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Russian ResourcesDuolingo vs Rosetta Stone: A Totally Ridiculous Comparison
Written byDonovan NagelDonovan NagelTeacher, translator, polyglot🎓 B.A., Theology, Australian College of Theology, NSW🎓 M.A., Applied Linguistics, University of New England, NSW
Applied Linguistics graduate, teacher and translator. Founder of The Mezzofanti Guild and Talk In Arabic.- Read time10 mins
- Comments28
Duolingo and Rosetta Stone are often compared side-by-side as language learning platforms and course options.
Is Duolingo better than Rosetta Stone? (or vice-versa?)
I was honestly inclined not to write this post today (because it really is like comparing apples to oranges!) but since so many people ask about it, I thought I’d take some time to put the matter to rest.
While I’ve written at length in the past about Rosetta Stone’s method, I’ve actually said little about Duolingo (keep reading and I’ll explain why).
Both platforms have had huge success in their own ways and many imitator products have spawned off them over the last few years.
First of all, let me summarize how they differ (based on their own claims):
- Rosetta Stone aims to be a full immersion experience, where all skills are trained through listening and image-matching exercises, and their advanced TruAccent™ speech-recognition technology.
- Duolingo is a thematic and grammar-intensive learning path where you’re taken through a gamified progression primarily made up of fill-in-the-blank exercises.
I don’t represent or earn from either of these companies.
Both of them have strengths and weaknesses in different areas but I definitely have a personal preference between the two which I’ll explain in a moment.
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RS and Duolingo: Buying a product vs BEING the product
My assumption is that anyone looking for a comparison between Duolingo and Rosetta Stone are doing so for one main reason:
Duolingo is free.
RS is expensive.
So if Duolingo produces better results then why not take a completely free product over something you need to pay for, right? Makes sense?
I’m going to say something really unpopular and fairly controversial here (that you probably weren’t aware of).
With Duolingo, YOU are the product.
By using their “free” software and doing their fill-in-the-blank exercises, you are actually submitting translations that are then sold to major corporations.
In fact, the guy behind Duolingo (Luis Von Ahn) previously worked on Re-CAPTCHA.
You know that annoying image pop-up on registration/login forms that gives you an image of a sign and asks you to verify by typing in what it says? That answer you type in actually gets sold – you’re basically translating something for them for free.
So this same principle is used on Duolingo.
What appears to be a completely free web app for learning languages is really just a front for crowd-sourced translation (why pay a translation company when they can just get ignorant consumers to do it for them?).
Nothing is ever free.
Rosetta Stone on the other hand is obviously a paid product.
When I initially reviewed RS years ago, I talked about its grotesque price tag and it really was notorious for being expensive. You’d pay several hundred dollars to buy a boxed package.
Thing have completely changed over the past 2 – 3 years.
With the massive rising popularity of subscription-based course platforms, RS was basically forced to change their pricing structure and offer an online subscription service (SaaS) at a fraction of the original cost.
Now, you might not consider Duolingo’s business model to be unethical or problematic in any way. That’s fine.
After all, they’re offering you a service (learn languages) in exchange for your service (translation).
But for someone like me, I would rather pay directly and knowingly for a service that is built solely for the purpose of teaching languages, rather than a company that’s taking my work and selling it to God-knows-who for God-knows-how-much.
It’d be like a teacher taking a student’s finished exam and selling the student’s exam answers to a third party without the knowledge of the student.
UPDATE: They recently introduced a Duolingo Plus option for about $7 a month that removes ads and allows for offline learning, but it seems you’re still giving them your translations which they’ll sell and profit on.
I’ve seen some reports around that Duolingo moved away from their crowd-sourced translation model (meaning they’d rely mostly on volunteers and donations) but nothing solid to confirm that yet.
Duolingo and the infantilization of language education
I recently wrote an article about the notable trend of infantilization in language app UI’s.
In fact, it’s not just language apps but a general “dumbing down” of education and attention spans everywhere.
Compare course content and delivery from 10 years ago to the products being sold today and you’ll notice something striking – consumers in 2019 are treated more and more like adult children.
Language apps cater for these poor attention spans.
Duolingo has a UI that looks like a child’s toy with cartoon awards, noises and it is completely non-intimidating by design.
The entire course experience is based on giving the user a false sense of progression as they click through to win their achievements and keep up learning streaks.
One of the criticisms of Rosetta Stone on the other hand that you hear quite often is that it’s “not fun”.
But I wonder if that means that RS is legitimately challenging as an adult learning platform that doesn’t treat its customer base like children?
Comparing the Duolingo and RS language teaching methods
Nearly every majorly critical review of Rosetta Stone comes back to one thing:
“How am I supposed to know what they’re saying if I don’t know the grammar?”
Criticism is almost entirely due to impatience.
The point I’ve made repeatedly in the past is that the RS method is actually enormously effective IF you allow it to be. While I don’t believe you can mimic a true immersion experience with a piece of software, I still think RS does a pretty decent job of leading you through a quasi-natural process of exposure and intuition-based learning.
No explicit grammar instruction is a huge plus too (you don’t need to study grammar to learn to speak a foreign language).
Your comprehension builds over time but it takes actual work on your part to let that happen.
I mentioned in my review that the first time you encounter various scenarios in the software, you’ll be completely confused and not understand a thing. That’s intentional.
But through repetition and actually using your intuition as you would in real life, you start connecting the dots.
The problem is: we live in a Google culture where we expect immediate answers to all our questions.
Language learning can never be rushed like this.
This is where I think Duolingo earns more praise in the short-term from its users – you can rush through the entire course and never learn anything.
There’s a quick gratification that comes from hearing the reward notifications: “BAM BAM BAAAAAAM”
“Yay! I’m learning this language!”
No, you’re not.
Duolingo wants you to feel gratified so you continue coming back for your streaks and giving them translation material to sell to third parties.
Follow the /r/languagelearning sub on Reddit and see how many times people have asked questions like:
“I finished a Duolingo course. Now what do I do?”
You get to the end of your fill-in-the-blank progression and find that you’ve in fact learned very little and run out of direction.
Culturally inappropriate content (Rosetta Stone) vs bizarre dialogue translations (Duolingo)
One of the other chief complaints made about RS (and I talked about it at length in my review) is that it’s culturally inappropriate.
Some languages are worse than others in this regard.
What you’ll see throughout RS is that it takes images from an American context and applies them to a completely foreign scenario and language.
For example, two Anglo-Americans shopping with Korean dialogues.
As I’ve said previously, this is not a major problem as it doesn’t necessarily change the meaning the conversation (two females are two females regardless of what context they’re in or their race).
However, in the case of the Korean edition for example, you also get situations where an old person is talking to a young person and using overly polite language that would never exist in the real world.
It’d be like an old man calling a teenager “sir”.
Duolingo doesn’t do this necessarily but its main problem (and something it’s routinely mocked for!) is that it uses absolutely bizarre sentence examples.
Just go on Google and search for: weird duolingo sentences
“Our cats are reading newspapers.”
“Why won’t my feet listen to me?”
“The dog and the cat converse in Korean.”
“She received a wish for each nut.”
These are the kinds of pointless absurdities that Duolingo will have you translate.
While it can still be said that you’re learning vocab and grammar by translating this, dialogues like this have zero practical usage in the real world.
No online language learning course is a substitute for real-world interaction
If you’re looking for a one-stop solution to your language learning goals then you’re going to be very disappointed no what matter product you choose to use.
Language courses and books are only supplements.
The real classroom is outside where you interact with other human beings and learn through constant mistakes.
I’ve talked about how social risk-takers are always the best language learners – they learn languages better than anyone else because they’re out with people and not afraid to embarrass themselves.
Of course, you can’t always have these physical opportunities depending on where you live but platforms like italki have certainly made this easier.
The important point I want to highlight here is that whether you’re using Duolingo or Rosetta Stone or something else entirely, you should not be relying on the tool alone to get you to where you want to be.
I see this a lot on our Arabic site where people will often come and ask:
“What level will this get me to?”
It’s impossible to answer because it always depends on the learner’s own determination and practice with other people.
Stop trying to compare two vastly different language learning platforms
Duolingo and RS are not even remotely similar.
As I said above, I don’t know why people frequently ask for a comparison of the two other than prospective RS customers looking for a cheaper/free alternative in Duolingo.
Apples and oranges! 🙂
On an ethical level, I can’t stand the thought of providing free translations to a company that will go on to sell them to a major corporation. I feel the same way about Re-CAPTCHA and hate having to use it to log in to a service online.
If I can’t be part of the transaction process, I’m just not comfortable with it at all (this coming from a guy who is paranoid about Internet privacy).
That aside, I also just find Duolingo’s childish gamification to be indicative of a massive downward trend in education quality. It’s not just the way companies are treating consumers – sadly it’s what consumers want.
RS, for all its faults and cost, still provides one of the only truly unique language methodologies on the market.
It’s also one of the few methodologies that correctly stays away from explicit grammar instruction in favor of a more intuition-based teaching style.
For a far more detailed explanation of Rosetta Stone (including criticisms of its method), see my review of it here.
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28 COMMENTS
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Rae
I tried the three month subscription for French this year and actually learned a quite a bit and can say you can probably figure out the grammar as we did have to masculine for famine nouns. I can’t speak for the other languages and yeah it can be frustrating at times; but did learn a lot-acheter (to buy), colors, numbers, jobs, directions and if something is close, far, different, the same, etc...I also liked the stories (had to listen and read them out loud), the phrase book and there were short videos that did discuss things such as slang, little cultural tidbits. Also downloaded audio for each lesson. I would have to try other languages to give more of an opinion overall; but the French course was good. I am assuming the for at least all the romance languages.
I did get a lot ouf it for only $30, so the price wasn’t bad and now the lifetime is #170 for all the languages is not that bad compared to other apps. Not perfect; but doesn’t deserve all the hate either. May it is because I waited longer to try it as it used to cost a lot more for just one language, things are different.
Also I did have some books to supplement (but not that far into reading them) and tried Duolingo; though it just keep asking if I am a cat-Tu es un chat? Not a natural way to learn and it did feel really childish (it is even worse now since the last update with the learning path and now people are finally talking about how infantile it all is). I agree that most people just want instant and easy which is just not how languages work. It takes time. Sometimes people learn faster (depending on the language and all that); but it’s not going to be overnight. Most apps seem to work more short term for to learn survival phrases; but not long term learning.
Want more practice, trying buying short story books, music, etc...can even use anki and deepl. Talking to others if you can also helps (online is bridging the gap).
doubt
Seems pretty naaive to believe that rs has access to the same data but isn’t selling it... They just *also* charge!
Nathan Cichorz
I think the obvious answer to the question of why people compare these two language platform is because they want to know which will help them learn. They are not apples and oranges in that sense. They are both marketed as teaching a language. In this sense, you answered the question. RS is clearly better at helping you learn a language.
Learning French
You’re absolutely right Donovan! The REAL point is how a person has trained themselves to learn something new. (Secondary, perhaps immaterial , is how a company makes money; after all, nobody goes into business to do you a favor, they want to make money for themselves.) Remember your classmates in school who said, “Why should I learn this? I’m never going to use this in real life.” It wasn’t what we were learning that was so important, it was developing the SKILLS to learn that was important. The RS method does this by forcing your brain to use common sense and intuition to draw conclusions. That’s how one comprehends and remembers what they’re learning. On the other hand, it’s no surprise gamified Duolingo would appeal to and appease the adult children in today’s society who want instant gratification without any effort. Duolingo results in automated responses rather than learned responses. Also, worrying too much about the grammar doesn’t help you to “think” in the new language, because you’re too busy translating every little word back and forth between languages. Thank you for the write up, because like you said, if you have developed proper learning skills, including patience and effort, all the dots will connect.
Kyle Williams
🤔 that have me lots to think about!
To grasp my take on it, you need to know that although i don’t consider myself a linguist, i ended up a scientist by training, going into teaching, then customer service.
With a German mother, growing up in the uk, i actually learnt German before i learnt English! I had no problem with either & would happily navigate the airports to visit Germany as a kid on my own to see grandma. So why wasn’t that a scary thing? Yes, i learnt by immersion but... We’d have German only days, i wasn’t allowed to use English on those! I had German radio (i still use it) yet i learnt English by immersion too! Thus i learnt to think in German or in English, independent of what i was speaking! Only when my 1st job involved live translation of a speaker on stage, did i grasp what i was doing!
There’s no app on earth that’s going to simulate making you think in another language, no matter how immersive if you can run to google or hit the pause! It takes time for sounds to become words & then phrases & concepts. I visited Norway many times, within days of the 1st visit i was able to introduce myself, etc. Same principle!
So why do the English (being from the uk) struggle? Every other European speaks at least one other language! The poor dutch, Scandinavians, maltese for example, may speak up to 5 fluently (well, who else speaks their language!) & can recognise your mother tongue within seconds of you opening your mouth! Why? As i realised from science, it’s all about patterns! You learn Latin names, realise how the English was derived & grasp how the word(s) communicate a concept, one that works of you think in that language! That’s why we struggle with foreign idioms! You can’t think in English & translate an untranslatable German idiom unless you knows the concept of what is trying to convey! That’s why i never got on with French or Spanish, i learnt them in a classroom, badly! I had no problems with computer languages though, write “X” to get this result, or ... Just like a language. Get the grammar wrong & out suits & stares at you blankly! But you never do courses on computer languages grammar! You learn by mistakes! Too many apps “punish” mistakes, esp when there is only one “correct” answer listed! I learnt that the hard way in Duolingo when i kept getting a question translating pantalon wrongly! They’re trousers i kept yelling at the screen! Only when i went to the forum to ask for help did i grasp it was an American app, rather than a British app! Maybe no one had considered trousers was correct, they say pants! When it’s immersive, someone will say “tell me, what do you call this?” “Oh, trousers!” Both you & they have learnt! It’s a connection, effective communication because you now know you’re talking about the same thing! That requires immersion AND interaction! An app just can’t do that, sorry!
It gets really messy when you get challenged with what is the correct way to say ... Sure, i was used to discussions as a student that in the North we say cob for this, in the South they say roll, another says bun, “yeah, b well don’t say cob where I’m from, means something TOTALLY different & very rude!” Oops! Mental note to self! But having a similar argument in German, about a sentence of written in German felt harsher! That’s when i realised just how much variation there was & if 5 native German speakers (from different parts of the German speaking world) couldn’t agree, any app based learning was, in a sense, doomed to failure!
So your article made me thoroughly realise, language is about communicating concepts & thoughts not so much speaking words (heaven help with Japanese where intonation is everything!) That’s something you can’t learn, except in an immersive environment but it needs 2 way communication & guidance (not correction or right & wrong) constantly! It’s easy to reinforce the wrong concept just because over person has learnt to say x for that @ symbol n another language, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to use it, but if an app doesn’t say that, it’ll lead you astray! Dumbing down makes that a guaranteed result!
I begin to wonder if app based language learning is akin to making your own path up the mountain when there are other perfectly good ones out there, the mountain itself is hard enough! After a year + of Duolingo i found myself screaming, if i know the basics of French & can listen to French TV, etc & happily get there gist of what they’re saying, why do i keep falling here?
Rather than asking RS or Duolingo, maybe it’s neither! Language learning isn’t about tricking off 100 phrases in farsi, i can say {something totally useless} rather should be i have my ear in, can grasp more & more words & have the confidence to say woah! That word you used... Ah! Makes sense now! How on earth can you ever teach that?
It’s the difference between “famille marsaud” French (for those who used that book series) & real spoken French, you can spot it a mile off!
Whilst in Wien, i often came across tourists {usually English speaking) butchering some phrase or other! I was often with a German speaking colleague & weed be speaking in German, I’d stop & correct them, in English. “Wow, your English is perfect!” Me (in my best Yorkshire) “ i should bloody well hope it is, been speaking it for 25 year!) The look was like how on earth can someone speak another language so well? (& In my case, given i could) why the hell was i struggling with French on Duolingo & screaming at it in better french than i was trying to learn! 🤷 So how did i learn German so well as a kid, pick up so much French from listening but fail badly on a language learning app when i struggle with both forms to learn ?!
Sven
The idea that Duolingo is selling translations to other companies is wrong. It’s not noted in their financial report. 73% of their revenue comes from subscriptions.
Free users are still the product though, they improve the translations, driving more customers to the premium plan. Ads also make up 17% of DUOLINGOs revenue.
David King
Donevan, you are full of BS and I have used both RS and Duo (neither of which I was paid for). I finished RS and knew fuck all . My daughter suggested I try Duo Spanish and it was night and day! Duo opened the door to Spanish for me. Although I am nowhere near fluent in Spanish, after completing 2.5 levels in Duo I came down to Guatemala to formally study Spanish. It was not RS that gave me the vocabulary to begin to speak in Spanish , it certainly was duolingo. While I am older, I think I have a good perspective on the dificulty in learning a language. All the methods that tote learning a language is X ammount of time ‘ the reality is you get out what you put in. After a couple of months I am getting better (and way better than many of the younger back packers that have more fun than me!). The universal similiarity is that they all seem to use Duo Lingo to advance. All language apps depend on some sort of revenue and user participation for success, so dont condemn duo for that. Ill put it very simply I could buy RS( the company ) and wouldnt. I couldnt buy Duolingo but would if I could.
Dillon
Thanks for writing this!
I wanted to mention that although duolingo does crowdsource translations, it’s not a massively evil corporation out to make money off the backs of the good honest folk. The founder also made the initial captcha, which was developed in response to the time we as a society were teaching machines to scan books and identify the words it scanned so we could convert old books to digital format for use around the world. Sometimes, the machine wouldn’t be able to identify a word, so it would need a human to help it out. So the initial captcha was helping humanity bring dated books to the digital age, which is awesome!
Now, the re-captcha is doing the same but we are teaching machines to properly identify different items in various scenarios, which I also find to be a really awesome thing to help with.
Duolingo is helping to translate websites like wikipedia into all these different languages, allowing us to share the encyclopedic collective knowledge of humanity with non-english speakers, and I believe that’s a wonderful thing to do. Luis Von Ahn has a ted talk from wayyy back before duolingo was even rolled out where he discusses this stuff, and you can absolutely tell that he is a man who is looking to help the world and found out that the best way to do that impactfully was to get millions of people to join in.
Randall Norstrem
Your comments regarding giving free translations to companies is a little off for Duolingo. The things that you translate in their courses are completely worthless to a corporation, so that makes no sense.
I have taken 3 languages in real classrooms. I have studied 2 languages by listening to tapes when that was the current technology. I have studied 2 more languages by Duolingo and one by the Rosetta Stone method. Duolingo is most like classroom learning and i found effective when I went to Italy. On the other hand, studying Maltese on a platform like Rosetta Stone yields much slower progress. Immersion is “natural “ only if you do not have a language already. It is inefficient and slow otherwise, and some pictures defy you to figure out the meaning. There needs to be a key somewhere! As someone who has studied 7 languages besides my native English, I prefer to learn grammar and vocabulary - unless we are dropped into a country where few speak our native language, total immersion is far more challenging and requires far more daily hours.
Words Of The Lost
So I have never heard anybody refer to DuoLingo as the means to learn a new language, rather its always referred to as something to HELP you learn a language, to MOTIVATE you to learn, & mostly to help you kinda learn a language casually & without committing to or putting real effort into it. It’s not a “Language Learning Software That Acts Like A Game” rather its a game that by playing can give you a few stepping stones to learn a language. Similar to how Ingress & Pokémon Go aren’t exercising programs, but by playing the game people are getting some exercise without realizing they are. Nobody would expect to become a triathlete by playing, rather they get a bit of light exercise which will make it easier if they ever decide to try running a marathon or starting a sport
Some Guy
You realize that the CAPTCHA & RE-CAPTCHA & NO-CAPTCHA are HELPING with internet privacy concerns more than hurting it right? Without them whatever you are logging into can more easily be hacked or spammed or infiltrated by bots. If anything the NO-CAPTCHA is worse because it’s tracking how you move the mouse, which is much more personal than how well you can read distorted text or find which squares have parking meters or stairs in them. You’re welcome to not like it, but “in the name of internet privacy” does not make sense at all
Chinwe Okeke
I really liked this article. It was very informative.
I am currently using Duolingo to learn Spanish and French, and do not think it is bad, but it certainly needs improvement.
Please send me a post about Italki. I’d like to see what it’s about.
Thank you.
David
You are completely incorrect about the multiple choice questions in duolingo being free translations that are then sold. They tare community developed courses. There is (or at least there used to be, I haven’t been on it in a while) articles which you could translate on the website, not the app. These articles are the crowd sourced translations you are talking about.
They are also completely unavailable in the app. That being said, unless you are paying for duolingo, you are correct that you are the product because they serve you ads.
Jamie
I want to thank you for writing about this topic even though you didn’t want to. Your insight truly helps others. But I also want to point out a grammer issue I’ve seen in your article. I am going to copy and paste the sentence......
*Thing have completely changed over the past 2 – 3 years.*
mark
If you don’t look at Duolingo’s screen and listen only to the audio when answering questions, the difficulty ramps up completely and transforms the entire experience. I agree Duolingo is for babies and totally ruins the learning experience if you look at the screen. No one should ever go for Duolingo’s default easy mode. Just listen to the audio when answering questions and you’ll see dramatic improvement.
Lucas
I use both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone; I write down the words I learn from Duolingo in a notebook, and write my own sentences; I also do the same for Rosetta Stone. But it does seem as if Rosetta Stone is not as “fun” or simply boring compared to Duolingo. Either way I learn and implement flash cards and repetitive writing.
I enjoyed your article.
Thank your for writing.
Kaye
I used DuoLingo for a year after not taking any Spanish classes since sixth grade. I stopped liking it after the switch to their current “crown” system, but I was a broke cashier, so paying to learn anything was out of the question at the time. I recently picked it up again, only to learn not only do I still dislike it, but it puts me to sleep! DuoLingo is nothing more than a kiddie game to me. I’m positive my “Spanish for Dummies” book teaches me more. It’s cute and I like cute, but cute doesn’t teach me anything.
I was always curious about Rosetta Stone, but avoided it because of the price. This year, I gave in because of a sale they had. $200 for a lifetime subscription of every language they offer. I figured if I really hate it, I could return it, and I have the money to spare, so I’ll try it. I learned more from RS in a week than from Duo in a year. Take that for what you will.
DuoLingo lets you start only as a beginner. A year’s worth of progress, and it’s only now trying to teach me numbers 1 - 10 (which I learned in second grade!). No wonder it was putting me to sleep. I find RS more challenging, especially (as much as I hate it!) because it has frequent speaking lessons. Duo has made me hate flashcards.
Only thing RS can’t help me with is speaking with other people, but that’s inherent shyness. No program can help me with that.
Kaye
I was mistaken about Duo only letting you start at beginner. Oops! I don’t remember the option for a placement test when I first signed up.
Also, RS has no reward system. You don’t get points or treats for finishing a lesson. You get to see the progress bar fill, but that’s it. And I think I prefer that.
Chris
Does anyone besides the OP care about duolingo selling your input?
Gerben Bladgroen
I couldn’t care less! I really don’t care, its a smart business model :) I help them translate that the cats drink milk in portuguees (A gato bebe leite), who cares?!. I want my cat milk translation money how horrible XD
Zach
I absolutely do not. Nor would I care if someone took my exam answers and sold those. I’m searching for an explanation for which course is more efficient in teaching language, not an ethics lecture. Oh no, they sold a translation of me asking where the bathroom is in Spanish. How terrible. Everything is ruined.
Madeleine Dacey
On some level it bothers me that they do not make this explicit and that they make you watch a lot of ads (unless you pay for premium), but I would rather give my translations in exchange for the service than have to pay for it. Seems like a mutually beneficial exchange, at the end of the day.
That said, I used the two week free premium trial, cancelled it, and then they gave me another free premium trial. I’m hoping this works a third time.
Beth Grixti
I don’t really understand how I’m helping them sell translations when they are already translated. I’m just learning what they’ve already created. What is left to sell?
Mario
I’ve been taking Rosetta courses, different languages. What I have seen is that they use in some situations, almost same images for all languages. They start teaching some words like “woman”, “man”, “child” (boy and girl depending on the genre, depending on the particular language) and I saw the same boy and the same girl in all languages.
However, I saw arabic dresses, hindi dresses, occidental dresses in order to encompass all cultural differences. I don’t see anything wrong on it. On the contrary, as I attend more than one language, it helps me to identify a relational meaning in different languages thanks to a same photo.
In the Japanese course, yes, there are like Japanese cultural photos to graphic a breakfast (food of the morning) and other meals.
To see an angloamerican person talking korean, well, it’s just to make the attendant of the course (who might be a foreigner) to feel identified as a tourist speaking a foreign language.
I think that beyond the interfaces or cultural proposals, the most important thing is the utility we can get from the method. If we really want to learn, at a basic level no problem, there are no cultural barriers. It’s my opinion.
Ralph
Hi, thank you for taking your time to write the post. I used Duolingo a lot for almost a year and I finished a few courses. I did learn a lot. So, I cannot agree with your observations. Now I am going to use Rosetta S. this is why I found your article. Duolingo vs Rosetta Stone can certainly be compared. Apple and oranges have much in common. Wishing you all the best.
Mathew
I get your point about learning grammar by intuition and eventually piecing it all together. However, even native speakers learn grammar in primary school. At least, we here in the US do. Is there a way to not only get the immersive aspect of Rosetta Stone/real-world interaction and some basic grammar instruction for a more robust solution?
Isabella Cates
I really appreciate this comparison and review!
I didn’t know about duolingo’s business model, but it helps me understand why I never liked using it.
I think the intent when building the product (for duolingo, as you described here, getting tons of language translation data) ends up baked into the core of the product, and it can never really be great for anything else.
In this case, it seems to me duolingo just has a thin veneer of actually teaching to learn. How, then, could someone expect to really learn much from it? With duolingo, it’s likely that someone who starts off motivated will end up feeling like a failure. Even though it’s the product’s fault, not the student’s.
The gamification aspect really turns me off as well. (Thank goodness, I don’t really enjoy electronic games or become addicted to them.)
Micah Burns
Thanks for the post! I would disagree with you on one key point though. I really think grammar and translation can be helpful for beginner adults when trying to learn another language.
For instance, think of the irony in naming a language program with little to no grammar or translation Rosetta Stone. The whole value of the original Rosetta Stone was that it contained a translation of a language which was hard to comprehend, using a language which the learners already knew. It finally made the foreign language comprehensible. It did not cause the learners to acquire the language, but it did finally allowed them to start receiving it. This is where you will be after finishing a Duolingo tree. You will be ready to start reading books, watching movies, and listening to songs in the language you studied. And, yes, you will be in a better position to start speaking as well. Just my two cents.