Memorization can help you learn new vocabulary. And it’s true that spaced repetition combats what’s called the “ forgetting curve,” thus allowing for easier and longer-lasting memorization. What do actual language professionals think of Duolingo?ĭuolingo’s design largely relies upon a system called “ spaced repetition,” a technique in which learned information is repeated at regular (usually short) intervals. But I’m not a language professor, or an expert I am merely a crabby writer with slight Francophile tendencies. It’s hard for me to believe anyone could really learn a new language in any meaningful way with this program. If coming to a language as a novice, you’ll learn largely by trial and error, which means you’ll learn by memorizing, with little context as to why sentences look the way they do. I didn’t learn much of anything about sentence structure, because the Duolingo app doesn’t explain that to you. Sure, I know how to say hello, and please, and thank you, but these are all things I’d already absorbed by living in a country that loves putting French words on pillows and T-shirts. I translated apple from English to French and back again. The circumstances in which Duolingo envisioned my needing to speak aboutĪpples were either too fanciful (“The bird is eating an apple: L’oiseau mange la pomme”) or vaguely threatening (“My pocket contains an apple: Ma poche contient une pomme.” And not in normal, plausibleĬontexts - not “I’ll have an apple, please,” or “Do you want my apple?” I cannot even begin to tell you how many timesĭuolingo had me talking about apples. Is what I remember from my months of Duolingo French studies: “une Why? Because they are real things people say, unlike most of the phrases “thank you,” and I remember them all today, 14 years later. To China in college, I learned these three phrases, plus “hello” and Get around town at least somewhat politely. The sort of purely transactional but useful phrases a tourist needs to Is the bathroom?” or “How much does this cost?” or “I want that one,” Quotation marks because I did not, of course, expect to become fluent orĮven mildly conversant in a foreign language over such a short timeįrame, and especially not using an app. ![]() Few years ago, about six months before a trip (my first) to Paris, Iĭownloaded Duolingo in an attempt to “learn French.” I put that in
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