It's undeniable that SRS is great for remembering discrete chunks of information, but making it the primary portion of language learning efforts is generally a mistake since learning a language is not simply a process of memorizing a dictionary, word by word. Unlike an SRS, Extensive Reading will also help solidify a learner's understanding of collocations and semantics. It teaches more of the target language's culture, too.
There are two places in language learning where an SRS is fantastic. It's a great way to speed up learning the very basic scaffold necessary for engaging with graded readers or children's materials. Basic phonics training is particularly low-hanging fruit. Another great use is for memorizing words that one will very rarely hear in daily life and yet are the kinds of words everyone would be expected to know.
I recently tried Duolingo. I like some aspects of it, but it's really too bad that it mixes comprehension and production in all the activities. Far more practice time should be spent on comprehension (both listening and reading) than on production. This is true at every level but even more vital for beginners. Typing out words in a foreign language just isn't the best use of a beginner's study time.
I really wish there was a way for Duolingo to test comprehension without translating. Far too often translations are non-intuitive, especially with idioms. I don't know how they could do that, though.
Edit - an example from Duolingo: Ihm gehören viele Zeitungen.
Ihm means he/him
gehören means to be a part of or to belong to, from Duolingo:
(to) be part of
(we/they) belong to
(we/they) are part of
viele Zeitungen is many newspapers.
But the sentence does not translate as "he belongs to many newspapers". What it actually means is "He owns many newspapers". When Duolingo asks you to translate, there's no good way to translate that as a student. That is a complex sentence that, for all intents and purposes, can only be understood in German. You can't translate it without rewording it. Duolingo doesn't mention that gehören can mean "to own" in certain circumstances, because they can't give you the connotation of every situation that arises. Huge unsolved problem in language learning that would be great if it were fixed.
Yes. The one saving grace for Duolingo is that the production isn't `free' production, but most of the time you just repeat a sentence you just heard in the same exercise.
(Though I have to admit, I got stuck on Duolingo learning Spanish once the productions got more complicated.)
It's undeniable that SRS is great for remembering discrete chunks of information, but making it the primary portion of language learning efforts is generally a mistake since learning a language is not simply a process of memorizing a dictionary, word by word. Unlike an SRS, Extensive Reading will also help solidify a learner's understanding of collocations and semantics. It teaches more of the target language's culture, too.
There are two places in language learning where an SRS is fantastic. It's a great way to speed up learning the very basic scaffold necessary for engaging with graded readers or children's materials. Basic phonics training is particularly low-hanging fruit. Another great use is for memorizing words that one will very rarely hear in daily life and yet are the kinds of words everyone would be expected to know.
I recently tried Duolingo. I like some aspects of it, but it's really too bad that it mixes comprehension and production in all the activities. Far more practice time should be spent on comprehension (both listening and reading) than on production. This is true at every level but even more vital for beginners. Typing out words in a foreign language just isn't the best use of a beginner's study time.