LinkedinLunatics

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A place to post ridiculous posts from linkedIn.com

(Full transparency.. a mod for this sub happens to work there.. but that doesn't influence his moderation or laughter at a lot of posts.)

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Duolingo is going AI-first (infosec.pub)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by slaacaa@lemmy.world to c/linkedinlunatics@sh.itjust.works

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[–] restingboredface@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I'm working on Spanish now with it and I have to admit it's significantly improved from the last time I used it a few years back. Fewer nonsense sentences to translate like "My bear loves your house", which was frustrating and felt so useless. There's way more listening and speaking modules, they are generally decent at speech to text, and the language pronunciation sounds more realistic with multiple very different voices.

However, I never know why I got a question wrong, and can't do anything to rectify that other than report that the AI made a mistake, which helps with their model training, but does absolutely squat for my learning. Even the more gamified exercises are just fancy tests, where you are expected to 'learn' by getting things wrong, seeing the correct answer and regurgitating it. The community forums and explanations are gone, and each module has maybe one or two example sentences that typically don't even cover the full range of content in the module.

My husband and I have a family plan, and he is a much more dedicated user than me, but I would never pay for duolingo on my own.

[–] kubica@fedia.io 21 points 2 months ago

I left after seeing a lot of useful community suggestions completely ignored for a long time. A few months later they finally closed the community making clear they won't hear anyone. I won't bother trying to get anything from them.

[–] gramie@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I have found that Language Transfer is a far superior way to learn languages (including Spanish), and it's free (although I make a monthly donation)!

It is available as YouTube videos, SoundCloud MP3s, or on a very simple but effective app.

[–] pipes@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

https://www.languagetransfer.org/

I think you mean this, your link is broken. I love them too and recommend them all the time (it's mostly a one guy effort actually, it's super impressive).

[–] gramie@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago

Thanks, I fixed it.

And yes, I agree that he is amazing. One guy teaching courses in Spanish, Italian, Greek, Arabic, French, German, Turkish, and Swahili!

[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago

Just calling it out: The nonsense/goofy sentences were used because it was found by studies to be more effective for learning/recall.

That wasn't a flaw, just a poorly/not at all broadcasted feature.