Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Some random comments on Duolingo:

I honestly don't see the point of following CEFR for an app like Duolingo.

Professional and GOOD teachers, that love to teach and did that for several years, know how to teach a language. THey don't need to follow something such as CEFR to know if they do well and what is interesting to teach and in which order.

I find it more important to make interesting lectures which do not follow a standardized curriculum. When someone is learning a language in this way will naturally go toward a CEFR based courses if needed afterward, with a big head start and only when he feels ready.

Also, not allowing to see 'already seen' vocabulary is a very strange move for an app, I guess it's for preventing having the vocab in a app like anki which makes duolingo less useful, but still, even if I don't use such app, having to screenshot all the time to have my vocab is a total pain.

Finally, the app doesn't seem to understand which words/sentences you already know and master and clearly do not need to see for the 400time instead of new vocabulary. Even having maximum points all the time and very fast will usually result in the same vocab shown again and again. It seems like an almost basic statistical problem, so I don't get why it's not fixed.

Also, some vocab is very strange, for example using 'es tut mir leid' in German to just say 'I'm sorry' feels like the content is automatically generated instead of having a linguist or even a German behind.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: