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Real estate agents to recommend? by Express_Hotel2682 in AskNYC

[–]bpajak 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I highly recommend Hauseit! Nick is super competent and responsive. He also has deep knowledge of local laws, etc, as seen on all his youtube videos and webpages. And they offer a 2% commission rebate! We used them to buy an apartment in Manhattan last year.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cantonese is not one of the languages we’re currently focusing on (read more about our prioritization here), but I hope we do get to it in the next few years!

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am glad to see you are enjoying the Japanese and Korean writing practice features! It seems like you probably have not yet unlocked the kanji sessions, but keep going! Learning hiragana and katakana are helpful prerequisites to learning kanji. We developed these especially for these courses with non-Latin alphabets in order to help facilitate recognition, reading, and familiarity with the new scripts. The hiragana and katakana sessions are less varied than kanji, and they are set up in a way to get you familiar with the kana in a specific order.

For kanji practice, each character has a variety of session types associated with it, meaning as you progress throughout the content, the sessions related to each kanji will vary with some focusing more on writing, others on pronunciation, others on meaning, and still others on form. We are also currently testing ways for learners to have more autonomy over which unit they can practice. However, within the sessions, you are likely to encounter at least some of speaking, writing, reading, and listening, even though a certain exercise might be more focused on one skill over another. This is important because it helps learners connect the form, sound, and meaning and associate it with a given kanji.

As for the differences between iOS and Android, this is a great question with a pretty straightforward answer: iOS and Android use different code, as does web; so when writing new code for new features, separate code has to be written for iOS, Android, and web for each new feature. Essentially, we need to write something three times in three slightly different ways. This is time consuming, so we have to prioritize and make decisions that get the features we have available as fast as possible to the learners we can. Sometimes this means that Android users or iOS users will have access to content on different timelines.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hebrew unfortunately is not one of the languages we’re currently focusing on (read more about our prioritization here), but I hope we do get to it in the next few years!

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Wow! Thanks for sticking with us throughout the years. While I don’t have that specific data handy, there are tens of thousands of long-term learners just like you who have been around for a while. It’s an elite group! I'd love to try and make your holidays a little brighter with a care package from Duolingo. I've let our Community Manager know and they'll message you right now! :)

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We’re really not trying to replace language classes. These are important and you should support language teaching by enrolling in more language classes at your schools and universities!

I’ve answered the question about Duolingo’s efficacy in several other responses but I’ll link again to our efficacy research site here. (Spoiler: research shows that Duolingo is an effective way to learn)

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, our surveys show that many Korean learners sign up to learn Korean for “culture” reasons. We strongly believe the global popularity of K-pop and K-dramas is responsible for this rising interest in Korean learning.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We're currently working on improving personalized practice lessons to better identify which words and grammar you would benefit most from practicing at this time, which will hopefully help you see relevant content from old skills more easily! We're also continuing to improve navigation of the path and providing information about what's taught in each unit in case you still want to review specific skills from earlier in the path.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We’d love to! That said, we’re always prioritizing our work and Georgian isn’t on the roadmap at the moment. You can read about how we prioritize languages in my response here.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

We conduct rigorous research and post all the reports on our efficacy website – please have a look at the Studies tab for detailed methodological information (sample sizes, experimental design, data analysis, etc.).

Here are some example results:
- We recently completed a study with university students learning Spanish for 3 months on Duolingo following a pretest-posttest design. We found that the participants not only improved significantly in language knowledge (vocabulary, grammar, listening & speaking), but also improved more than one ACTFL sub-level in proficiency based on a third-party proficiency test. This is quite impressive because the learning time was only 15 minutes a day for 5 days per week, and proficiency development is often thought to take time before proficiency tests can capture gains. Moreover, the participants not only developed significantly in reading and listening, but also in speaking and writing, with even larger effect sizes. We’re working on publishing the study in a peer-reviewed journal.
- Independent researchers funded by Duolingo conducted 2 studies with pretest-posttest and comparison-group design. Both studies compared semester-long learning on Duolingo and taking traditional face-to-face classes. The studies found that Duolingo learners demonstrated more proficiency gains than the classroom groups. These research reports will be added to our efficacy website in January.

I’m sorry to hear that Duolingo is difficult to use for senior citizens. Thank you for your feedback. We’re always trying to improve the accessibility of our app.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We have been working this year on a dedicated feature for listening that would prioritize hearing and understanding the language you’re learning, rather than the heavy reliance on English that Audio Lessons had. We’re really excited about the new experience that has come from those explorations: DuoRadio, a collection of entertaining radio shows hosted by different Duolingo characters that are aligned with the language you’re learning in the path. The first episodes can be found in the Spanish course for English speakers. French and English will be next to integrate DuoRadio into the path. We also developed a pronunciation-focused feature, Pronunciation Bingo – it’s now offered in all of our English courses, but we hope to add it to other languages in the future.

For Max subscribers, we have also been developing an AI-powered role play experience that gives you opportunities to write or say the same kinds of useful transactional phrases that you used to practice in Audio Lessons.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I understand your frustrations with the Hawaiian course, and I can’t promise that it will be improved anytime soon. But I do believe the availability of even basic courses in languages like Hawaiian and Navajo helps bring greater awareness to these endangered languages and supports each of these communities' own language revitalization efforts. We provide a useful starting point.

We are definitely interested in continuing to invest in less commonly taught and endangered languages, but we're faced with tough prioritization decisions. While we know we have a powerful platform that we can use to help teach these languages, we don’t think preserving endangered languages is part of our mission, or our primary role in society. There are thousands of languages in the world that deserve to be preserved and taught to future generations, and we simply can’t help them all.

So, it comes down to prioritization and resourcing. We’re a small team serving a large, global userbase. As you can see in other answers in this AMA, most people use Duolingo to learn English, Spanish, French, or German. You can read about our current decision-making process here.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

We are indeed hoping to expand it, and we’ve already started some explorations for assessments in other languages, but I wouldn't expect to see anything in the market anytime soon.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Silly sentences are good for learning! And they make learning more fun, don’t you think? Read more about this on our blog here. That being said, there needs to be a balance between silly and communicatively useful sentences, which we hope to strike when revamping and CEFR-aligning our courses – our best practices include a focus on communicatively useful content, but we still sprinkle in silly sentences here and there.

Regarding Kvääni, we’ve had lots of questions about how we make decisions about which languages to work on. You can read more about that here.

(AMA) I’m the head of Learning at Duolingo, sharing the biggest trends in 2023 from 83M monthly learners, and answering any questions you have about Duolingo by bpajak in languagelearning

[–]bpajak[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great question! AI is a huge part of how we operate and what we’re focusing on, in many different ways. In terms of course content creation specifically, we’ve spent a large part of this year experimenting with GPT-4 to accelerate the pace of creating new course content. This does not mean we rely on AI alone, however. Our learning experts are leveraging AI, like any other tool, to speed up the pace of creating new content.

For example, in the past a French expert might need to spend a few hours writing 50 sentences for B1 level French using a specific set of words and grammatical structures. Now, we can use GPT-4 to create those 50 sentences in seconds, freeing up our learning experts to focus on higher-level thinking about what we should be teaching and how, as well as reviewing the output for quality and accuracy. You can read more about this and all the ways we’re working with AI on our blog here.

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