Please compare competition features of LingQ and Duolingo

Open Forum
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I signed up for LingQ but don’t use it. I know LingQ is better, and why, but now I ‘love’ Duolingo—not because it teaches the way I want to be taught, but because of the leaderboards/leagues. Until my wife signed us up, I thought it was stupid. It is stupid, but I’m hooked now.

Maintaining a respectable spot in the league motivates me to spend at least 15 minutes every morning and every night pacing around the house, listening, reading, tapping, and babbling. Call me childish, I don’t care.

So how does LingQ compare on this point? I looked at the page that has info on the ‘challenges’ and a bunch of other stuff, but it’s kind of overwhelming. I gather there are competitions, but:

Are there weekly ones? (Which are great because they keep you on your toes all week, and then give you a momentary breather, and then a brand new chance.) I know there are streaks, but are you shown your streak automatically? Are there friend (enemy) streaks like Duolingo has? I don’t want to let the other person down, so I do at least one lesson a day.

And most especially, are the challenges and streaks automatic (or can you make them automatic), so you’re always in a competition (and always offered friend streaks if there are those) without having to click anything or whatever? Every extra click is a friction point, and Duolingo puts that all in front of you so you don’t have to think about it.

Also, is there a subset of people on LingQ who use the competition features routinely and ‘like’ them, the way I do the Duolingo leagues, so that I would get some meaningful competition?

And I’d appreciate any other comments on the subject, especially from anyone who uses or has used both.

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Duolingo’s strength is gamification; they offer many interesting features to make users engage more. Though LingQ has similar features like streak and challenge, they are not the key features, they only show us numbers. However, it has a stat page that allows you to keep track of your learning progress.

Also, the learning style of the platforms is completely different. LingQ is built based on the Comprehensive Input method, and Duolingo is a more conventional style. They are complementary. If you are a complete beginner, you can easily learn the core of the language, like grammar, sentence structure of something, with Duolingo, but as your ability grows, it will not be as effective as before. However, LingQ is quite beginner-unfriendly, but it doesn’t have an upper limit, as you can import any content.

That’s my notion about them.

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I used Duolingo for eight months with French and for a month with German. My experience is that it isn’t a good way to learn a language, it’s getting you to memorise some words and phrases and encouraging translation in your head. That’s not learning a foreign language. You could argue that it is one way to fill your head with some words and phrases, and some people do like it.

I think the problem is that learning a language is hard, and some people expect it to be fun. To be honest it often isn’t, it can be more like work.

I recommend finding a course on YouTube, and working through it, here or on YouTube. However, we all have different ways to learn. If you like Duolingo, then go for it. But be aware that enjoyment isn’t necessarily a good measure of effectiveness.

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At heart it’s an assisted reader and video player. It allows you to quickly look up words and phrases. It’s not based on CI, any half decent learning approach has to include input.

Duolingo is far from conventional, and is nothing like school and evening class lessons I attended. It’s just a badly implemented Spaced Repetition System with huge amounts of gameification to get you addicted.

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I did the hard challenges for Ukrainian during the last 6 months. It was quite challenging as having an average of more than 40 words known per day is hard for me. But I did it for 5 months in a row. So the challenge can push you a little bit further and it’s fun.

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This. DuoLingo tops out after a year or so. LingQ is a tool that’s limited to your motivation.

I’ve been using LingQ for over 8 years.

Use DuoLingo to get you interested and motivated. Once you max out the game, move onto more intermediate and advanced learning tools like LingQ.

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“I know LingQ is better, and why, but now I ‘love’ Duolingo”.
If you want to learn a language, you know LingQ is better. So do that. Ideally first so it gets done even if you run out of time.
If you want to “babble” with Duolingo, nobody is stopping you. You can love it all you want and enjoy the games. That’s different to saying it’s best for teaching you a language.You know it’s not.
How about you do some Lingq before you do any Duolingo (if at all)?

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Duolingo is intentionally designed to give people a false sense of learning and get people addicted to the app via dark patterns. They use psychological manipulation. The courses are intentionally stretched out so people can stay on the app as long as possible.

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Thanks everyone for your comments and your time.

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Hey, I’m late to the discussion but I wanted to mention that I really dislike the gamification of Duolingo and have as much of it turned off as they’ll let me. I’ve been on Duolingo for nearly 900 days, (and nearly the same on LingQ), and it used to be quite a bit better. I’ve studied a few different languages on it, completed their entire French course, and am using it currently to supplement my Spanish studies.

These days it feels like it is padded out with filler and a lot of busy work that slows down learning. It seems to be designed for children and won’t get you very far in your target language. I skip/test out of a lot of the lessons/units there because it wastes so much time. It’s really best to use it as a starting point or introduction to a language.

If you like the competitive elements of Duo and you want a site where you’ll actually learn a language, give Busuu a try. It is MUCH better for serious language learners than Duolingo. There is a free tier where you have to sit through in-house ads between lessons, but I’m only paying around US $40 per year (they run periodic sales) to study as many languages as I’d like without ads, and unlike Duo you’ll actually learn grammar and a decent vocabulary.

So you may want to take a look at Busuu as well.

Good luck!

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I agree with most of your post. I completed the Busuu French course, it was okay and much better than Duolingo, but like all of these apps, it’s only a starter course. I tried the Busuu German course, but gave up as there was too much grammar being introduced, and I got lost. I did the Babbel German course, which I preferred. Again, it’s only a starter course. All these online apps are little more than glorified SRS.

I think apps are good for novices, they provide a framework, but I can’t help thinking a proper course with group lessons would be better. Anyone with at least one L2 learnt as an adult to a high level should be able to learn independently without an app.

There is a trend to dismiss school teaching, and promote apps as the modern way to learn. I can’t help thinking that such ideas were promoted by the app creators.

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I agree 100%. I took in-person university level courses for the four main languages I have studied, as well as spending two years each in France and Taiwan in my twenties, speaking French and Mandarin with native speakers.

For me, most of the online ones are just refresher courses after 40 years of rarely revisiting the languages.

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Here are my thoughts: Duolingo is trying to become a one-size-fits-all language learning app with little to no personalization.

They’ve realized that getting users hooked on their app is key to their bottom line, so they’ve implemented a lot of gamification and simplified many features. It’s fine for beginners or casual learners, but in the long run, I doubt anyone can learn much from using Duolingo. The biggest benefit Duolingo provides, in my opinion, is helping learners get started in their language.

On the other hand, LingQ is based on Steve Kaufmann’s learning method, which in turn is rooted in Stephen Krashen’s input hypothesis.

LingQ trains your brain to get used to your target language and acquire vocabulary using real, authentic content. It makes the process of consuming content in your target language easier and more enjoyable. For example, if a real book written in Japanese looks intimidating, you can import it into LingQ and work through it. Do this enough times, and real books will become accessible. Same goes for listening to podcasts. Read the transcripts and listen enough times using LingQ, look up words, etc. and you’ll eventually be able to enjoy podcasts outside the platform.

It worked for me.

LingQ incorporates streaks and leaderboards as well. It is also highly customizable and doesn’t sell your data.

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@ericfromlingq
I agree. I love LingQ and am using it for Spanish. I tried to use LingQ for Mandarin, but gave up. I know you used it for Japanese. I just wish LingQ was less intimidating and more user friendly to absolute beginners especially for learners of languages like Mandarin which doesn’t have an alphabet.

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Is that necessarily a bad thing? We all learn differently. Education can and should happen outside the classroom. I don’t think language learning apps have anything to do with the anti-intellectualism that’s going on in the USA and elsewhere. Tbh, the grammar heavy traditional language learning classes don’t work. I’ve taken them in high school and in university. I’ve known people who studied French traditionally in school for several years yet can’t speak it.

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@hmbkang
I think it boils down to what you want:

  • Do you want to have some gamified fun? Use Duolingo. Their user interface and gamification are world-class - but you won’t understand (fast-paced) native speaker content.
  • Do you want to understand (fast-paced) native speaker content? Then a reading-while-listening approach using audio reader software (LingQ, ReadLang, etc.), YT with subtitles (from Easy Languages, for example), etc. are your best friends.
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You’re repeating a number of old chestnuts. In truth there is no such thing as a traditional language learning class, they vary greatly according to institution and country. Fans of Comprehensible Input love to create this false dichotomy between rigid, grammar heavy traditional methods, and their modern, effective and enjoyable approach. Duolingo claim that their ‘course’ is more effective than university classes. Well they must be comparing to some very bad university classes.

I started French at school in England 50 years ago, it was not grammar heavy. I did evening classes 40 years ago with L’Alliance Française and L’Institut Français, neither were grammar heavy, quite the opposite. There are grammar heavy teaching methods, you’ve experienced them yourself, but I’ve never come across them. They are not the norm in English state schools.

As for not being able to speak after several years, that’s hardly surprising. Even after 5 years of school lessons, I had not done enough to get beyond a high B1 or low B2. School lessons provide a basis, but in my experience most students are not motivated, and do not listen to enough input. To develop speaking skills, you have to be self motivated, listen a lot, a thousand or more hours, and practise output.

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It may be partly a difference in audience. Perhaps duolingo has a larger audience of young people using their phones, and used to playing games on their phones, so their audience is more used to a mobile interface and to gamification features.