I’ve been wanting to talk about Duolingo for a while because I have a lot of feelings regarding its teaching methodology. I tried it first a few years ago, but quickly burned out for three reasons: a) the sentences were weird, b) the grading was tough on spelling/formatting, and c) there was no instruction. So, one had to start a lesson and make mistakes to at least get a sentence level translation, but the 3-strikes-and-you-are-out system made learning a real chore. When I started up again over a year ago, it was clear they had worked out a lot of the flaws, and the “relaunch” last spring shows the company is continually trying to optimize the system. Nevertheless, there are some major flaws with Duolingo:
- Over reliance on full sentence translations. Sometimes the question bank pulls up a word-word pair or a word-image pair, but it seems the vast majority of Duolingo’s question bank involves full sentences. While the context allows greater flexibility in learning expressions (when context is needed for disambiguation) and this allows for testing of grammar (S-V agreements, conjugation, etc), sometimes it can be useful just to drill the smaller elements of a language. For a mobile first learning platform, full sentences involve a lot of typing on a phone keyboard. Maybe I’m just old, but that’s a pain in the neck. On the other hand, when selecting from the word bank, there is usually only one grammatically sentence that can be formed (I’m thinking translating from target language to source language), so one could essentially ignore the target language.
- Limited question bank. Not only are most vocabulary items stuck within the context of a sentence, they only exist in one or two sentences. The main exceptions of which are the earlier levels where you drill “he sits, she sits, the dog sits, the duck sits, … ad nauseum.” One needs to see words in a variety of contexts to really master it. However, after a few times through the set of questions in a particular lesson, one has memorized the meanings of all the possible sentences and can hack it.
- Rigid lesson structures. Duolingo segregates its question bank into discrete lesson units. So topic A has 2-6 lessons, and each lesson draws from its own question bank. Because the current crown system requires repeating all the lessons in the topic up to 11 times, one can quickly over learn. For example, I know from memory that Japanese Hiragana 1 Lesson 1 has dog, cat, and bird. If I do a random review, and come across bird, then I automatically know the next questions are going to be about dogs and cats.
- Weak on Asian languages*. Having thoroughly explored Duolingo’s Korean and Japanese units as well as briefly playing around with Chinese, I can attest that Duolingo doesn’t understand the need for a stronger drilling of the language basics. I started with Japanese because I wanted to improve my recognition of hirigana and kitakana, but because of the rigid lesson structures and poor overall design, I can learn groups of 4-5 characters in discrete chunks, only needing to distinguish among those 4 characters (instead of against ones that are visually similar and easily confused). When testing character to romanization, Duolingo says the character out loud, undercutting the point of training sight recognition (and complains if you try muting your phone). Finally, there are a bunch of characters that aren’t even taught in the early sections or on their own at all, only being mixed into to full sentences further down the lesson tree.
- No sense of learner’s vocabulary level. Though Duolingo offers the option to “test out” of chunks of lessons and touts the use of spaced repetition, the system really doesn’t have a clue what words I know and what words I don’t, meaning I sometimes repeatedly am answering questions that are way too easy which is both boring and a waste of time. As far as testing out goes, it merely unlocks chunks of levels, so one could theoretical start learning midway through the tree. But the gamified design still incentivizes one to max out the earlier lessons.
Despite all this, I’ve been sticking with Duolingo for over a year. Firstly, because I do find it quite useful with Spanish and German. Secondly, despite its flaws, one does get exposed to the target language and learning does occur. Thirdly, most of these flaws are common to every language learning app/software I’ve seen.
*I have seen Lingodeer presented as an alternative to Duolingo with a better treatment of Asian languages. I’ve only used it a little so far, but other than substituting a deer for an owl, it seems to be similarly structured.