> [learning by translation] [is] an utterly broken approach to learning languages
I speak one foreign language fluently, which I learned in a traditional classroom environment with a teacher, and recently started to learn another language with Duolingo. I actually find their "learning by translation" method possibly easier (and definitely less boring) than the traditional "keep learning all the different grammar combinations first" approach, usually featured in a classroom or in self-learning video courses.
The only feature missing from Duolingo is short grammar summaries before new grammar constructs are introduced for the first time, as Duolingo unit/section "guidebook" entries are way to short and thus useless. You have to ask an LLM for an explanation every time a particular sentence turns out to be different from what you would expect.
> traditional "keep learning all the different grammar combinations first" approach
That's not better than Duolingo, no.
Duolingo is OK initially (especially if you need to learn a new alphabet), but then quickly move on to
* https://www.languagetransfer.org/ (will give you a good understanding of the principles of the language but without feeling like a grammar book)
* https://www.pimsleur.com/ or similar audio courses (expensive, but thorough, seem to be informed by spaced repetition principles, I remember what I learn here)
* and when you've got the basics down, slow speaking podcasts or youtube which will increase your vocab and understanding greatly
* simple translated stories (I don't know what these are called, but you'll typically have first a story with translations interspersed, then the full story without any guide). https://www.lingq.com/en/ is a site that does this for you, though I guess you can use llm's this way too now
You want lots of input. You also want some deliberate practice making sentences, though in smaller portions than the input.
Translated stories are sometimes called Graded Readers, you can buy them aligned with most common language levels (CEFR, JLPT, etc)
Subtitles though, tricky. The sites that sync with Netflix are probably better than whatever Netflix offers, or whatever you can get that comes with your video files. Subtitles for entertainment are often abbreviated, which is fine for your native language, but it doesn't help if you want to look up a sentence. You need the crowdsourced ones. YouTube can be better in this regard, especially if they're automatically generated. There are also lists of video games floating around that rank games based on the availability of a script, replayable dialogue, that sort of thing. See Game Gengo for a Japanese example [1] (great channel, he also does lessons with all the vocab + grammar in context using games).
A big shootout and kuddos to Language Transfer. I love their method (since I loved Michel Thomas, we see the influence).
"Don't try to remember, don't do homework, but repeat with the two other students. It is of our responsibility [the teacher] to make you understand the language. What you know, you don't forget" (para-phrasing)
I've used Pimsleur on and off for a while and it's great, because even with sporadic usage I can still more or less remember what I learned and most of the time I just need a bit of a refresher in terms of using the right case or conjugation so I don't get I/you/they/it mixed up.
Hours into Duolingo I'm repeating total nonsense like "the man is a boy" and "the turtle has green pants," but with Pimsleur, after the same amount of time, it's right into practical stuff like "I would like something to eat" or "I don't understand X but I do speak Y."
Having an extensive vocabulary of random words isn't particulary helpful except to extrapolate meaning out of conversations you don't fully understand, and almost certainly cannot contribute to.
You need very little grammar in the first place. And if you learned your native one, it becomes easier to just store the difference (leaks may still happen). Coherent input where previous words are repeated while you learned new one are best (watch subtitled movies, and you can pick a lot if you’re focused on that).
Probably especially with a related language. I remember high school French (vaguely) abd it was probably a pretty good 4 years of high school French. But I also remember memorizing a ton of complex tenses and the like, many of which I probably rarely use in English, couldn't name, and would probably be hard for a lot of people to parse if I did, especially conversationally and mixed with negation.
Yep, French has a lot of rules! But they are grammar rules only. So while rote memorization is hard, a good tutor can hel you with the basic understanding. At the end of the day, it’s just practice. With english, you have to practice spelling and pronunciation, with French you have to practice grammar.
I see people say they get nonsense phrases in Duolingo a lot but I never seem to get them. For example, a lesson I'm doing right now has phrases like "Quand est-ce que vous partez aux Etas-Unis?" (When are you leaving for the United States?), "Tu as ton ticket? (Do you have your ticket?), "Nous cherchons un bon hôtel à Paris." (We are looking for a good hotel in Paris).
How are these nonsense phrases? Seems like some useful things to know as a traveler.
Maybe it's the different language courses. But I also did a lot of Esperanto and it had similar quality phrases to learn as this French course.
You’re not saying how far in the course you are or at what level.
The basic stage stuff is trash. You’re not even getting “ou est la biblioteque” or “donde esta la biblioteca”, you’re getting “la tortuga es verde” or “un homme ne pas femme” or something.
But I haven't done Esperanto in a long while, so I hopped into that. Back in section 1 unit 2, very early. The phrases are things like "La vetero estas bona" (the weather is good), "Hodiau estas bona tago" (today is a good day), "Cu la tago estas varma?" (Is the day hot?), "Hodiau la vetero estas tre bona" (Today the weather is very good), "Hodiau estas varma tago kaj la suno brilas" (Today is a hot day and the sun is shining). Once again, not nonsense like "the turtle has green pants".
So once again my experiences in the app do not mirror yours of just getting nonsense phrases for hours and hours.
* https://www.latudio.com/ - listening first approach, pause and show sentence if you don't understand, practice words you didn't get later, 4 types of exercises, scripted conversations being one of them
This is a falde dichotomy. Focusing on grammar is not the opposite.
If you follow the approach in "Fluent forever" by Gabriel Wyner you will focus on 1) sentences and 2) speech from day one.
The idea is that you really don't want to focus on learning translation but learn the language. Ie. It is not important that you know how to translate horse to Pferd. What is important is that you know how communicate the concept of "I want to ride a horse" in German.
> This is a false dichotomy. Focusing on grammar is not the opposite.
I don't follow you. I did not claim that focusing on grammar was a literal opposite of anything. I claimed that in my case "repetitive learning by example" turned out to be less boring than "repetitive learning by memorizing grammar".
In order to translate a randomly generated (thus never seen before, non-memorized) sentence from one language to another you have to understand the grammar in order to create a valid combination of words for your translation.
You don't have to consciously and rationally understand the grammar - you didn't when first learning to speak your first language!
Stephen Krashen is a pretty good researcher on this - the summary is that exposure to the language for time (e.g. 500 hours of content you just about understand) is the critical factor. This is training non-conscious parts of your brain's neural network.
Some people like understanding the grammar and structure of a language consciously, and it can help as a mnemonic aid for anyone. But it isn't necessary, or the critical process.
A very interesting point, I stand corrected. When I think about it, my brain usually does strongly prefer to consciously create a set of "rules" about a knowledge base rather than unconsciously memorize a set of ready-made samples. But that might be just me.
> Some people like understanding the grammar and structure of a language consciously, and it can help as a mnemonic aid for anyone.
Also, if you're looking for entertaining reading in your target language, grammar books are going to be interesting to you. The goal during language learning is to find interesting content that you understand, and your target language's grammar is a known hobby of yours.
I feel like it's the opposite. Most people who speak languages with complex grammar natively can not clearly explain the grammar to you, because they use the correct grammar intuitively, and they have learned to do so by having a ton of input in that language.
This is a bad example because it's probably more wordy/complex than it needs to be but I couldn't begin to name the various grammar being used in: "I would not have gone to Paris except that a friend decided to give me a free ticket."
Good luck getting a 3 year old Finnish person lecturing you on Finnish grammar - Even though the kid can easily ask for a ice cream in both past, present, and future.
> I claimed that in my case "repetitive learning by example" turned out to be less boring than "repetitive learning by memorizing grammar"
In this claim you implicitly say that you are focusing on "learning by memorizing grammar" if you do not are focusing on "learning by example" - hence the dichotomy, that is false.
.. is something I can't fully agree with. The exception being if the target language only has sounds which you are familiar with already (as in _really_ familiar - your native language already have them). Otherwise you'll simply train your brain to pronounce badly, because in the beginning you can't hear the differences. That's something which will be hard to fix later. And it takes time to hear the differences, your brain literally needs to grow new connections.
There are other reasons too for doing a lot (a lot) of listening when you start a new language.
I did not at all in any way mean to say that learning a language should be from a source language towards a target language. Quite the opposite really. I completely agree with the statement ".. embodying that language - ie. it is not an intellectual task". That matches my own anecdotal experiences, at least.
What I wanted to say was that even though babies can hear and differentiate between all the sounds of every language on earth (and yes they can), and young children too - what then happens is that the brain will after a time simply keep what's needed for the child's language and discard the rest. Which is why adults will have problems hearing certain sounds of a target language, unless those sounds already exist in that person's language(s). That takes time. Native English speakers, for example, are in my experience generally unable to hear the difference between certain vowels in my native language even though said vowels are as different as night and day for me. It seems to take up to two years for that to get fixed, depending on the person and also age. And in the meantime the pronunciation will be wrong and the person is unable to hear it and thus can't fix it. And later it's so hard that it won't, as a rule, get fixed.
My wife can't hear the difference between certain consonants in my language even though she's fully fluent otherwise. She has to watch my lips. After all these years. The reason is simply that those differences don't exist in her native language. On the other hand, very young people can easily do it and will get the pronunciation right at first try.
But you have to start speaking at some point. Very few non-natives can differentiate between some sounds in my language and if they waited with speaking until they could they would never get there.
Does it really matter? You can always take a diction course later if it is that important. I’ve never bothered myself to learn the different sound for ‘th’ in English, nor the exact spanish flow.
Ah yes, I agree. There are biases from previous language experience.
I am learning Polish currently, that has "complex consonant clusters". I come from a vowel heavy language, and I use a lot of time with my partner to learn to pronounce these sounds.
The only method worse than Duolingo for language learning is possibly the traditional classroom, in my humble opinion.
My background is that I've studied Korean for ~8 years now, as a native English speaker. Like most US citizens I took Spanish classes in middle & high school. I did the traditional classroom method with 3 semesters of German in college. And I forgot most of Spanish and German aside from some words and grammatical rules, because neither got me to a level of conversations with native speakers or being able to engage with media.
Duolingo and most classrooms (I know there are exceptional curriculums and exceptional students) don't prepare you to actually speak to people. They prepare you to engage within their systems, aka answering tests or whatever. This is not speaking a language but moreso learning about it academically.
There is a lot to discuss but I've never been able to recommend Duolingo, even before they reduced their staff and replaced them with AI. Why? Because it's inefficient with regards to your time, and the content is too insubstantial. It's possible to spend a year of your time on Duolingo and barely be able to speak the language at all with someone... which is kinda the whole point of studying a language?
I love the hobby of studying languages and things like Duolingo and the classroom method put people off when they can't speak very much even after a long time investment, which is damn shame.
My point is neither should really be looked towards for substantial language learning methods.
> and most classrooms (I know there are exceptional curriculums and exceptional students) don't prepare you to actually speak to people
Is this really how language lessons are taught in US high schools? I've learned English and French in high school, and we were forced to speak all the time.
* Read a story together (who's reading aloud is frequently switched), then the teacher asks questions about the story and picks students to answer. The student answers, if there's errors the teacher fixes them, and the student repeats the corrected answer.
* When you learn new grammar, the teacher starts a sentence, and a student has to finish it using the new grammatical structure (or similar exercises). This was followed by homework, where all those exercises happened again, in writing.
By year 3, we also did lots of essay-style writing, which is where you really drill down into learning the language. Essays were graded and discussed.
In my opinion, this is the best (and also most expensive) way to thoroughly learn a language, it can only really be improved by cutting down the size of the class to ideally 2-3 students - which, of course, makes it even more expensive.
We did do those kinds of things. For example, speaking with a partner or having to give a 5 minute talk to the teacher on something.
The problem is that it's grossly inefficient time-wise, and the content of "conversations" was always very, very simple. "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation. It's boring and most students learn the vocab for the upcoming chapter's test, then forget it after.
I'll concede that with 3 semesters of German, were I to pick it up again, I would probably do so pretty quickly given that the teachers paid a lot of attention to our essays.
It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.
Diligent self-study with attending a language exchange or another environment to speak/practice the language will yield much greater results much faster. You can study the same textbooks at your own pace, you can find additional material and study groups, and you can hire a tutor at times to fill in gaps.
I think if you're a college student it's fine since you have to pick a class anyway (I had to take 3 semesters of any language), but as an adult where time is significantly more precious, I can't recommend it. In a sibling comment I went over what I do use.
> "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation.
That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.
We basically never did speaking with a partner, I think our teachers realized that most students will learn little from that. It was always student teacher interactions, but in a way that required everybody to pay attention/participate. The teacher would ask a question, waited a few seconds so everybody could begin forming a response, and then pick a student to answer.
Not listening and mentally preparing an answer risked getting picked, failing, and getting admonished/ridiculed - and the teachers were (naturally) pretty good at calling on students who had drifted off. If you were paying attention, you also constantly compared your prepared response with what other students were answering, which made you think about correct grammar, ect.
I think if you have the resources to do 5 hours of language lessons a week, this is the best way. If you're learning independently, your way is probably more effective in terms of time and money. I've saved your other comment, I really should get back into Spanish...
In my four years of US high school Spanish in South Florida, I don't recall a single time we read complete stories or newspaper articles. It was entirely grammar and vocabulary in isolation. When there was speaking exercises the teachers did not make an effort to have the native speakers speak with the non-native speakers.
The only thing close to what I'd now call "Compelling Comprehensive Input" that I recall is a single week where we watched a Friends-style miniseries about an English speaker moving to Spain.
> That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.
After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.
That's certainly true, but there's probably another effect at play here: language learning is extremely time intensive, and you don't progress if you're not practicing a minimum amount of hours per month - you even lose progress again.
You probably could break through to hundreds of phrases with spaced repetition software and "only" a concentrated effort of a few dozen hours. But, yes, this requires almost daily practice. And then later, many hours of maintenance effort.
Every human learns a language from birth; there's no inherent reason why learning a second one "can't be for everyone".
The thing is that it requires a lot of time and studying. At least 30 mins per day is the bare minimum, but 1-3 is much better for results.
I don't personally feel like language learning is easier for me than other people. I just focused on putting the time and studying in diligently over many years.
> It's probable that small classes would help because the teacher could then be more of a private tutor. But with 20-30 size classes, only really motivated students who already study/watch media outside of school will excel. So it's kind of redundant in my opinion.
Yup. Motivated students learn the language in the classroom (+ self-study) just fine. Unmotivated students don't, but they are not motivated anyway.
That's interesting to me. From my perspective, I didn't find Duolingo great, but it did give me some vocab and basic sentences, and left me feeling more competent than I actually ended up being once I was living where they speak the language I was learning.
Since then I did classes on-again, off-again and I can really feel my ability ramping up when I'm doing them, to the point where I was having short conversations in that second language. When I'm not doing classes, I'm still reinforcing things through my surroundings but I definitely feel that I plateau and don't really get much better.
However, the classes did get me to a point where now I can do things like play D&D in my second language. I still don't feel fluent (I have to active-listen the whole time which is tiring, and sometimes mentally translate still, though that's improving) but I am pretty conversational, and the classes definitely made a big difference for me.
Perhaps it's that there are classes and then there are classes, and you've had bad luck with the quality or nature of yours?
internet_points posted good advice a comment or two above. Duolingo _is_ ok as a starting point, but (as was said before), move on as soon as possible. As a poster above did, I also spent way way too long on Duolingo, chasing the 'streak'. And got nowhere. I already had a foundation when I started, but I got no farther in a year or more of daily Duo. All progress stopped. When I finally switched to graded input instead, and deleted everything Duo from my devices, things finally picked up again. I could have used the time I wasted on Duo to get input instead, it's something which actually works (when the input is compelling and something which can be mostly understood).
I can only tell you what worked for me: it's input. Read. Start using any brute-force method to learn the basics, like the 100 most common words. Then start reading stories aimed at toddlers (or especially written for language learners, there are apps), and keep going to more complex input as you progress.
Do not worry about grammar; you will learn it intuitively as you move from simple sentences to more complex blocks of text. Do not worry about learning word lists after you have the basics; learn words in the context of the text you're reading.
(I have no qualifications besides being a self-taught English and Chinese speaker, so take my input for what it's worth.)
There is no one magic solution. Every person I know who has learned a language to an advanced degree has used a variety of methods, diligently, over a long period of time, depending on their current needs. I can give a brief overview of some tools that I find to be efficient in terms of time and payoff, in no particular order.
1. SRS - Spaced Repetition Software, for flashcards. Anki is the gold standard. It's open source and free on every pc/android/etc except iphone where it's $20 I think. I recommend finding a good starting deck with about 3k to 6k words to help build your core vocabulary. In my case it was "Evita's 5k Korean". For about 6-8 months I grinded 20 new words per day, which means about 30-50 minutes of Anki depending on if you missed a day or not and thus had a backlog. If you have less time I recommend 5 or 10 new words per day.
2. Find trusted resources for grammar and structured learning. You might have to hunt around but for Korean, I found some excellent websites, Youtubers, and textbooks like Korean Grammar in Use I-III. These materials really are the core of your studying. Vocab doesn't help much if you don't know grammar and you certainly can't say anything without vocab. These are how you get to output, i.e. writing and speaking correctly.
3. Find graded readers if possible. Roughly, these are texts designed around 90% comprehension which is a sweetspot for learning new words naturally through context. Unfortunately at the time I couldnt find any for Korean, but I've watched friends use them for e.g. Mandarin Chinese and learn quite a lot of vocabulary in a short time.
4. Find someone who can correct your writing in some form. Whether that's a private tutor or a friend who's native language is your target language and their target language is your native language. In the past I found some dedicated learners through HelloTalk who would trade journal entries with me. I would correct their English and they would correct my Korean. It goes without saying that you need to practice output in your target language when possible, both in writing and in speech.
5. Find a good language exchange and/or friends who speak your target language. By good, I mean a structured language exchange that enforces pairings and language usage. In Seoul I find that most "language exchanges" are excuses to drink and and chat, mostly in English. There was one language exchange that 1:1 Korean language-only pairings for 1 hour, then I repaid that with 2-3 30minute pairings of 2-3 people in English. This is where you put your textbook/solo studies to practice by actually speaking (and hopefully getting corrections). Eventually I hit a plateau and got tired of having similar conversations, plus paying $10 per event. I also found a few lifelong friends who are studying English and thus we can ping each other for random questions.
6. Find some spaces or groups that are -only- in your target language. With the internet it's easier than ever now with Discord. For example, my friend learned a lot of French by hanging out in French speaking gaming servers on discord. There are also apps like Hilokal and HelloTalk, but I haven't used them in a while so I can't speak to their quality anymore. Lastly there are offline options depending on your area. In the US I used Meetup to find language groups and in Korea I use, well, a korean equivalent to find groups in niches I enjoy.
7. Lastly, and this isn't a tool, but "If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus. In learning a language, you will make mistakes and you will say things that sound stupid. It's okay. It's unavoidable and you make good progress by learning from these mistakes, so long as you reflect on them and understand why the mistake occurred. The people who focus on being perfect and making zero mistakes in learning a language, in my experience, do not go very far.
These are some great tips. Having consistent daily exposure to your target language I think is important. Compelling graded readers can make spending that time every day enjoyable and not feel like a chore. A stress-free positive learning environment helps quite a bit with the subconscious process of language acquisition; it's what Krashen calls the "Affective Filter Hypothesis".
> recently started to learn another language with Duolingo
Duolingo feels great when you're starting. You feel like you make a lot of progress quickly, and it's fun, so you do it every day. Before you know it, you've done it for half a year, and then you try to talk to somebody and realize that you've learned very little.
>the traditional "keep learning all the different grammar combinations first"
Yes, this is also a bad approach. They're both bad.
Research has figured out that grammar is the wrong thing to focus on in a classroom. There are better ways to teach in a classroom that work. However many schools are not following the latest research so you need to find a good one.
grammar is good in the classroom - but not until every lesson gets you thinking so that is why I do X. If you are not used to the grammar don't learn it. So don't start until you have had around 50 hours in the classroom.
English grammar (my native language) has always been a mystery to me. Any time I hear about participles or present perfect or infinitives or passive voice etc… my eyes glaze over and I have no idea what any of it means. In school I failed those units.
Learning a new language from grammar principles wouldn’t be a very effective path for me…
It's funny, but I always found English grammar (also my native language) to be completely pointless, but I find myself really enjoying learning about Latin grammar, and as a result marveling about how weird English is. It's fascinating that one subsystem in our brain can completely understand our native language's grammar, and yet another part finds it unfathomable.
In high school French class, I had the same problems with grammar in that language.
For example, to teach plus-que-parfait my teacher used English language analogies and they were all useless for me. Again, I failed that part of the course but my grades were high enough to pass without it.
I speak one foreign language fluently, which I learned in a traditional classroom environment with a teacher, and recently started to learn another language with Duolingo. I actually find their "learning by translation" method possibly easier (and definitely less boring) than the traditional "keep learning all the different grammar combinations first" approach, usually featured in a classroom or in self-learning video courses.
The only feature missing from Duolingo is short grammar summaries before new grammar constructs are introduced for the first time, as Duolingo unit/section "guidebook" entries are way to short and thus useless. You have to ask an LLM for an explanation every time a particular sentence turns out to be different from what you would expect.