The biggest problem with Duo are the extremely limited exercises and educational materials. Gamification is great.
But you're not going to learn declension and cases from repeating the same few stilted examples that don't even exhibit enough variety to pick up the underlying rules, especially as an adult.
Duolingo is trying to do implicit language learning but the language input is far too narrow.
I used Duolingo to start learning a language with a different alphabet, and it taught me the alphabet, the sounds, and some basic vocabulary. But it couldn't teach me verb conjugation, noun declension, plurals, ownership, etc. etc. etc. That I needed a teacher for.
With the teacher, I then used Anki cards to help with remembering more vocab and with keeping things fresh everyday in between lessons. Duolingo could be that, if they had enough examples, perhaps. I would prefer Duolingo type exercises over my Anki cards, as well as the streak and friendship network effects, but there's simply not enough content.
I think the gamification is at the core of why Duolingo has persisted even though it doesn’t work.
At any point in real learning, or in acquiring any kind of skill in anything, one hits a plateau and the thing becomes boring or dull or hard. Internal drive to learn the thing must overcome the drudgery of repetition until you exceed that plateau. And then eventually there’s another one down the road.
What’s more is that the more we learn the more we get rewarded for confronting and pushing through the boring or hard. It’s a real reward that dopamine is evolutionarily designed to encourage. In a way, learning is already as “gamified” as it needs to be.
Gamification on the other hand convinces us that we’re making progress but it’s completely artificial. It manipulates dopamine in ways that don’t encourage actual and more learning. Instead gamification rewards gamification.
We need less gamification in our world and more internalification.
But you're not going to learn declension and cases from repeating the same few stilted examples that don't even exhibit enough variety to pick up the underlying rules, especially as an adult.
Duolingo is trying to do implicit language learning but the language input is far too narrow.
I used Duolingo to start learning a language with a different alphabet, and it taught me the alphabet, the sounds, and some basic vocabulary. But it couldn't teach me verb conjugation, noun declension, plurals, ownership, etc. etc. etc. That I needed a teacher for.
With the teacher, I then used Anki cards to help with remembering more vocab and with keeping things fresh everyday in between lessons. Duolingo could be that, if they had enough examples, perhaps. I would prefer Duolingo type exercises over my Anki cards, as well as the streak and friendship network effects, but there's simply not enough content.