Re:500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a...
by Barrin92 on Saturday May 04, 2019 @09:17PM
(#19830488)
>1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar mistakes, etc.
In almost all cases the primary reason for learning another language is conversation. The richness of interaction trumps the fact of picking up an accent or grammar errors.
I learned French by living in France for half a year, and was relatively decent at it at the end of my stay. Over the last few years I've tried to learn several languages by book or through apps, and progress is significantly slower, maybe as much as ten times slower.
There's so much richness in real world interaction, including visuals, sounds, connecting words and phrases to specific tasks, it's impossible to replace with an app.
In almost all cases the primary reason for learning another language is conversation. The richness of interaction trumps the fact of picking up an accent or grammar errors.
I learned French by living in France for half a year, and was relatively decent at it at the end of my stay. Over the last few years I've tried to learn several languages by book or through apps, and progress is significantly slower, maybe as much as ten times slower.
There's so much richness in real world interaction, including visuals, sounds, connecting words and phrases to specific tasks, it's impossible to replace with an app.