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What's a good language learning app or method? (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by to c/comradeship@lemmygrad.ml
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I'd like to learn Mandarin and also have interest learning Russian, Arabic and Spanish, but don't really know where to start. I know apps like Duolingo and Mango exist, but are those the best options? Would I be best off taking a class? To my multi-lingual comrades, where should I start?

Edit: Thanks for all the great replies everyone! I have a lot of resources to look into now.

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[–] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Comprehensible input is becoming a cult and I've seen good evidence this method does not really work.

Here's the latest video in a series from a skeptic trying dreaming Spanish, he's 800 hours in and he's... well behind 800 hours in a classroom, at least.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    I didn't watch that video, but I can say it's working for me. I've tried to do classroom learning (grammar exercises, vocab memorization), and flash card method, and it's not as fast or enjoyabe as this. I can actually stand in a group of spanish speakers and understand most of what's being said, which wasn't something I could do for years of study in other ways.

    Also if some random youtuber is blanket demonizing CI, that's entirely anecdotal, because there have been many studies comparing its performance to other learning methods.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    Also if some random youtuber is blanket demonizing CI,

    I think this is the kind of accusation you shouldn't make as someone who admitted to not even checking out the YouTuber in question. He's not "blanket demonizing CI" he's running an extremely long, intensive experiment to test the claims people make in favor of this method, and the results are not particularly impressive.

    If he just wanted to "blanket demonize" anything he wouldn't bother dedicating so much of his life to it (it certainly doesn't make him much money!) he's doing it because he's passionate about language learning and wants to understand different methods of learning and their pros and cons.

    CI is, by the way, of course a good component of learning a language. You should be using it. But the idea that it is, on its own, an effective method with no other studying or supplementation strikes me as obviously absurd, as shown by the YouTube series in question.

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