Comment by tudorconstantin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tudorconstantin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

tudorconstantin

My now 12.5 years old daughter started to learn English on Duolingo when she was around 9. She didn't complete the full course, but has around 100-150 days of lessons. It definitely helped her starting to understand the language.

She loves Harry Potter so much that after reading the whole series in Romanian, she started to read the first volume in English. Didn't finish that either, but managed to read about 100 pages of it and she said that after 30-40 pages, it became substantially easier to understand.

Now she's among top 3 students, if not the first, in her class at English, outpacing colleagues who take 2-3 hours weekly of extra English lessons, without having a single paid English lesson.

Duolingo might not teach you how to speak a language fluently, but it definitely can give you a headstart in learning one.

She's not able to speak English fluently yet, but she's able to watch TV series without subtitles and she's able to actually communicate with other English speaking people when visiting other countries.

When I started learning more languages as an adult, I found that the biggest accelerator for me personally was likewise to read novels, even if they were way beyond my nominal skill level. The first 50-100 pages would be slow grinding, looking up almost everything in the dictionary, but then it would rapidly get faster and easier as I got used to common turns of phrases, idioms etc. And it was great for maintaining real motivation, wanting to read and understand these captivating stories by Eco, Houellebecq, etc.

That's a really interesting approach. I wonder if there are reading apps which have that dictionary integrated, but which still require a mouseover / tap to display it for a particular word (they are just using a translation language dictionary).

In my experience, a little hardship when looking up a word helps you remember it. Like having to alt-tab to a Google Translate tab vs just tapping the word inline, or having subtitles.

If it's too easy, then I found I'll look up the same words every time because it's too easy-come-easy-go.

Pleco is a high-quality dictionary app (for Chinese and only Chinese) which is currently moving into the space of selling ebooks. Dictionary features are of course integrated into the reader.

Kindle does this, both on device and in app.

I learned Japanese to a level where I can read novels without a dictionary, more or less. I just looked the words up one by one - I think the amount of time to look up a word actually made me learn them better. If I only saw a word once, I would be less likely to look it up. If a word I didn’t know always came up, I’d look it up and write it down. You also get lots of examples of how to use a word if you look it up - a definition alone is not always the best way to learn. If you are reading online, you can use the chrome plugin rikaikun to get a mouse over lookup. But I still prefer a hard copy and an electronic dictionary.

Look up LingQ

LingQ is great but too expensive for what it is, in my opinion. You could build a similar (unpolished) app in a month over some weekends.

Kobo does this.

I think that's both duolingo and more her effort to find ways to apply the language to her interests. I didn't have literature in my language classes and generally wasn't taught about the opportunity to "live" in my target language until I got to college IIRC.

Here in the US, we go hard on repeated rote memorization and mastery of minute things that don't matter as much.

This is compelling enough that I'm giving the app a try. Thank you and congratulations to your daughter.

>She didn't complete the full course, but has around 100-150 days of lessons

"Did wet streets cause rain or did rain cause wet streets" Did 100 lessons of treatment (duolingo) cause her to become proficient in English or are children with a natural proficiency towards language the ones that survive the treatment?

If only the strongest people survive having their blood drawn by leeches, it doesn't mean that leeches make you strong. Despite there being a high correlation in treatment outcome.

>Duolingo might not teach you how to speak a language fluently, but it definitely can give you a headstart in learning one.

That's a remarkable jump, to make that claim based on some rough assessment of a single person.

I didn't have duolingo but I still outperformed most of my colleagues who were in extracurricular English. What can I conclude from that?

Is no discussion permitted except presentation of double-blind, appropriately sized studies?

If you re-read my comment carefully, you will find that I am presenting another anecdotal counterexample, so I don't see where your coming from with that comment.

Also, we can discuss, but we should be aware that we can draw little to no conclusions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com