so pessimistic. Learning a language is hard and you’re probably correct that you won’t be able to speak it with just duolingo. That doesn’t mean duolingo isn’t providing a substantial amount of necessary foundation.
I’ve never tried it but I feel like it’s probably similar to Spanish classes in high school.
It is similar in that Spanish classes necessarily require learning a lot of vocabulary and grammar. However once you have a base level of knowledge you can take advantage of being near real people to practice conversation skills. By the end of my second year of Spanish class we were being tested speaking for several sentences about a topic (with some advance preparation) to the teacher who would ask questions. Holding a conversation, more or less.
Duolingo doesn't put so much emphasis on conversation in my experience. Most of the questions give you the words in one language or the other and have you write out an answer. This allows you to lean on reading. Listening and speaking are the hardest parts so the should have the most practice, not the least.
That it doesn't - teach you to communicate, that is - but I found DuoLingo great at providing the base vocabulary and phrases to enable me to make my first small attempts at communicating.
(I suddenly found myself stuck in Brazil for work for two months this year, and after a couple of hours of DuoLingo I was able to exchange a few phrases with hotel staff, often interspersed with the most useful phrase 'O que isso significa?' (What does that mean?')
The best part of DuoLingo was (and is) to save my conversation partners much of the 'Oh, in Portuguese we call that...' we'd otherwise be doing.
In the context you mentioned it, the streak sounds like a powerful demotivator.
This is a more general problem with gamification and external rewards: they are just as good demotivators as they are motivators, if not more so.
This is why I wanted to turn off streaks when I was using Duolingo. I knew it was just a matter of time before I had my streak broken, and I was very concerned about what would happen then.
The real question is whether they'd have used it to begin with— I’d guess not. It seems most folks here discouraged by streak-loss had sizable steaks to lose. That means they reaped real benefit and provided real revenue for duolingo. Nobody uses a language learning app forever.
The gamification requires two coordinating motivations— secondarily the game mechanics, and primarily learning a language. Duolingo won't replace candy crush for non-language-learners. I imagine folks significantly discouraged by poor game performance without doing some serious learning first just aren’t motivated enough to practice their language skills in an app.
Personally, I’m not motivated by gamification at all and am content to ignore it. It is noisy, however, and I also wouldn’t mind the ability to shut it off.
That goes to show how easily humans are manipulated. When I read these comments it all sounds incredibly pointless. People cherishing a counter they are allowed to increase.
The problem is progress is slow and hard to measure. Streaks are something you can measure and consistent study makes a different after many hours of work.
That said, if you want to learn a language you need to study a lot. Complete everything Duolingo can in a few months and then find better courses of study to learn after that. You should never in my opinion have more than a 6 month streak.
Better for who, you or Duolingo? If you want to learn a language you need to run out of Duolingo exercises in a couple months and quit that app for other study.
Same here. In fact I lost my 1000+ day streak 2 months ago (a newborn will do that to you) and haven't done a single Duolingo lesson since then. However, I did replace it with another app called DuoCards (no relation to Duolingo, AFAICT) which is great for memorizing vocabulary using spaced repetition. Duolingo used to have a companion app that did something similar, but they closed it a year ago. Anyway, they lost my subscription.
I was learning several languages and one day at 12:01am I lost a streak. That crushed me. From then on I haven't touched Dulolingo. It sounds silly but the streaks have a very real physical affect on me.
It's similar to redit where someone demanded a subredit of mine since they deemed I not active enough (I was active but not to random guy's satisfaction) and the redit mods agreed. I haven't been on redit since after being a member for 15 years.
So yeah streaks, the chain (as Jerry Seinfeld says), consistency being broken makes me feel like crap.
At a much smaller scale, that's what happened to me with the Wordle game. Once I lost my 100%, I never touched it again. With Duolingo the drive is the learning so I've lost the streak many times (current is highest at 60) but that matters nothing to me. With Wordle, I think I was no longer having much fun, and keeping the streak probably was the only reason I played.
I'm not defending the current system, but the predatory tactics of a decade+ ago changed dramatically under Obama and there are other steps currently being taken to prevent overly aggressive marketing tactics. University of Phoenix, for example, completely changed their marketing habits (among others afraid of getting sued/losing accreditation).
My boss got me on CookUnity and I use it because the taste/variety is good enough and I'd rather spend my time on my hobbies. Re: portion size, you just have to know what to pick to get your money's worth.
The calorie counts looked way off in the past, and my boss actually contacted them about it. I still don't believe most of the calorie counts and breakdown of macros.
I heard their service went downhill for some people but I've never had any issues, and a long time ago got a deserved refund for something.
I always get alerts before the cutoff time, so you could "skip" that week rather than message customer service. I'm not saying the author's gripe isn't real, it is, but they've at least always been clear with my orders.
Deaths from the current year can take a while to be finalized, and Decembers can be one of the deadliest months. If the U.S. hits 500k excess deaths this year, that's still a 20-25% hike on our normal death rate (2.7M give or take). Seems like Sweden will surpass past years in the end, perhaps by a similar percentage.
If we linearly extrapolate the December 18 data to December 31st, we get 91773 * (366/353) = 95,152.
Which would indeed be the highest level this decade, but still only 3.2% higher than 2018.
Sweden's 2019 deaths were also the lowest in the decade, so there was a lot of built up 'dry tinder'. In fact the excess deaths in 2020 match up almost exactly with the 'non-deaths' of 2019.
"In Sweden, the observed increase in all-cause mortality during Covid-19 was partly due to a lower than expected mortality preceding the epidemic and the observed excess mortality, was followed by a lower than expected mortality after the first Covid-19 wave. This may suggest mortality displacement."
Thanks for posting this. I do think we are greatly overreacting to this. The drug industries have wanted to push mRNA treatments for years and have never been able to get them approved. They have a vested interested in leveraging this perceived crisis.
Vitamin D, ivermectin and even some inhaled steroids have all shown to been effective in treating the worst cases. The insanely high amplification of PCR assays are padding case numbers with false positives. Any contradictory information and academic viewpoints are getting censored on every major platform. This is totally madness.
I live in the East Village and sure you can see the occasional rooftop gathering or neighbor having a 5-10-person get-together, but except for some anecdotes about 'underground parties,' nightlife is quite shutdown except for outdoor (and minimal) indoor dining that closes early. No one I know has been to an 'underground party' and we are the types to go out to bars/dance places on weekends outside of Covid.
I have the same experience but am fairly certain the story sounds accurate.
I use to go to a fair amount of underground parties after last calls when I was younger, and there are definitely people out there. I’d bet places like Bushwick are a good bet to look with the big industrial spaces.
Even if it was 15 parties a weekend, times 500 people a party... it’d still only be 7,500 people in a city of 8 million (that’s if 400,000 truly left), I’m sure it’s concentrated primarily among ravers, and dancers, and clubbers.
I went to a few during late summer around Bushwick and East New York. They're happening regularly. One I went to was in a basement of an unfinished apartment building.
So you are one guy living somewhere in New York City, and reporting that based on your view from your window, you report that nightlife has indeed, for the most part stopped save the few small gatherings? okay..
I do daily 30-60 minute conversations with native Brazilian speakers on Italki. That can add up in price quickly, but I would recommend at least 1-2 lessons per week to start after getting the basics down on something like Duolingo/Rosetta Stone. It was a world of difference between year 1 only using Duolingo/YouTube etc. and actually having Brazilian teachers correct my grammar, pronunciation, and add vocabulary for very context-specific situations that came up in conversations. Not to mention slang, idioms, etc.
I see. Thank you for your prompt comment. Just one clarification ... When you are saying "getting the basics down on something like Duolingo/Rosetta Stone", do you mean that "basics" here includes all levels (as far as I know, solid courses like Rosetta Stone or Fluenz - as opposed to Duolingo and similar apps - have multiple levels, where higher levels are pretty advanced) or you are talking about first 1-2 levels?
Duolinguo is a poor substitute for human interaction. It's a good tool to support other methods, but it encourages pattern matching rather than actual memorisation and there simply isn't enough variety in the examples to help you with translating unseen phrases. It's also not sufficient for speaking practice, but at least you can hear the text-to-speech.
There are some positives. The community is very active and helpful. They've done a lot better with the lessons. Japanese, for example, is much improved. It used to be that you'd get exercises in hiragana with no context at all.
I agree with the other post, you'll get much more out of a two hour class once a week than doing ten minutes of duolinguo a day. The claim that x hours is equivalent to a university semester is nonsense.
Your question was about optimality. It doesn't take much classroom time to get good - maybe two or three courses? (say 60 hours to A2/B1) That gets you enough of a baseline that you can start watching TV, reading papers. For example in our B1 lessons for Spanish, we'd actually read El País as an exercise.
I ran through the Michel Thomas 8 hour audio course, then 3 semesters of evening class at my university (run by the language dept). That was about 60 hours of class time, 2 hours a week. By the end I would have been comfortable going for B1 with a bit of study. In terms of course level I finished up working on B2 level material. If I was doing it again I'd look at the Instituto Cervantes. I had access to grad student pricing, but even so it cost about 200 a semester.
At the time I was also dating a native speaker and we would watch Spanish TV with English subs as well as English TV with Spanish subs. I still have a lot of friends who are native Spanish speakers which helps.
No idea about Fluenz, sorry. One of my friends used Lingoda for German and seemed to have a decent time with it. They also do language marathons where you get a significant discount if you do daily lessons, but it's easy to miss one and then you don't get a refund.
I think the takeaway is that classes sometimes don't feel that useful at the time - I would often be doing homework the night before, or on the train, but it made a massive difference speaking to people regularly. The main benefit is it offers a structure that's difficult to get if you talk to strangers or even friends, or if you buy a textbook.
Professional (and experienced) teachers are careful to not use vocabulary that's beyond your level, but at the same time a good class will be taught solely in the target language. In that sense I would seriously look at Lingoda if you can't attend evening classes. You get structured lessons with real people with very flexible scheduling. I don't know what qualifications the teachers are required to have though, and it's important as a beginner that you have people who know how to teach (and aren't just regurgitating the material).
For Spanish, Instituto Cervantes (similarly for German you have the Goethe Institute) is the de facto international language school and you can mostly guarantee the teachers will be good.
Much appreciate your feedback, which is very helpful. I agree with you on balancing structural benefits of classes with vocabulary and other benefits of conversational practice with native speakers. I haven't heard of Lingoda before - will definitely check it out and keep it in mind.
So I went through the whole Duolingo tree for Portuguese and thought it was high quality and got me good a foundation. As others noted, there is no substitute for actual conversation/interaction with native speakers, and I wish I started that sooner. I also second the recommendation of using something like Anki or Quizlet for vocabulary practice. I only noted that it's good to have a base before starting with professional teachers because if you're budget isn't unlimited, you might not get the bang for your buck having teachers walk you through the most basic stuff like hello/how are you/how much does that cost/etc. that you can get with Duoloingo/Rosetta Stone or similar programs. But if you want to start off with Italki and lessons on day 1 with native speakers, it certainly won't hurt!
Duolingo works very well as an introduction so you can get a taste of a language.
There's no point doing higher levels on duolingo - if you actually want to learn a language to conversational level and beyond then proceed directly to memorising vocabulary with spaced repetition software such as Anki. It is much more effective.
The person who might benefit from higher levels on duolingo is the traveller who does not aim for conversational level but wants to pick up enough words to get by.
While this is a fair point (due to the difference in money), there is something to be said about the trauma imposed on people who are witness to a bank robbery, not to mention the potential lives hurt/lost if things go sour. I'm not saying in your above example that the 27mo and 10yr sentences should be shorter or longer, I'm just noting that there are reasons the two aren't equal.
Fair point, but the penalties for white collar crime are still very lax even when "everyday" people are affected. Look at the last recession which led to many "average" american families losing their homes. That wasn't possible without fraud especially the ratings agencies that were giving out false ratings and still no one went to prison.
Yes I agree with you there. There are a whole host of blue collar crimes that have too high a penalty as well. I'm not saying don't change the sentences. Just noting the difference. I personally tried to convince multiple people that insider trading should be illegal and prosecuted (example of white collar crime that is hard to pinpoint someone who suffers directly). Between libertarian-minded people and very left-wing people, it's hard to convince some people I know that want to eliminate prisons (left) or regulations (libertarians), that we should be handing out penalties for certain things, let alone stiffer penalties. Prosecute fraud? I'm with you on that!
> If you are convicted of misdemeanor grand theft, you face up to 364 days in county jail and a maximum fine of $1,000. If you are convicted of felony grand theft, you face a sentence of 16 months, two or three years in county jail and maximum fine of $10,000[1]
I think armed robbery sentences depend on whether it was the first time or this is far down the list of incidents (also rap sheet might have a history of other things), but a fist time non violent robber probably will not get ten years in the klink, though you could if the judge and prosecutor impose maximums.
Most states consider “no priors” in sentencing guidelines.
