Would I use Duolingo to learn a new language?

So I'm going to do a little bit of Duolingo.

I'm going to look at two languages, Turkish and Hindi.

Turkish, because my wife and I are going to go to Turkey in the fall.

As a result of this, I've decided to sort of slow down my Arabic and

Persian and focus in on Turkish.

And that's a language where I have already spent some time.

You'll see from my statistics that four years ago, I spent

three months on Turkish.

So I do have some knowledge of Turkish.

I'm probably sort of at an A2 verging on the B1 level.

I'm not entirely sure what those levels mean, but I have some

knowledge of Turkish and Hindi, of course, I'm starting from scratch.

Turkish is written in the Latin alphabet.

Therefore it's easier.

Hindi, of course, it has its own writing system.

So different scenarios and what I will do.

Is I will get on the Duolingo here and I will record the screen and a comment as

I'm going through it, and we will talk again after my experience with Duolingo.

So Greek and Arabic is what I did before, but this time I'm interested in Turkish.

And there it is.

So Turkish is loading.

So I got to decide where I am.

I'm about a quarter of the way through.

In terms of my knowledge, I think.

They promised that I'll be able to converse with confidence.

I don't believe that, but we'll see.

15 minutes a day makes me a serious learner.

Okay.

That's not very much, but whatever.

No, I'll find my level.

All right.

We are reading, I think.

Let's see.

Oh, the book.

Yeah.

All right.

Now, this isn't very difficult because capital means that's the first

word in the sentence, but anyway.

The cat is sleeping.

Now, again, there's only one choice, so that's gotta be it.

I'm a bit sort of surprised that it would be so simple,

but that seems to be the thing.

So these are pretty easy, and yet it's still possible to get them wrong.

I'm not too clear what the verb for raining is, but I'll give it a try.

Under a little pressure here.

Ah, yeah you are.

So I got the first person and third person confused.

I got the third person right this time.

Still getting used to my Turkish verbs.

I understand the principle.

It's just applying it.

Yeah, so that's your son instead of your sin.

So I'm a star here.

Yeah, that's not so hard.

Nah, I'm just guessing.

A form of ah, okay.

There's two I's there, I have no idea which it is.

It's wrong, okay.

Not sure.

Sounds like an A, that's not right.

Now I gotta match pairs, like not a chance, just total

guesswork, total guesswork.

Maybe the third one down, ah, ah, is, I do remember.

That one is okay.

That's a guess.

All right, now what?

Yeah, I keep on getting this one wrong.

I get, I guess eventually if I get in the language, and when I get

in the language, these things will become natural to me, but right now

they're pretty much of a mystery.

I guess I had a 30 percent, 33 percent chance of getting it right, but I didn't.

So now what are they asking?

You'll lose your progress if you quit.

Now keep learning.

You ran out of hearts, so what do I do now?

And they asked me to buy more gems or something.

I'm not going to do that at this point.

So I'm, I'm a bit confused at this point as to how I continue.

It's supposed to be free, you know, go, you lose your progress.

Okay.

I got no choice.

I'm going to end the session.

So what's my reaction to Duolingo?

Bear in mind, I have.

I've kind of played with it in the past.

I think it's better now.

It's more fun.

And I think the, the positive side of Duolingo is that it is fun.

It's easy to do.

You can do it five minutes a day.

If you do 15 minutes a day, you're considered a serious learner.

It's fun to get things right.

It's even fun to get things wrong and to be reminded of things that you still,

you know, don't know or haven't mastered.

So it is just an overwhelmingly pleasant experience.

And it does contribute to, if not teaching you a lot.

At least enabling you to do things with the language that confirm what

you know, and what you don't know.

The problem with Duolingo is that A, 15 minutes a day is

not going to get you very far.

It's even suggesting you can do five minutes a day and it deals

with such small disjointed things.

Parts of the language and you have no control over what you're going to learn.

So if I look at the case of Turkish, for example, once I decided that

we were going to go to Turkey, of course, I went and grabbed my Assimil

Le Turk, which I've done before.

So I'd go after this.

I have other books on Turkish.

This is only some of the books I have on Turkish.

So the point I'm trying to make is.

And there's lots there, there's lots of things associated with that language.

And I want to be able to explore what I want to explore at my pace, going

forward, going backwards, reviewing stuff that I did before, of course, I've been

spending a lot of time with our mini stories at LingQ, listening to them.

Going through them, saving words, seeing words that I've

saved before that I now refresh.

But doing all of that, I might still maybe want to spend five, 10, 15

minutes a day confirming what I know.

The problem in Duolingo is that I can't control what comes at me.

They control.

So I can't deliberately review words from a particular lesson.

I just have to, you know, perform based on whatever they give me and hopefully derive

some satisfaction from performing well.

If I look at the Hindi.

So here again, like I buy books, okay.

If I'm going to learn a language, I haven't even started on Hindi.

And even though I'm a bit skeptical of teach yourself, it is a source.

I love doing the beginner material in a language using different materials,

different sources, different books, different systems, because it's

covering sort of the same ground from a different angle and books are relatively

inexpensive compared to going to a school or engaging with a teacher.

And when it comes to the Hindi writing system, again, In Duolingo,

it comes at you so quickly.

I don't hear the text to speech very clearly.

I'm given sort of a microscopic view of a few of the letters.

I want to start with more of an overview.

So I got myself a book like this, where I have to actually

trace the letters by hand.

So when I go and do this.

I will work at learning the letters.

Of course, I'll forget them as I learn them.

And I may very well go to Duolingo to review my knowledge of the letters.

And then as we get into Hindi itself, I will of course use the mini stories

because there's so much repetition.

These are stories that make sense, but it's possible that I will go.

To Duolingo, although honestly, maybe not.

I mean, there's only so much time that I can spend.

I have an hour, an hour and a half a day to spend.

If I get engaged with content that I'm listening to and I'm looking

up the words or I'm going into a lesson in sentence mode, that I'm

probably going to continue doing that.

However, for people who are maybe less motivated or who like to maintain

contact with the language they're learning, then I think Duolingo is fine.

I was playing golf the other day.

And this lady came up to me and she knows, of course, that I'm with LingQ.

And she said, Oh, you know, I've done 1500 days consecutive streak on a Duolingo

in Spanish, and I know that she has lived in Thailand and speaks some Thai.

Her husband is a French speaking Swiss person.

And so she's pretty good at languages.

And I said, so can you speak Spanish now?

And she said, no, that's the only problem.

I still can't speak.

Yeah, because she's getting the language in little dribs

and drabs and bits and pieces.

And so that's fine, but maybe not if that's the only thing you're doing.

So you've still got to go and do all these other things and use Duolingo as

a, as an entertaining way of testing yourself, getting some feedback,

getting a sense of achievement and maintaining a contact with the language.

So that's essentially what I have to say on Duolingo.

I hope you won't feel that I was being too negative in commenting

on a, Competitive system, although I don't see it as competitive.

I see it as something that could be complimentary to books, LingQ, and

all the other things that we do.