• echo64@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The quality of duolingo has gone down massively in the past few years as they have done lay-offs, they don’t even have anyone checking the feedback coming from users any-more.

    the courses themselves are worse too, designed more to stretch out app usage rather than teach more. I used to recommend duolingo as a good starter on learning a language, but it’s just so bad now that I won’t. And it seems to be a direct result of layoffs.

    • Solivine@sopuli.xyz
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      2 years ago

      Yeah now it repeats the same vocab over and over a bit too long and it’s hard to get much use out of it

    • AmieFromEarth@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Is there any better app you can recommend? I started with babbel in the beginning but after finishing the basic courses it got so dry and boring to use, that i swapped to Duo. Also because a few friends use it.

      • gramie@lemmy.ca
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        2 years ago

        I strongly recommend [Language Transfer ](https://language transfer.org). The best language course I have ever done, and I have done many (I speak five languages, at varying levels of fluency).

        They have an app, that is simple, streamlined, and very functional.

        The app also has also an Introduction to Music Theory course which people say is very, very good.

      • BoneALisa@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        I’ve been using LingoDeer for the past few days since hearing this news, and so far it’s not too bad. The social features are severely lacking compared to Duolingo (my friend group goes hard on the friends quests lol) but they have a lot more grammar explanation and whatnot available that duolingo doesn’t. Plus, LingoDeer seems much less focused on learning for tourism, and more for actual learning.

        Note this is all for the Japanese course, no idea how their other courses are.

    • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Duolingo is a steaming pile compared to what it used to be. The nags to pay went up and the quality went down. Their new learning path completely ruined the process for me.

    • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      I did the Latin course last year and was unpleasantly surprised by how low quality znd even low quantity it was. Guess I’ll try Babbel next.

    • RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 years ago

      To be fair, it has been a long time of the decline and increased monetization.

      I remember using it at a time where gems had only cosmetic use or you could freeze your streak.

      I did not use it for a couple years and came back to gems being used for a whole lot more, a few free exercises and then it cost gems. Getting the final, I think gold, level of each exercise cost like 100 gems a try, no mistakes allowed.

      The only reason I still kept using it was that in the early years I amassed 10000+ gems, so I was slowly using those up. Once that was over I stopped, unusable without paying and even then it does not provide more than vocabulary practise.