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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

But is that actually true? When I see people say Duolingo is bad, they're always comparing it to some highly optimized language learning strategy, where you weave together Anki and suchandsuch grammar resource and a strict regimen of 30 minutes of target language media every day.

I'd agree that Duolingo significantly compromises effectiveness for the sake of engagement, but to most people engagement is the hardest part of learning a language!

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Yes, it's true. Using Duolingo is significantly worse than just about all your other options, including picking up a $30 Living Language textbook/workbook/CD set of whatever language you want. Living Language isn't aimed at university students or the most motivated people either. It's just one of the cheaper options.

This is not just a throwaway comment, either. I've built and run a language school for four years (with two partners), taught thousands of children, worked at a language learning startup, and have read a lot L2 acquisition papers and know this space pretty well. I also contributed to Anki long ago, but I'm not a huge fan of using SRS for learning vocabulary. Extensive reading (and listening once you can) is a far better strategy. (Anki is pretty good for memorizing discrete pieces info though, such as how to write each Chinese character or all the atomic weights and numbers on the periodic table).

As for engagement, I think Duolingo is pretty boring compared to making new friends, talking with people or even just reading a book about something I'm curious about. If you're learning any popular language (e.g. English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, etc), you'll be able to find some pretty good graded readers aimed at beginners that let you start actually reading in your first few months of studying.

> I'm not a huge fan of using SRS for learning vocabulary. Extensive reading (and listening once you can) is a far better strategy

Can you explain your logic and how you measure success? FWIW I'm ~8 languages deep and started using SRS with my 5th language. For the last couple languages I've tracked my metrics extensively (i.e. words learned and retained per day). Also with the SRS tool I use I read sentences along side the words I'm learning so I get some context.

There's a lot of L2 acquisition research on extensive reading and it's definitely worth checking out.

I covered some of my reasoning about the limitations of SRS in the 2nd half of this podcast: https://alchemist.camp/learning-machine/spaced-repetition-sy...

Seems like you pretty much contrast:

[1] SRS flashcard apps as an exclusive language learning system

[2] Extensive reading

While (2) is clearly better if those are your only choices, as you point out yourself SRS can easily be integrated into other curriculum or used as a supplemental tool. I'm not sure how many languages deep you are but I find getting through the first 1000-3000 words a real slog in the language and it is also quite hard to read in a language when you are at sub-3000 words unless you are reading especially prepared texts in a textbook for language learners.

My preferred method is to do the basic grammar of a language and first 2000 words as quickly as possible with a cram method and then work on speaking and transitioning from passive to active vocabulary. SRS is a nice tool, esp. if the SRS tool you are using also has included sentences in context (I mostly use learnwitholiver.com). Then usually I work to train for the state run test of the language that I'm studying at a reasonably high level.

Turns out Gwern has a very well researched article on SRS: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition

That's odd. Your strategy of rushing through basic grammar and a small number of words quickly is actually a use case I said SRS is useful for.

In the link you're responding to, I said:

> "The second situation where spaced repetition works really well is when you're studying something more complex, but you can use spaced repetition as a scaffold to get through the initial phases a bit faster. Learning vocabulary is like this. Though there are the issues that pointed out earlier about context and collocations and word boundaries, spaced repetition can still be a huge win. And that's because you don't have to use it to learn and remember everything. You can use it to get a scaffold, to get started with whatever foreign language you're learning or medical vocabulary or whatever kind of vocabulary. And after having memorized, say, five hundred or a thousand or even five thousand words in this new area that you're studying, you can then do a lot of reading and use those words and encounter them in many different contexts and actually acquire a solid grasp of that topic."

I would definitely start with training my ear to the sounds in a language at the very beginning, but flashcards can also be a useful supplement early on. It's funny you mention Oliver! I was in contact with him when he first launched his site (just for Chinese, initially). For what it does, it's made well. LingQ is probably my favorite for getting the initial base down, though.

FWIW, I don't think I've every encountered anyone who saw SRS as an exclusive language learning system, except maybe a few hopeful app developers who have realized how easy it is to make a flashcard app.

The real question is how much of your study time do you want to spend on decontextualized sentences or words vs time spent on sustained reading, listening or conversation?

I track my time via 22 minute segments and typically do ~3 per day of vocab vs 9 per day of structured language learning and another 6 per day of reading and writing. So of the structured time I spent language learning it is a bit less than 20% of the time I spend. My target is about 100 words per day but my actual best time over an extended period is about 58 words per day on tracked words. Oliver is good but there are a bunch of features I'd add if I could. Will check out LingQ as well.

One of your criticisms of spaced repetition is the difficulty of representing associations between words on flashcards. I agree that that's difficult (though you can mitigate it by including example sentences in your deck). However, I think that that criticism expects too much of spaced repetition. It's a very powerful technique for learning and holding onto new vocabulary, but it doesn't replace reading, listening and speaking. You really can't learn nuances of word meaning with flashcards alone, but you can build up and retain a large vocabulary. You can deepen your understanding of the subtleties of the language in other ways.

I would say that Duolingo does the distinctly American thing of optimizing for making you “feel good” about your progress, even if that progress has no correlation with actual language ability. It’s more of a self-esteem simulator by way of language-learning than it is a useful tool for foreign language instruction.

The point is that if you want to learn a language, you either follow an intensive regimen like the one you've described, or you don't and you make essentially no progress. Learning languages is not rocket science. It's mostly just work and dedication.

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