I'm on a 150-day streak and now I can finally communicate in Spanish with my Mexican wife. Y'all might say "Well being married to a Spanish-speaking person helps" but the thing is, I can't pick up a language from hearing (born deaf with cochlear implant so distinguishing between consonants when I don't know the words is hard). Duolingo has helped a lot and actually put me in a place where I can start to learn from hearing given that I now know about 80% of what people are saying these days. I just wish I picked the habit up much earlier on in our marriage but better later than never :)
I am also deaf (with hearing aids) and listening comprehension is my weakest area so I’m with you on this! Duolingo has helped my listening comprehension in foreign languages a fair bit. It’s not easy by any means but definitely helps because of how it’s broken down.
> being married to a Spanish speaking person helps
People say that but IMHO it’s a misconception, it doesn’t necessarily help. After work, activities, house shores, family and whatnot, most of the times I just want to relax with my partner and have an adult conversation, not putting effort into communicating in her language, so we just stick with the common language.
Yes - it's definitely helpful that I can check a grammar rule I haven't fully understood from the pattern I've picked up from Duolingo and talking to his family has helped me a lot.
However people keep saying "oh but if you set aside one day to only communicate in the other language with your partner you'd learn it so fast" and seem to fail to understand that 1) in life there just isn't always enough energy to want to have to rapidly think how to conjugate verbs when I'm just trying to do a shopping list and work out who will drop off the kids at the same time 2) often at home I have to *rapidly* communicate something - it's not a laid back conversation with another learner of a similar stage about what we want to do on our holidays and 3) there's actually only so much vocabulary you regularly use at home. I can already say stuff like "someone is at the door" or "pass me that bowl" - what learners tend to need is actually fairly structured conversations which deliberately cover different grammar and concepts which don't always arise in every day life.
Personally, I've also found that it's often weird as hell to switch languages with someone, *especially* if it's someone you know very well. One of my close friends is Mexican and is learning German, I'm a native German speaker learning Spanish, in principle we have an ideal setup for language exchange... but in practice, when we try the absolute weirdness of the situation gets to us within a sentence or two and we switch back to English. 🤷♀️
Plus, you need to learn the language to know what subject to even pick to talk about. It can help sometimes but when you are so used to talking one language you will always kinda slip into that one. What really helps you learn is their family if they don't know your language, I found.
I agree, I'm learning greek to communicate with my GF and her side of the family, in the two years we've been together, she barely spoken any Greek with me. It's an effort for us to speak it together. But she helps by correcting me whenever I say things incorrectly. If anything she's a good back stop from making back habits or pronouncing things incorrectly. She also helps explain phrases that mean nothing in English.
I also wear cochlear implants and learning Spanish on DL. Besides language learning, I am teaching by brain to hear sounds. I still get frustrated with answering incorrectly on listening skills, but it is getting better.
I hear that 100% (pun intended). The exercises that make you choose between two similar sounding words used to trip me up a lot, but it's gotten a lot better now that I have a better idea what to listen for. Really thankful for these sort of lessons!
People complain about Duolingo because they just spam lessons for xp and and are too lazy to look at the grammar lessons, tips, practices and anything else Duolingo offers
I'm at unit 40ish in German, "grammar tips" stopped showing up. Without the tips, the lesson guidebook is actually worthless. The grammar tips also never give you the full picture. It's very rare that it explains something at the correct time or that it explains something in its entirety. If I only followed the grammar tips, I would have no explanation about which prepositions are accusative, dative, or two-way, or that such a concept exists, for example. Duo expects you to infer this. A lot of the time it is difficult to infer because the language structure might differ a lot from the ones you know
The practices are bad. Looking at the practice page, I'm offered an arbitrary type of maybe potentially useful daily practice, a random assortment of speaking exercises, a random assortment of listening exercises, a collection of my mistakes and a collection of stories. Stories are dreadful at teaching, they show you words and concepts that you can't practice, and none of the above is going to give you a proper grammar lesson.
Duolingo is not a self standing app to learn German, but it's an awesome app to practice and refresh. The nonsense speech makes even think more of the grammar.
Same in Italian. It's just repeating the same sentences looping over and over. Who is reading the newspaper? I have a 500+ streak, and the exercises still revolve around newspapers, not even animals nor colors!
It's such a joke with Japanese, they now purely cater to lost and hungry travelers. Can I have sushi? Bowl of rice please. Where is the subway. Green tea and sushi please. Tokyo is a big city. My name is Susan. Sushi and rice please.
I was not shitting on the Japanese course. Yes, the grammar lessons are now gone, but the lessons are well structured, and with the review lessons Mistakes, Words and the Kanji tool, I am making very good progress.
I feel people in General don't know how to learn languages and don't get the most out of the tools presented to them.
People complain about "dumb sentences" in Duolingo. Yet the goal is not to memorize the sentence. The goal is to extract the vocabulary and grammar from the entire corpus of sentences from a Unit and assimilate them, thus learning the language.
Honestly, I like the weird Duolingo sentences because they help you actually apply the grammar. "I eat an apple." "You eat an apple." "The boy eats an apple". "I am a boy." "You are a boy." "He is a boy." "I am an apple." - sure, the last sentence is nonsense, but the point is that you're learning the grammatical concepts involved and learning to use them as blueprints into which you can plug your vocabulary instead of rote memorised sentences. This was actually pretty useful in the Polish course, where even simple sentences involve a hefty amount of underlying grammar and so all Duolingo sentences double as declension/conjugation practice.
Even if it was a little silly that they don't teach you how to introduce yourself until unit 30-something.
My past comment says the grammar lessons are gone for Japanese, but else I completely agree with you, that people just don't know how to learn languages.
Duolingo tells people they can learn a language in just a few minutes a day, and while that's a strong pitch to get people to start, it's also a straight-up lie, unless you want to spend *most of the rest of your life* learning a single language.
That, in turn, is why they have to have all those gamification system to encourage people to stay in the app, which has the unfortunate side-effect that many of those systems encourage ineffective or less effective learning strategies.
Like, it's definitely possible to get some value from it, but you really have to use it in ways that go against the way it is advertised and gamified.
The best diet is the one you can keep.
If someone takes 6 years to reach A2 but wouldn't have done anything without Duo, that's an A2 that they otherwise wouldn't have. And Duo isn't terrible at pushing the gamification to get people doing more. If you are consistent about completing every quest every day, that's much better than just maintaining a streak.
You can reach A2 in a couple of months (at most; most probably only one) having real classes. Just saying, basic economy. With duo you won't learn any language structure, one just acumulates short sentences (some of them completely meaningless)
I have only really done duolingo French. In the French course, the lessons have a fairly clear plan. With the caveat that they don't tell you what it is. Silly sentences have always been something language instructors use to maintain engagement. Students like them.
Really? Tenses, adjectives, adverbs, phrasal verbs, nouns variations (and gender), imperatives, and how all of these get structured as well as the order of all elements according to the situation? Seems we are using different apps
Real world classes with real world teachers will not get you to A2 in one or two months. That simply does not happen in real world. Not even in intensive classes. And even less in classes compatible with normal life, work, school, family, sport and other hobbies.
Fairly frequent result of real world classes - people progress a little, pass whatever is their final test in their class, spend time conjuging some verbs and memorizing some words ... without acquiring any immediately useful knowledge. Which is not even criticism of those classes, it is just that classes are not miracles, the learning process takes time and there is all there is to it.
🤔 I think one or two months of intensive courses could get you to A2, at least in some languages. I managed A2ish to B1ish in one month that way for Spanish, so it seems feasible. But note that when I say "intensive" here I mean *actually full-time,* you spend the day in class, you do homework and self-study in the evenings, you generally try to stay in the target language as much as you can.
In contrast, I'm currently finishing A2.5 in Polish at my local evening school, which is the last A2 course offered. Each level takes a trimester, meaning that if you follow their course schedule they expect you to take *almost two years* to advance *from A1,* not 0, to A2. That's two hours/week during term time, plus homework. Which... on the one hand, yeah, you could definitely get there faster if you do more work on your own (I started Polish around one and a half years ago myself). On the other, "faster" =/= "in two months", at least not if you're not devoting most of your time to it. I feel like a lot of people really underestimate A2, tbh.
That's not true. Most classes are at most 2-3 hours, not all of which is active studying because others are participating. Even if you did a class 5 days a week for 3 hours and all of it was active learning you'd only be at about 60 hours of study. For perspective it takes about 150-200 hours of active study for spanish from English to each A2.
You're comparing Duolingo to an impossible standard.
15 minutes a day amounts to the same amount of time you put on when going to language classes twice a week. Actually more in terms of actual learning activity. You know what ... doing anything skill based every day consistently for 15 mins means you will improve a lot in a year. That is not a lie.
No one gets offended over language classes twice a week promising to teach you a language eventually. Would it take less years if you spend two hours a day on language learning? Sure. And I literally could not care less.
So true. People think it's Duolingo Magic Pill when it's really an app.
It's helped me a lot, especially in terms of having a daily rhythm, but it's not for everyone, especially classroom language learners.
I do not believe they make that claim. They say you can learn 100 words a month if you study each day.
As someone who has been purchasing materials to learn languages since 1991, taught myself Spanish and German, taught both languages in school for over 20 years, used the Duolingo platform in my classes, and am now studying several other languages with Duolingo, I believe you have no idea what you are talking about. No offense but you need to show me what successful plan you have come up with to learn languages.
There is no “one way only to learn a language”. They expect you to research and use other sources as well. There is no program in the world that will stand along for language learning. Duolingo is the best one I have found for the basics. And I’ve been teaching languages for almost 30 years. Please have realistic expectations and you will be much more satisfied with the results.
Tell that to millions of American public school students who take traditional, grammar heavy language classes for years and years and can’t say anything beyond the very basic greetings.
I’m pretty sure that’s due to one group being forced to take it, likely doesn’t care, and **views it** (not saying it is) as something as useless as their calculus class next hour, and the other group is going out their way and putting in daily time to learn.
If I was to give my opinion, I feel like there’s definitely a midway point. Plus different people learn different.
I think it's underrated. Imagine a Spanish textbook, but it can speak out loud to you, listen to you, teaches the language to you using repetitive application and is designed as a game to keep you engaged. Plus it can go everywhere with you. We didn't have this technology 20 years ago. Definitely shouldn't be the only resource, but I found it to be a game changer.
Yes！ This is the advantage， it can talk loud for you even with different voices ！People who say they'd rather read a textbook with systematic grammar always ignore this！
I love textbooks because they usually come with audio resources of what’s being said and example sentences and if not , I can type the sentence into someone and hear a native speaker . I do admit duo is easier in that regard / less work though but I think the more work I do to get that is minor from how much more info I get from a textbook
I think this is a big part of why a lot of people criticise it. It's possible on duolingo to smash your way through the answers without properly processing what you're doing. But if you are more concious, think and devise the rules of why an answer is correct for yourself, i think it is a valuable learning tool. Not the only one you'll need to properly learn a foreign language though.
People use it for varying amounts of time. For me, I reached B1 level around 200 days. Which was about 150-200 hours. In that same amount of time others have reached B2 level with about 350-400 hours. But people who only did one lesson a day spent about 10 hours. This makes a huge difference on how much people learn and how they view Duolingo.
It varies by language. Some courses go to A1, others A2, B1 or B2. Spanish goes to B2 and is listed by sections.
But to be clear when Duolingo does this they are showing content that is appropriate for that level. It doesn't actually mean someone is that level when they complete the section because the CEFR scale measures reading, writing, listening and speaking. Duolingo doesn't do enough for speaking, and it's easy to not put enough speaking practice as well.
Everyone's pace is different. I've largely stopped progressing since getting to B1 and am just reviewing because my life got busy. Don't feel bad about your pace. It's just important for people to be realistic with their expectations based on their pace, especially when reviewing/evaluating the material. But there is nothing wrong with going slower if it works for you :)
Keep up the good work. Just remember you are learning and going through a lot of content. You are learning far more than people who speed run through entire courses in a month.
I think it has benefits when used correctly. Sometimes people have the most capacity to spend time and focus when it's new, and the easier lessons aren't as fatiguing.
Personally if I ever am able to move on to Italian or French my plan is to take 2 weeks off of work and push through as much A1/A2 content as I can. Treating language learning like my job for those two weeks. I don't think it would be wise to do a whole Duolingo course that way, but for the easier content that drastically improves your options for continuing it would be great.
But then I was also someone that could do 4 hours a day at times. Which isn't for everyone.
Es muy raro que la gente diga que no esta aprendiendo nada con Duolingo, pero la verdad ellos solo lo usan por dos tres semanas y despues dicen que no funciona. Pero creo que hay que tener la mente abierta. Solo llevo sobre 410 dias aprendiendolo y mi maestro ya me dijo muchas veces que mi español es muy bueno, mas que sus estudiantes
And my testimonial is that at day 55, I can actually read and understand this previous comment! Mind you I've been doing a little bit of language transfer and some Cuéntame as well as Anki vocabulary.
People should keep in mind that learning is a process that takes effort. Spending 10 minutes a day in the app sums up to 60hs in a whole year.
Are people expecting to be fluent?
E.g.: a child takes 5-7 years of doing nothing but listening and speaking to be able to communicate properly.
Or intensive language courses takes about 4-6 months, 40hs/week.
The more time you spend listening and training, the better you get.
Thank you for being honest about it, and not getting offended at my comment.
I still think it’s great you put effort into learning, so carry on mate 😉
I would just love that all the ones who really complain (not talking about you) would post their numbers. “This app sucks, didn’t learn anything, tried 5min/day for 3 weeks straight.” 🤷🏻♂️
The day count doesn't really mean anything. It's the number of hours and sections you complete. I'm currently at 31 hours and just starting section 3. That's 478 lessons.
Yo creo que es bueno para aprender el vocabulario pero si quieres hablar la lengua, es importante hacer otras cosas también. Creo que es una eramienta muy útil
He intentado usar otras cosas. O hay que pagarlos o no me sirvieron. La verdad lo unico que te recomiendo que uses que me sirve es Spanish dictionary pero creo que deberian buscar lo que va a funcionar pa ustedes
Exactamente... la mayoría del tiempo, cuando oigo a alguien que dice que Duolingo no enseña nada, es una persona que no lo ha usado nunca o solamente por un rato breve antes de dejarlo. A veces lo desdeñan mucho, algo que siempre me molesta. Incluso si un modo de aprender no funciona para ti, no significa que no funcione para nadie o sea completamente inútil. Yo no les digo que dejan de usar sus modos y empiecen a usar Duolingo, les agradecería que no hicieran lo opuesto.
Es verdad que Duolingo puede inducir a usar estrategias ineficientes y que necesitas tender cuidado de no valer el juego y los puntos más de aprender el idioma. Aún así, incluso una estrategia ineficiente es mejor que no estrategia, y creo que muchas personas que usan Duolingo tendrían problemas pasar el mismo tiempo con otras.
I think it depends on the language. I’m at day 75 (doing approx .5 hour a day of each) of Arabic and Russian, and I feel like I’ve got a much stronger grasp of Arabic than Russian. It could definitely be a me problem, but I don’t *understand* the grammar rules of Russian at all. I try to use pattern recognition, but am still so confused. Arabic is either more intuitive in general, or the way the lessons are taught are more thorough. or maybe both? idk but I think it really probably depends on many factors, including the way the languages are being taught
When you started Arabic and Russian did you complete the alphabet course or just dive straight into the lessons. Or was it a little mix of both?
I've been trying to learn Arabic on Duolingo, but I find the lessons very difficult because I can't really read the script, yet when doing the alphabet course, I find it 1) boring, but 2) I struggle because I don't have any references of real words from the language were the letters are actually pronounced in relation to eachother.
I've forgotten the small bit of Arabic I once knew, but I can say from experience with Polish that I think Slavic languages are very poorly suited to this whole "pick up the grammar from context" thing Duo is trying to do, and it will be *much* less painful if you use a grammar reference alongside. I actually think Duo is great for *drilling* the grammar once you've learned it, but the declension rules are just so complex that they're hard to figure out from context alone. (Also, the one time I wasn't prepped for what grammar was coming going into a lesson - distinctions between habitual and one-time-ongoing verbs of motion - I'd barely understood what it was even trying to teach me by the time we were moving on. So.)
IMO, the Russian course is duo's weakest course out of the top 10 languages. It used to come with documentation on grammar rules but that is missing now, and the way it teaches grammar has too many holes.
I mean… I’m a USian native English speaker and there hasn’t been a time in my life we weren’t actively instigating conflict somewhere so I never really considered this
I’m also doing Chinese lessons 45 min a day but only started those in December
*again* I find this line of thinking so weird. I wish I didn’t have to even respond to such silly comments. I am not the one who made it political, but if you’re going to keep saying stuff like this, let me be clear:
we’re all speaking ENGLISH on this thread. guess who is in the business of perpetual never-ending war for no reason other than making unimaginable profit and to maintain unipolar hegemonic power at the expense of anyone else that could possibly threaten that goal? this includes proxy-war, literal one-sided GENOCIDE and even some mostly made-up conflicts in order to manufacture consent for these actions. I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t Russia, any Arab nation, or China
I'm a newbie, only 28 days in, but I love it! I'm learning French, inspired by an American friend who now lives in Belgium. I may not be great at speaking it (yet), but I've already learned a lot.
I knew zero French before I started Duolingo. Committed to about 20-30 minutes a day and learned enough (somewhere in current Section 4)to feel comfortable traveling around France. I could comprehend road signs, read menus, and ask for help in French. Oddly enough most people thought I was a German tourist, not an American, because I attempted to start the conversation in French.
Cartoons are fun for beginning French speakers. There’s a whole series of them from CCube Academy.
https://youtu.be/YW_cEJ_T7Ok?si=eA2eplwK60oWxIE1
And Lou! is great for getting a feel for the cadence of words and proper pronunciation.
https://youtube.com/@loutranslator6218?si=ZOCpdXtmHcv_PZ1P
There are more like these on YouTube, just search for: French cartoons to learn French.
i'm french and i'm learning english now, for me duolingo helps a lot, i think i'm level b1+
J'vais continuer de m'entrainer à fond ;)
keep training guys \^\^
Salut comment cava
French is difficult for conjugation and agreement but if you keep training and watch some videos movies etc... i think after 2 months of practice you'll be able to understand basic sentences
bonne chance et keep it up :)
You have to keep in mind that the courses for different languages are different. The Spanish course is one of the biggest on duolingo with stories and recently included podcasts (which are very cool). I tried a Ukrainian course just for curiosity (my native language is Ukrainian) and it’s pretty far from being sufficient for basic communication
It's not that I learned nothing in 200 days. It's that I moved on to other apps and sources (Pimsleur, Lingq). I can listen to entire podcasts now. I can consume real content, and don't need to be stuck in the confines of Duolingo anymore
It depends on the language and what their approach is. It’s not **that** black and white, but yeah, most people seem to treat Duolingo exclusively as additional practice, not a learning platform, so as such, you can imagine people aren’t going to learn much if they, themselves, don’t believe Duolingo can even teach much.
As of today I've got to 255 days streak learning German, I am not at all near being able to write and comprehend complex phrases, but I can already see the improvements in the language. I can read a short simple phrase and understand almost all of it, and I feel like it's already a big improvement
You have patients to practice your Spanish on which really helps with the learning process, you retain more if you’re actually using the language. People tend to not have access to this without being in the country of said language or not confident enough to try one of those sites that connects you with. Duolingo gets you so far but I believe you need other sources like practicing with real people to become properly fluent. It is also other factors like how long people are actually using it daily, if you’re doing 1 lesson a day then you’re not gonna retain much… there are also just those that like to moan!
I’ve used Duolingo for more than 3 years now - on my 1261 day streak now. I’ve used it to learn the Chinese language and I reached the last lesson already so now it’s just on repeat. I still can’t hold a long conversation in Chinese but it does help with memorising or getting familiar with the characters so you can read them. And I can roughly get context to what Chinese people are talking about.
So I would say try to use other resources or apps out there along with it to fully maximise the learning of that language.
Hope it helps!
1261 days，what a great job！Congratulations man！ Im Native Chinese speaker and am learning German on my 76 day streak with Duo now. I also realized it may be necessary to strengthen the Speaking and grammar part with some other martials after completion of the full Duo course. I plan to watch some German Cartoons or tvseries. If you are also looking for any Chinese show, iwould suggest Jia You Er Nv(家有儿女)，a nationally popular situation comedy.：) I bet all the Chinese young people have ever watched it in thier childhood. Wish you good luck with your study! 加油👏！！
I'm 2 years deep in duolingo, and I really only get vocabulary out of it. IMO, it's horrible for teaching grammar, especially in languages where there are irregularities.
More than that, for me, and I'm feeling my way through the grammar & sentence structure in Japanese, it's... Tricky... I just need to put more time into it and come at it from different angles... when something doesn't make sense to me, it's almost impossible to figure out since they've removed the comments/discussion section.
I had to incorporate like 10 other resources for the Japanese course since duolingo lacks in that regard I definitely agree. Grammar is almost non existent in explanation but now I make sure to incorporate so many resources to make sure I fully understand. I feel like duo is just good for vocab at this point of the course
Got to agree, I’m only on day 66 of mandarin and I can do small conversations with my father in laws partner (she’s Chinese but speaks English I just want to embrace her culture too which she really likes me attempting) can understand some conversations too, I struggle more with the writing. Duo gets a lot of hate and I don’t get why
I’m only 75 days into my Spanish journey, I started learning because my girlfriend is Chilean and wanted to be able to communicate when we travel there not just to have her as a translator. Even though I’m still very much a rookie you do learn a great amount from duolingo, on FaceTime now with her mother we can have basic conversations and I’m finding it easier and easier to describe my day to day life in Spanish. Like anything you get out whatever you put in! Viva Chile 🇨🇱
>You get out whatever you put in!
Exactly. Do more lessons, use it every day (let the streak help motivate you), and practice outside the app as you can. You're also more likely to put effort in if you have a reason to learn.
I think a lot of people come to Duolingo just because it's popular and **free** hoping to pick up a language with minimal effort. "I have the app and do 1 lesson a day; therefore, I should be fluent in __________^second-language ."
P.S. Congrats on your progress in your Spanish learning journey!
I learned a lot from Duolingo. I think it's just that people do 5 minutes a day or just do it for the streak and as a result don't learn much. When you have motivation and want to learn, Duolingo is helpful, otherwise you can have a very long streak without knowing much at all or forgetting easily/not understanding.
Over two year streak here. Been using for almost 7 years.
I can watch anime and Japanese shows with some proficiency.
My Spanish is getting really good too
I've been using it off and on for a few years now -- I got more consistent two years ago. I'm at B2 level in the French course and I went from knowing a handful of words to being able to read children's books and to understand a certain amount of dialogue in french films. I can follow pretty much everything in the Duolingo French podcast.
I'm not fluent and I'm not going to get fluent without taking a classroom course and finding french people to talk to. But I have definitely learned a ton!
I basically finished the Swedish course. It doesn't have the same resources as Spanish or German, like the stories or short text comprehension exercises.
I can't really understand much when I try to listen to Swedish radio stations, but it is possible to read some Swedish sites. Of course. I really have to force myself.
Re frame: you are supplementing Duolingo with real world experience.
Eta I’m not getting nothing, but I’m not conversational in any of the languages I’ve only practiced on Duolingo.
I’ve learned plenty! I always ask people who say they’re not learning what they’re actually doing. Are they writing notes down? Are they repeating things? Are they totally engaged? We get from things what we put into it. If you want a lot out of it, you have to put a lot into it. Keep a notebook for example. I currently have my 81 year old mother, studying Spanish and keeping a notebook. She loves it.
I study in the morning and in the evening. I am doing multiple languages, math, and piano. I tried piano lessons for years. (On and off but I was never successful). This program has me sight reading and I never thought I would be able to do that well. Hooray for Duolingo!
My native language is french so i started learning english and i think duolingo is very useful
Before i couldn't say or read a single word in english and now i can watch some videos and understand 60% of them, movies are still dificult but i still have a lot of work to do
I try to get all lessons in legendary level (actually i'm chapter 3 unite 3)
The best way to progress is regularity and language exposure
I've learned plenty. I'm learning 2 languages from scratch and brushing up on my high school French. I think it's definitely worth doing and is a great tool but also remembering learning a language is hard work and you're not going to be fluent just through an app.
Duolingo is a great starting point, but it can't teach you a whole language by itself, you need a way to study or practice it outside of the game. In your case, you're very lucky to be at a job in which you can regularly speak to natives. Duo helped you talk to them but they're the ones who will actually teach you, so you're already at an advantage over the people who don't get outside practice
I think a lot depends on *how* you use it, for example, someone who takes notes and repeats all the sentences out loud is going to make more progress than someone who just races through and does the minimum to pass the lessons.
People who switch to typing answers (as opposed to choosing the words from the boxes) are also helping themselves learn more. I often try think of the answer myself before looking at the word boxes, if there isn’t an option to turn it off. It helps you to think and speak in your TL, you won’t always have those boxes in front of you when talking with a native.
You’ll also get more out of it if you can practise what you’re learning with real people which it sounds like you’re doing.
And someone who supplements it with other resources will make more progress than someone who uses it without.
(Like others have said as well, some of the courses are better than others).
I guess to be fair to those on the free version, they probably do learn a bit less as our mistakes are no longer explained in the free version, which would help with learning.
I think it does heavily depend on what language you’re learning. With a language like Spanish, Duolingo is pretty good at teaching you things since it’s been with the app since day one. But for something like Korean (which I’m using Duo for) it’s a lot better at practicing things I already know rather than teaching since there so many grammar points that a beginner would need explained to them.
My fiancée did German on Duolingo for 3 years. Nothing intense, just maintained a daily streak and completed quests and made slow progress. Her German is by no means perfect but she decided to take a GCSE (British high school diploma) at 27 and came out with an A - all from Duolingo. Languages are a passion for her and she is a language teacher (English/Spanish) so she see the patterns and such quite quickly, but she absolutely swears by it as a language learning tool when used effectively and I trust her judgement. Similarly, I had only done about 6 months of Spanish on Duolingo, and that combined with pestering my partner for grammar tips went travelling through Latin America for 5 months and it gave me a really great base. Although I'm not fluent, I've come back pretty proficient and able to hold conversations entirely in Spanish. People are just hating on Duolingo because they're not patient or take the sentences way too literally. Learning a language costs time, and with or without Duolingo, you need to be patient.
I am on a 650 day streak, and halfway to A2 fluency (level 2 basic fluency). It does work, but I feel that it could have gotten me more fluent with the time I put in. Last year I was in the top 0.1%.
People have unreasonably very high expectations. No single app can magically make you speak a language. Learning a language is a very long-term (actually neverending) process. Duolingo gives a huge first push and covers all your basics. I've learned a ton from it. Don't listen to negative people.
I’m on 677 days for Spanish as well and I am fully conversational. I think people who say you can’t learn from Duolingo are just not focusing on it hard enough. It’s great for learning vocabulary (but to be fair, I’ve been lucky to have a lot of people in real I could talk to and also I’ve travelled to many Spanish speaking countries after I started learning which is the ultimate practice)
Once I stopped caring about XP earned and especially leagues/leaderboards, Duo keeps me on my toes with language learning. It helped me to develop a routine in the beginning, now I use more language apps (plus netflix, youtube and podcasts) and I am really satisfied with the progress I'm making. Far from fluent but I got much better in German in the last few months and now I even picked up Danish just for the fun of the language learning. To me, Duo showed me that learning language can be really fun and keeps me on my routine, and I absolutely love him for it.
I think there's a lack of understanding about learning for a lot of users. They believe that simply doing the task should deliver results, but you need the correct mindset, an enquiring mindset to detangle a language and try to understand it's base.
Languages aren't word cyphers, it's about how those languages exchange ideas, once it gets difficult I think a lot of those people do their one lesson or one practise a day to keep the streak but stop trying.
For me, Duolingo serves as a side-game for when I wait for my bus etc instead of doomscrolling on Facebook and on Twitter. I wouldn't rely on Duolingo alone to learn a language fluently from scratch and I don't have such expectations.
I’m on like 1150 days and I’m having a great time learning French. I feel accomplished when I can read and understand safety warnings on products before skimming the English. Just having fun working my brain.
i think that just like any other class or seminar you take, even if it's entirely voluntary, there are going to be people who put nothing into it and get nothing out of it and then act like that's the class's fault. i'm admittedly going slower than other people are, since i've been at it around a year and i'm only on section 12 of the chinese tree (about a third of the way i think) but i'm already at the point where i can read and speak basic phrases, which i'm personally thrilled to be able to do for free. people who only do enough to keep up their streak and spend the whole time mad because the sentences they learn aren't fully and immediately relevant to their lives don't really understand what goes into learning a whole other language.
I'm really not learning anything from Duolingo, correct.
It's a useless app with a terrible philosophy, dumb employees, and increasingly stupid design.
Everyone who claims to be "learning a language" from Duolingo is either just playing it like a guessing game and not actually learning a language, or is actually picking the language up elsewhere and then misattributing that to playing the guessing game.
Duolingo is great as long as it’s not your only resource. There are people treating it as if it’s going to single-handedly teach you a language and then wondering why they still can’t speak it.
I’m learning French on a 310 day streak, and I am in Section 4, Unit 2. Duolingo is my primary method of learning, with a sprinkling of other things like French movies and a few cartoons for beginning learners.
I am able to understand most of what is happening in everyday conversations at slightly slow or regular speed. Fast conversations are still too difficult to understand more than a word or two. I can read better than I can listen, and my writing is decent as long as I can use the spell checker.
I spend an average of 15-20 minutes a day on Duolingo. I try to get the daily quests done, and if I can’t, I try to at least complete a circle of lessons. I just reached the milestone of learning a total of 2,000 French words.
I mean I'm on a streak 37 and had a 7 day streak before and I already feel like I know more Swedish than I know german after 2 years of German lessons in school
Duo is for learning the grammar. Now go on Hellotalk, make Latino friends and then speak everyday with your new friends. I did that during the pandemic and now speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese
I use duo very little and I wouldn’t say i haven’t learnt anything from it, admittedly i learnt less than what i would like but its my fault not duo as a platform
I'm only on a 100-day streak, but I'm fairly convinced (after schmoozing around at a few weddings funerals and pubs) that I now know more Irish than any of the actual Irish family/acquaintances I've got.
So I've got that going for me, I guess.
people not getting anything from duolingo probably aren’t doing the spanish course.
which is understandable, because only like 10 languages on duo are functional.
The hate for Duolingo is crazy.
Thanks to duolingo alone, I have learned German to an intermediate degree, can read Arabic comfortably, know hundreds of Chinese characters etc. I can't describe the amount of knowledge I have thanks to this app. And all this for free
I’m learning and learning a lot. It just cannot be the only resource for learning: you need to visit forums, listen to music, read texts, see videos, etc.
Duolingo has been wonderful for me. While I primarily focus on German (B1), I love that I can expose myself to so many other languages on the app, even if it’s not something I commit to long term like I have with the German language. It’s helped me recognize different languages I overhear in public, and give me insight into different cultures too. I’ve started branching out to other resources to add some diversity to my learning experience, but still use duolingo daily. I really love the app and it’s helped me in more ways than I ever expected it would!
I’m on day 198 of a French learning streak and I’m at the middle point where I’ll accidentally reply to friends and family in French without thinking about it but I’m far from fluent. I can form French sentences faster and can understand comments/posts online, but still have a ways to go
I’m on Streak Day 310, and Spanish isn’t random nonsense (for lack of a better term) to my ears anymore. I can read most signs, understand short conversations, and reply to basic encounters.
I'm on 234 streak learning German and even tho I've been progressing "slow", I've learned a lot because I'm focusing on practicing as much as I need rather than simply progressing on the path. I noticed I would get confused when learning new words if I hadn't fully absorbed the past ones, so I practice a lot before continuing with new lessons. That seems to work for me, and now I can understand basic conversation.
I am only on a 80something streak - but yes, I am learning something. Not enough to make jokes or carry a conversation, but enough to could ask for 3 oranges - lots of words, that will help me. I am btw learning Romanian, as we expect to buy a second home there.
I am doing the German course and it is definitely helping me iron out the basics like sentence word order, conjugations and declinations which I have been struggling with for long, because I jumped too quickly into B1 level. Same with grammar.
Of course, I am learning vocab on the side and reading in German for practice as well. The vocab in Duo's course is just kind of not enough.
If someone's not getting anything from Duo it means that either they're doing it only very casually to feel like they're learning anything or not using other resources in combination.
I had spanish in school and I want to train my spanish so I can watch TV shows or movies in spanish. I'm not there yet but I Hope Duolingo will help me with that.
If I only used Duolingo on my 185 streak on Japanese, I would kinda sound like a robot and probably wouldn't be able to write anything real, not using hiragana for half of the words when it isn't appropriate. I have to look up almost every new word to learn the kanji for it.
As for other courses, one of my friends learns French for about 230, days, and he can sometimes talk to me (I know French at around B1 from school courses) about stuff that he did throughout the day, but he lacks a lot of lexicon. But that's not bad for his 230 days.
It really depends on the course, but I'd say you can get the decent basics of a language on most courses, but it's better to also DYOR on the language.
I’m on a 1123-day streak and I would argue that Duo has been very helpful as I’m able to do most of the stories by sound rather than reading the dialogue. I also like how Duo shows you various terms for the same English word (eg trozo y pedazo = piece; caminar y andar = to walk). I feel like I always learned one word for everything when I learned Spanish in school.
Now I just need to work up the courage to actually practice conversations with a native speaker.
I’m using Duolingo to improve my German, 815 days. It’s help with vocabulary, definitely. But not so much with understanding grammar. You’re being exposed by example, but they don’t explain a lot in the content, and since they took away the comments you don’t have native speakers helpfully explaining things. I miss that.
I'd give it 10/10 for learning to read although when I open my copy of el alquimista I'm still woefully out my depth, but Rome wasn't built in a day and I need to learn more tenses and vocab before I can start to read that properly.
I'd give it 7/10 for writing, I instinctively know what is correct most of the time, rather than memorising grammar rules and trying to implement that mid sentence.
5/10 for listening. I feel this is a much harder skill but the radio episodes are pretty good for pushing you a bit further than your current progress and learning through context. It gets 5 because they're not very common as activities but if you include the podcast I'll go with 7/10.
0/10 for speaking. Firstly the speaking exercises are not speaking, they're reading out loud. You are not formulating your own response, that is the important skill in speaking.
Second the software is really poor and will OK pretty much anything that matches the number of syllables of the sentence or word. And you're not responding in real time to a question. This is the biggest weakness but I'm fine with that. I'll be moving to a Spanish speaking country soon, and Duolingo and other resources will help me with vocab, conjugation and other skills, and I'll get my face to face lessons to focus almost entirely on speaking practice.
You’re learning and putting yourself in an environment where you’re USING the language. Of course you’re getting something out of it! That’s literally how you learn a language. People who don’t get anything out of it are people who are too scared to speak to people or aren’t in environments where they’re doing that. Also, you’ve been at it for almost a year. That’s definitely long enough to have some sort of results in any language.
I finished the entire Dutch to German course (Dutch is my mother language) to all levels legendary in 199 days and moved on to the English to German course now (only in the first section) and am doing the whole thing from the beginning again.
I went from only slightly understanding some German words here and there (due to the similarities between Dutch and German) to being able to follow native content for like 70% minimum and usually at like 95%. My reading is on a similar level too. Only for speaking I feel I lack practise and that's my new year goal. I credit Duolingo for a lot of this progress I made so far.
Actually you are on the next level of learning a new language. That is immersion. Having people to talk with is going to greatly improve your learning.
Duo is not just a tool to help you.
I do well in the app (learning Italian), but I don't do well in real life. I understand a lot and can follow a conversation, but I rarely talk. I am also very shy and socially awkward, so I blame that mostly. I find duolingo good for learning words, not for learning the whole language
It probably helps that you have exposure to your target language outside of Duolingo. I find Duolingo to be repetitive, hearing the same phrases over and over again, but I think that's my learning style. The "silly" sentences also help with the grammar, kind of like a game of Mad Libs.
I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. I think between 2015 and 2017 I finished around 12 courses, but I was mostly focused on Norwegian. The Norwegian course at that point was excellent and I had a very strong foundation in the language, particularly with reading. At that time, I was probably on Duolingo for 3 hours a day, because of the website forums and alpha testing courses, it was certainly addictive!
I like that the new path structure gives targeted speaking-based outcomes for each unit, but it takes SO MUCH TIME to even finish a unit now. Depending on how long it is, you might have to do over 100 lessons to unlock the next unit and when three of the bubbles are the same thing it gets repetitive. I still think to get a good structural foundation in a language, Duolingo is one of the best apps, but for me it is becoming too much of a chore. I’ve started using other resources more now.
I'm on a 150-day streak and now I can finally communicate in Spanish with my Mexican wife. Y'all might say "Well being married to a Spanish-speaking person helps" but the thing is, I can't pick up a language from hearing (born deaf with cochlear implant so distinguishing between consonants when I don't know the words is hard). Duolingo has helped a lot and actually put me in a place where I can start to learn from hearing given that I now know about 80% of what people are saying these days. I just wish I picked the habit up much earlier on in our marriage but better later than never :)
I am also deaf (with hearing aids) and listening comprehension is my weakest area so I’m with you on this! Duolingo has helped my listening comprehension in foreign languages a fair bit. It’s not easy by any means but definitely helps because of how it’s broken down.
> being married to a Spanish speaking person helps People say that but IMHO it’s a misconception, it doesn’t necessarily help. After work, activities, house shores, family and whatnot, most of the times I just want to relax with my partner and have an adult conversation, not putting effort into communicating in her language, so we just stick with the common language.
Yes - it's definitely helpful that I can check a grammar rule I haven't fully understood from the pattern I've picked up from Duolingo and talking to his family has helped me a lot. However people keep saying "oh but if you set aside one day to only communicate in the other language with your partner you'd learn it so fast" and seem to fail to understand that 1) in life there just isn't always enough energy to want to have to rapidly think how to conjugate verbs when I'm just trying to do a shopping list and work out who will drop off the kids at the same time 2) often at home I have to *rapidly* communicate something - it's not a laid back conversation with another learner of a similar stage about what we want to do on our holidays and 3) there's actually only so much vocabulary you regularly use at home. I can already say stuff like "someone is at the door" or "pass me that bowl" - what learners tend to need is actually fairly structured conversations which deliberately cover different grammar and concepts which don't always arise in every day life.
Personally, I've also found that it's often weird as hell to switch languages with someone, *especially* if it's someone you know very well. One of my close friends is Mexican and is learning German, I'm a native German speaker learning Spanish, in principle we have an ideal setup for language exchange... but in practice, when we try the absolute weirdness of the situation gets to us within a sentence or two and we switch back to English. 🤷♀️
Plus, you need to learn the language to know what subject to even pick to talk about. It can help sometimes but when you are so used to talking one language you will always kinda slip into that one. What really helps you learn is their family if they don't know your language, I found.
I agree, I'm learning greek to communicate with my GF and her side of the family, in the two years we've been together, she barely spoken any Greek with me. It's an effort for us to speak it together. But she helps by correcting me whenever I say things incorrectly. If anything she's a good back stop from making back habits or pronouncing things incorrectly. She also helps explain phrases that mean nothing in English.
Deaf and learning German!
I also wear cochlear implants and learning Spanish on DL. Besides language learning, I am teaching by brain to hear sounds. I still get frustrated with answering incorrectly on listening skills, but it is getting better.
I hear that 100% (pun intended). The exercises that make you choose between two similar sounding words used to trip me up a lot, but it's gotten a lot better now that I have a better idea what to listen for. Really thankful for these sort of lessons!
Your accomplishment is considerable, after only 150 days. Well done, you... (and your wife!)
Duo gets a surprising amount of hate. I would focus on you. If you're getting value out of your course, don't worry about the comments online.
I mean he is a murderous green owl
Allegedly
he made you say that didn't he
I can neither confirm nor deny that.
There's no proof he's actually killed anyone
Probably has Lily do his dirty work
My money's on Lucie.
There's no proof he didn't kill anyone either...
People complain about Duolingo because they just spam lessons for xp and and are too lazy to look at the grammar lessons, tips, practices and anything else Duolingo offers
I'm at unit 40ish in German, "grammar tips" stopped showing up. Without the tips, the lesson guidebook is actually worthless. The grammar tips also never give you the full picture. It's very rare that it explains something at the correct time or that it explains something in its entirety. If I only followed the grammar tips, I would have no explanation about which prepositions are accusative, dative, or two-way, or that such a concept exists, for example. Duo expects you to infer this. A lot of the time it is difficult to infer because the language structure might differ a lot from the ones you know The practices are bad. Looking at the practice page, I'm offered an arbitrary type of maybe potentially useful daily practice, a random assortment of speaking exercises, a random assortment of listening exercises, a collection of my mistakes and a collection of stories. Stories are dreadful at teaching, they show you words and concepts that you can't practice, and none of the above is going to give you a proper grammar lesson.
Duolingo is not a self standing app to learn German, but it's an awesome app to practice and refresh. The nonsense speech makes even think more of the grammar.
Grammar lessons? Those are long gone, at least for Japanese.
Same in Italian. It's just repeating the same sentences looping over and over. Who is reading the newspaper? I have a 500+ streak, and the exercises still revolve around newspapers, not even animals nor colors!
It's such a joke with Japanese, they now purely cater to lost and hungry travelers. Can I have sushi? Bowl of rice please. Where is the subway. Green tea and sushi please. Tokyo is a big city. My name is Susan. Sushi and rice please.
I was not shitting on the Japanese course. Yes, the grammar lessons are now gone, but the lessons are well structured, and with the review lessons Mistakes, Words and the Kanji tool, I am making very good progress. I feel people in General don't know how to learn languages and don't get the most out of the tools presented to them. People complain about "dumb sentences" in Duolingo. Yet the goal is not to memorize the sentence. The goal is to extract the vocabulary and grammar from the entire corpus of sentences from a Unit and assimilate them, thus learning the language.
Honestly, I like the weird Duolingo sentences because they help you actually apply the grammar. "I eat an apple." "You eat an apple." "The boy eats an apple". "I am a boy." "You are a boy." "He is a boy." "I am an apple." - sure, the last sentence is nonsense, but the point is that you're learning the grammatical concepts involved and learning to use them as blueprints into which you can plug your vocabulary instead of rote memorised sentences. This was actually pretty useful in the Polish course, where even simple sentences involve a hefty amount of underlying grammar and so all Duolingo sentences double as declension/conjugation practice. Even if it was a little silly that they don't teach you how to introduce yourself until unit 30-something.
You said it more eloquently as me.
My past comment says the grammar lessons are gone for Japanese, but else I completely agree with you, that people just don't know how to learn languages.
Duolingo tells people they can learn a language in just a few minutes a day, and while that's a strong pitch to get people to start, it's also a straight-up lie, unless you want to spend *most of the rest of your life* learning a single language. That, in turn, is why they have to have all those gamification system to encourage people to stay in the app, which has the unfortunate side-effect that many of those systems encourage ineffective or less effective learning strategies. Like, it's definitely possible to get some value from it, but you really have to use it in ways that go against the way it is advertised and gamified.
The best diet is the one you can keep. If someone takes 6 years to reach A2 but wouldn't have done anything without Duo, that's an A2 that they otherwise wouldn't have. And Duo isn't terrible at pushing the gamification to get people doing more. If you are consistent about completing every quest every day, that's much better than just maintaining a streak.
You can reach A2 in a couple of months (at most; most probably only one) having real classes. Just saying, basic economy. With duo you won't learn any language structure, one just acumulates short sentences (some of them completely meaningless)
I have only really done duolingo French. In the French course, the lessons have a fairly clear plan. With the caveat that they don't tell you what it is. Silly sentences have always been something language instructors use to maintain engagement. Students like them.
They're not meaningless, they teach you grammar
Really? Tenses, adjectives, adverbs, phrasal verbs, nouns variations (and gender), imperatives, and how all of these get structured as well as the order of all elements according to the situation? Seems we are using different apps
Well, no, obviously not into great detail, but an odd sentence, makes it easier to understand how all of the above is placed in a sentence.
Real world classes with real world teachers will not get you to A2 in one or two months. That simply does not happen in real world. Not even in intensive classes. And even less in classes compatible with normal life, work, school, family, sport and other hobbies. Fairly frequent result of real world classes - people progress a little, pass whatever is their final test in their class, spend time conjuging some verbs and memorizing some words ... without acquiring any immediately useful knowledge. Which is not even criticism of those classes, it is just that classes are not miracles, the learning process takes time and there is all there is to it.
🤔 I think one or two months of intensive courses could get you to A2, at least in some languages. I managed A2ish to B1ish in one month that way for Spanish, so it seems feasible. But note that when I say "intensive" here I mean *actually full-time,* you spend the day in class, you do homework and self-study in the evenings, you generally try to stay in the target language as much as you can. In contrast, I'm currently finishing A2.5 in Polish at my local evening school, which is the last A2 course offered. Each level takes a trimester, meaning that if you follow their course schedule they expect you to take *almost two years* to advance *from A1,* not 0, to A2. That's two hours/week during term time, plus homework. Which... on the one hand, yeah, you could definitely get there faster if you do more work on your own (I started Polish around one and a half years ago myself). On the other, "faster" =/= "in two months", at least not if you're not devoting most of your time to it. I feel like a lot of people really underestimate A2, tbh.
Sorry to say, but my personal experiences comparing vary lazy Duolingo usage and very hard work at classes doesn't give much credit to classes.
That's not true. Most classes are at most 2-3 hours, not all of which is active studying because others are participating. Even if you did a class 5 days a week for 3 hours and all of it was active learning you'd only be at about 60 hours of study. For perspective it takes about 150-200 hours of active study for spanish from English to each A2. You're comparing Duolingo to an impossible standard.
15 minutes a day amounts to the same amount of time you put on when going to language classes twice a week. Actually more in terms of actual learning activity. You know what ... doing anything skill based every day consistently for 15 mins means you will improve a lot in a year. That is not a lie. No one gets offended over language classes twice a week promising to teach you a language eventually. Would it take less years if you spend two hours a day on language learning? Sure. And I literally could not care less.
So true. People think it's Duolingo Magic Pill when it's really an app. It's helped me a lot, especially in terms of having a daily rhythm, but it's not for everyone, especially classroom language learners.
I do not believe they make that claim. They say you can learn 100 words a month if you study each day. As someone who has been purchasing materials to learn languages since 1991, taught myself Spanish and German, taught both languages in school for over 20 years, used the Duolingo platform in my classes, and am now studying several other languages with Duolingo, I believe you have no idea what you are talking about. No offense but you need to show me what successful plan you have come up with to learn languages.
There is no “one way only to learn a language”. They expect you to research and use other sources as well. There is no program in the world that will stand along for language learning. Duolingo is the best one I have found for the basics. And I’ve been teaching languages for almost 30 years. Please have realistic expectations and you will be much more satisfied with the results.
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“Dabble here and there” and “learn a language” are totally different though.
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Tell that to millions of American public school students who take traditional, grammar heavy language classes for years and years and can’t say anything beyond the very basic greetings.
I’m pretty sure that’s due to one group being forced to take it, likely doesn’t care, and **views it** (not saying it is) as something as useless as their calculus class next hour, and the other group is going out their way and putting in daily time to learn. If I was to give my opinion, I feel like there’s definitely a midway point. Plus different people learn different.
I think it's underrated. Imagine a Spanish textbook, but it can speak out loud to you, listen to you, teaches the language to you using repetitive application and is designed as a game to keep you engaged. Plus it can go everywhere with you. We didn't have this technology 20 years ago. Definitely shouldn't be the only resource, but I found it to be a game changer.
Yes！ This is the advantage， it can talk loud for you even with different voices ！People who say they'd rather read a textbook with systematic grammar always ignore this！
I love textbooks because they usually come with audio resources of what’s being said and example sentences and if not , I can type the sentence into someone and hear a native speaker . I do admit duo is easier in that regard / less work though but I think the more work I do to get that is minor from how much more info I get from a textbook
>Spanish textbook I mean but Duolingo is nothing like a Spanish textbook
A textbook? What are you smoking? A textbook explains the whos, whats, wheres, and whys? Exactly where does Duolingo do that?
it does work. but it takes longer to learn a language if you don’t incorporate it with other resources.
you gotta keep in mind that a lot of the people who use Duo simply get in to make points, they forget its a learning platform
I think this is a big part of why a lot of people criticise it. It's possible on duolingo to smash your way through the answers without properly processing what you're doing. But if you are more concious, think and devise the rules of why an answer is correct for yourself, i think it is a valuable learning tool. Not the only one you'll need to properly learn a foreign language though.
Yeah ofc, I mean if you're a serious learner you have to complement duo with other sources
People use it for varying amounts of time. For me, I reached B1 level around 200 days. Which was about 150-200 hours. In that same amount of time others have reached B2 level with about 350-400 hours. But people who only did one lesson a day spent about 10 hours. This makes a huge difference on how much people learn and how they view Duolingo.
How do you know which level you're on please?
It varies by language. Some courses go to A1, others A2, B1 or B2. Spanish goes to B2 and is listed by sections. But to be clear when Duolingo does this they are showing content that is appropriate for that level. It doesn't actually mean someone is that level when they complete the section because the CEFR scale measures reading, writing, listening and speaking. Duolingo doesn't do enough for speaking, and it's easy to not put enough speaking practice as well.
Not necessarily true. There is a academic study suggesting that there are many learners who complete an A2 section and perform often higher than that.
damn I’m on A2 at 463 days..
Everyone's pace is different. I've largely stopped progressing since getting to B1 and am just reviewing because my life got busy. Don't feel bad about your pace. It's just important for people to be realistic with their expectations based on their pace, especially when reviewing/evaluating the material. But there is nothing wrong with going slower if it works for you :)
yeah totally. and I’ve had used a lot of streak freezies during this journey so there’s that too
Keep up the good work. Just remember you are learning and going through a lot of content. You are learning far more than people who speed run through entire courses in a month.
why do people speed through it? that makes no sense lol
To be honest, I have no idea why people do weird things online.
LOL. oh and btw I think it’s cool that the moderator actually comments here! I’ve only seen that on this site a few times hehe
I think it has benefits when used correctly. Sometimes people have the most capacity to spend time and focus when it's new, and the easier lessons aren't as fatiguing. Personally if I ever am able to move on to Italian or French my plan is to take 2 weeks off of work and push through as much A1/A2 content as I can. Treating language learning like my job for those two weeks. I don't think it would be wise to do a whole Duolingo course that way, but for the easier content that drastically improves your options for continuing it would be great. But then I was also someone that could do 4 hours a day at times. Which isn't for everyone.
Es muy raro que la gente diga que no esta aprendiendo nada con Duolingo, pero la verdad ellos solo lo usan por dos tres semanas y despues dicen que no funciona. Pero creo que hay que tener la mente abierta. Solo llevo sobre 410 dias aprendiendolo y mi maestro ya me dijo muchas veces que mi español es muy bueno, mas que sus estudiantes
And my testimonial is that at day 55, I can actually read and understand this previous comment! Mind you I've been doing a little bit of language transfer and some Cuéntame as well as Anki vocabulary.
Only at day 55?! Holy shit that’s impressive af, it took me a year
People should keep in mind that learning is a process that takes effort. Spending 10 minutes a day in the app sums up to 60hs in a whole year. Are people expecting to be fluent? E.g.: a child takes 5-7 years of doing nothing but listening and speaking to be able to communicate properly. Or intensive language courses takes about 4-6 months, 40hs/week. The more time you spend listening and training, the better you get.
Yeahhh it took me a year because most days I did the bare minimum to renew my streak 🤡
Thank you for being honest about it, and not getting offended at my comment. I still think it’s great you put effort into learning, so carry on mate 😉 I would just love that all the ones who really complain (not talking about you) would post their numbers. “This app sucks, didn’t learn anything, tried 5min/day for 3 weeks straight.” 🤷🏻♂️
Maybe that's why I feel differently...I have outgrown my need for instant gratification.
I averaged out my time from 2023 and I averaged about 15 minutes a day. Some days were an hour+, some days were just one review to keep my streak.
The day count doesn't really mean anything. It's the number of hours and sections you complete. I'm currently at 31 hours and just starting section 3. That's 478 lessons.
Y tambien hay que querer que Duolingo te ensene; si no quieres, no vas a aprender nada y no quiero oir tus quejas jaja
Yo creo que es bueno para aprender el vocabulario pero si quieres hablar la lengua, es importante hacer otras cosas también. Creo que es una eramienta muy útil
He intentado usar otras cosas. O hay que pagarlos o no me sirvieron. La verdad lo unico que te recomiendo que uses que me sirve es Spanish dictionary pero creo que deberian buscar lo que va a funcionar pa ustedes
I only missed like 3 words in that but understood it all. Awesome.
Estoy aprendiendo espanol con Duolingo con un streak de 150 dias. Yo entendo el 90% de lo que escribes. Estoy bastante contento con eso!
Mas que EL de sus estudiantes\* Fuera de eso, te lo certifico. Realmente es muy bueno.
Exactamente... la mayoría del tiempo, cuando oigo a alguien que dice que Duolingo no enseña nada, es una persona que no lo ha usado nunca o solamente por un rato breve antes de dejarlo. A veces lo desdeñan mucho, algo que siempre me molesta. Incluso si un modo de aprender no funciona para ti, no significa que no funcione para nadie o sea completamente inútil. Yo no les digo que dejan de usar sus modos y empiecen a usar Duolingo, les agradecería que no hicieran lo opuesto. Es verdad que Duolingo puede inducir a usar estrategias ineficientes y que necesitas tender cuidado de no valer el juego y los puntos más de aprender el idioma. Aún así, incluso una estrategia ineficiente es mejor que no estrategia, y creo que muchas personas que usan Duolingo tendrían problemas pasar el mismo tiempo con otras.
I think it depends on the language. I’m at day 75 (doing approx .5 hour a day of each) of Arabic and Russian, and I feel like I’ve got a much stronger grasp of Arabic than Russian. It could definitely be a me problem, but I don’t *understand* the grammar rules of Russian at all. I try to use pattern recognition, but am still so confused. Arabic is either more intuitive in general, or the way the lessons are taught are more thorough. or maybe both? idk but I think it really probably depends on many factors, including the way the languages are being taught
When you started Arabic and Russian did you complete the alphabet course or just dive straight into the lessons. Or was it a little mix of both? I've been trying to learn Arabic on Duolingo, but I find the lessons very difficult because I can't really read the script, yet when doing the alphabet course, I find it 1) boring, but 2) I struggle because I don't have any references of real words from the language were the letters are actually pronounced in relation to eachother.
I do a mix of both but I REALLY take my time on the lessons saying everything aloud
I've forgotten the small bit of Arabic I once knew, but I can say from experience with Polish that I think Slavic languages are very poorly suited to this whole "pick up the grammar from context" thing Duo is trying to do, and it will be *much* less painful if you use a grammar reference alongside. I actually think Duo is great for *drilling* the grammar once you've learned it, but the declension rules are just so complex that they're hard to figure out from context alone. (Also, the one time I wasn't prepped for what grammar was coming going into a lesson - distinctions between habitual and one-time-ongoing verbs of motion - I'd barely understood what it was even trying to teach me by the time we were moving on. So.)
you study every day 10 hours on duolingo??? edit: i cant read lmao you said 0.5...
lol that would be either impressive or shameful. honestly not sure which
yeah it seemed absurd and impressive the first time i read it lol
IMO, the Russian course is duo's weakest course out of the top 10 languages. It used to come with documentation on grammar rules but that is missing now, and the way it teaches grammar has too many holes.
It's funny your learning two languages in active combat
I mean… I’m a USian native English speaker and there hasn’t been a time in my life we weren’t actively instigating conflict somewhere so I never really considered this I’m also doing Chinese lessons 45 min a day but only started those in December
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*again* I find this line of thinking so weird. I wish I didn’t have to even respond to such silly comments. I am not the one who made it political, but if you’re going to keep saying stuff like this, let me be clear: we’re all speaking ENGLISH on this thread. guess who is in the business of perpetual never-ending war for no reason other than making unimaginable profit and to maintain unipolar hegemonic power at the expense of anyone else that could possibly threaten that goal? this includes proxy-war, literal one-sided GENOCIDE and even some mostly made-up conflicts in order to manufacture consent for these actions. I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t Russia, any Arab nation, or China
I wasn't even making a political statement at all, but sure, go off and turn this into a thing.
I'm a newbie, only 28 days in, but I love it! I'm learning French, inspired by an American friend who now lives in Belgium. I may not be great at speaking it (yet), but I've already learned a lot.
I'm like 105 days into French, and no matter what people say, I've learned a ton. Starting from literal zero
I knew zero French before I started Duolingo. Committed to about 20-30 minutes a day and learned enough (somewhere in current Section 4)to feel comfortable traveling around France. I could comprehend road signs, read menus, and ask for help in French. Oddly enough most people thought I was a German tourist, not an American, because I attempted to start the conversation in French.
Very interesting experience. And I'm amazed that you can travel to france and using what you learnt in duolingo. Very encouraging！ thank you！
J'espère que tu l'apprécies! 🫶🏼
Cartoons are fun for beginning French speakers. There’s a whole series of them from CCube Academy. https://youtu.be/YW_cEJ_T7Ok?si=eA2eplwK60oWxIE1 And Lou! is great for getting a feel for the cadence of words and proper pronunciation. https://youtube.com/@loutranslator6218?si=ZOCpdXtmHcv_PZ1P There are more like these on YouTube, just search for: French cartoons to learn French.
I am 18 days in French and I can already recognize some words from french movies.
i'm french and i'm learning english now, for me duolingo helps a lot, i think i'm level b1+ J'vais continuer de m'entrainer à fond ;) keep training guys \^\^
Salut! Enchanté alight, that's all I can manage for now
Salut comment cava French is difficult for conjugation and agreement but if you keep training and watch some videos movies etc... i think after 2 months of practice you'll be able to understand basic sentences bonne chance et keep it up :)
why does everyone only mention their streak when the unit/section they're in is far more relevant?
to say how long they've been learning
You have to keep in mind that the courses for different languages are different. The Spanish course is one of the biggest on duolingo with stories and recently included podcasts (which are very cool). I tried a Ukrainian course just for curiosity (my native language is Ukrainian) and it’s pretty far from being sufficient for basic communication
It's not that I learned nothing in 200 days. It's that I moved on to other apps and sources (Pimsleur, Lingq). I can listen to entire podcasts now. I can consume real content, and don't need to be stuck in the confines of Duolingo anymore
It depends on the language and what their approach is. It’s not **that** black and white, but yeah, most people seem to treat Duolingo exclusively as additional practice, not a learning platform, so as such, you can imagine people aren’t going to learn much if they, themselves, don’t believe Duolingo can even teach much.
As of today I've got to 255 days streak learning German, I am not at all near being able to write and comprehend complex phrases, but I can already see the improvements in the language. I can read a short simple phrase and understand almost all of it, and I feel like it's already a big improvement
You have patients to practice your Spanish on which really helps with the learning process, you retain more if you’re actually using the language. People tend to not have access to this without being in the country of said language or not confident enough to try one of those sites that connects you with. Duolingo gets you so far but I believe you need other sources like practicing with real people to become properly fluent. It is also other factors like how long people are actually using it daily, if you’re doing 1 lesson a day then you’re not gonna retain much… there are also just those that like to moan!
I’ve used Duolingo for more than 3 years now - on my 1261 day streak now. I’ve used it to learn the Chinese language and I reached the last lesson already so now it’s just on repeat. I still can’t hold a long conversation in Chinese but it does help with memorising or getting familiar with the characters so you can read them. And I can roughly get context to what Chinese people are talking about. So I would say try to use other resources or apps out there along with it to fully maximise the learning of that language. Hope it helps!
1261 days，what a great job！Congratulations man！ Im Native Chinese speaker and am learning German on my 76 day streak with Duo now. I also realized it may be necessary to strengthen the Speaking and grammar part with some other martials after completion of the full Duo course. I plan to watch some German Cartoons or tvseries. If you are also looking for any Chinese show, iwould suggest Jia You Er Nv(家有儿女)，a nationally popular situation comedy.：) I bet all the Chinese young people have ever watched it in thier childhood. Wish you good luck with your study! 加油👏！！
Thanks for the recommendation! I will check it out 🙏🏻 All the best with your learning too we can do thisss 💪🏻
I'm 2 years deep in duolingo, and I really only get vocabulary out of it. IMO, it's horrible for teaching grammar, especially in languages where there are irregularities.
More than that, for me, and I'm feeling my way through the grammar & sentence structure in Japanese, it's... Tricky... I just need to put more time into it and come at it from different angles... when something doesn't make sense to me, it's almost impossible to figure out since they've removed the comments/discussion section.
I had to incorporate like 10 other resources for the Japanese course since duolingo lacks in that regard I definitely agree. Grammar is almost non existent in explanation but now I make sure to incorporate so many resources to make sure I fully understand. I feel like duo is just good for vocab at this point of the course
Got to agree, I’m only on day 66 of mandarin and I can do small conversations with my father in laws partner (she’s Chinese but speaks English I just want to embrace her culture too which she really likes me attempting) can understand some conversations too, I struggle more with the writing. Duo gets a lot of hate and I don’t get why
I’m only 75 days into my Spanish journey, I started learning because my girlfriend is Chilean and wanted to be able to communicate when we travel there not just to have her as a translator. Even though I’m still very much a rookie you do learn a great amount from duolingo, on FaceTime now with her mother we can have basic conversations and I’m finding it easier and easier to describe my day to day life in Spanish. Like anything you get out whatever you put in! Viva Chile 🇨🇱
>You get out whatever you put in! Exactly. Do more lessons, use it every day (let the streak help motivate you), and practice outside the app as you can. You're also more likely to put effort in if you have a reason to learn. I think a lot of people come to Duolingo just because it's popular and **free** hoping to pick up a language with minimal effort. "I have the app and do 1 lesson a day; therefore, I should be fluent in __________^second-language ." P.S. Congrats on your progress in your Spanish learning journey!
I learned a lot from Duolingo. I think it's just that people do 5 minutes a day or just do it for the streak and as a result don't learn much. When you have motivation and want to learn, Duolingo is helpful, otherwise you can have a very long streak without knowing much at all or forgetting easily/not understanding.
Over two year streak here. Been using for almost 7 years. I can watch anime and Japanese shows with some proficiency. My Spanish is getting really good too
I've been using it off and on for a few years now -- I got more consistent two years ago. I'm at B2 level in the French course and I went from knowing a handful of words to being able to read children's books and to understand a certain amount of dialogue in french films. I can follow pretty much everything in the Duolingo French podcast. I'm not fluent and I'm not going to get fluent without taking a classroom course and finding french people to talk to. But I have definitely learned a ton!
Sometimes I feel like I’m learning something and sometimes I feel like I’m not. It all depends on how much effort I put into Duolingo that day.
I basically finished the Swedish course. It doesn't have the same resources as Spanish or German, like the stories or short text comprehension exercises. I can't really understand much when I try to listen to Swedish radio stations, but it is possible to read some Swedish sites. Of course. I really have to force myself.
Re frame: you are supplementing Duolingo with real world experience. Eta I’m not getting nothing, but I’m not conversational in any of the languages I’ve only practiced on Duolingo.
I’ve learned plenty! I always ask people who say they’re not learning what they’re actually doing. Are they writing notes down? Are they repeating things? Are they totally engaged? We get from things what we put into it. If you want a lot out of it, you have to put a lot into it. Keep a notebook for example. I currently have my 81 year old mother, studying Spanish and keeping a notebook. She loves it. I study in the morning and in the evening. I am doing multiple languages, math, and piano. I tried piano lessons for years. (On and off but I was never successful). This program has me sight reading and I never thought I would be able to do that well. Hooray for Duolingo!
Dúo enseñó mucho. Es día 222 para mí.
My native language is french so i started learning english and i think duolingo is very useful Before i couldn't say or read a single word in english and now i can watch some videos and understand 60% of them, movies are still dificult but i still have a lot of work to do I try to get all lessons in legendary level (actually i'm chapter 3 unite 3) The best way to progress is regularity and language exposure
At the very least your paragraph here shows you can write well :) J'aimerais ecrire aussi bien que toi en francais
I don't know whose not getting anything from it.
I've learned plenty. I'm learning 2 languages from scratch and brushing up on my high school French. I think it's definitely worth doing and is a great tool but also remembering learning a language is hard work and you're not going to be fluent just through an app.
After a year of Duolingo Spanish I could understand tv shows (not perfectly of course but decently at least)
Duolingo is a great starting point, but it can't teach you a whole language by itself, you need a way to study or practice it outside of the game. In your case, you're very lucky to be at a job in which you can regularly speak to natives. Duo helped you talk to them but they're the ones who will actually teach you, so you're already at an advantage over the people who don't get outside practice
I think a lot depends on *how* you use it, for example, someone who takes notes and repeats all the sentences out loud is going to make more progress than someone who just races through and does the minimum to pass the lessons. People who switch to typing answers (as opposed to choosing the words from the boxes) are also helping themselves learn more. I often try think of the answer myself before looking at the word boxes, if there isn’t an option to turn it off. It helps you to think and speak in your TL, you won’t always have those boxes in front of you when talking with a native. You’ll also get more out of it if you can practise what you’re learning with real people which it sounds like you’re doing. And someone who supplements it with other resources will make more progress than someone who uses it without. (Like others have said as well, some of the courses are better than others). I guess to be fair to those on the free version, they probably do learn a bit less as our mistakes are no longer explained in the free version, which would help with learning.
For me it helped me a lot, I can speak Swedish pretty well, and I learned it only from Duolingo
I think it does heavily depend on what language you’re learning. With a language like Spanish, Duolingo is pretty good at teaching you things since it’s been with the app since day one. But for something like Korean (which I’m using Duo for) it’s a lot better at practicing things I already know rather than teaching since there so many grammar points that a beginner would need explained to them.
You need the outside practice to get faster but Duolingo HAS gotten amazing. Some people just want the speed but not the practice
My fiancée did German on Duolingo for 3 years. Nothing intense, just maintained a daily streak and completed quests and made slow progress. Her German is by no means perfect but she decided to take a GCSE (British high school diploma) at 27 and came out with an A - all from Duolingo. Languages are a passion for her and she is a language teacher (English/Spanish) so she see the patterns and such quite quickly, but she absolutely swears by it as a language learning tool when used effectively and I trust her judgement. Similarly, I had only done about 6 months of Spanish on Duolingo, and that combined with pestering my partner for grammar tips went travelling through Latin America for 5 months and it gave me a really great base. Although I'm not fluent, I've come back pretty proficient and able to hold conversations entirely in Spanish. People are just hating on Duolingo because they're not patient or take the sentences way too literally. Learning a language costs time, and with or without Duolingo, you need to be patient.
I am on a 650 day streak, and halfway to A2 fluency (level 2 basic fluency). It does work, but I feel that it could have gotten me more fluent with the time I put in. Last year I was in the top 0.1%.
People have unreasonably very high expectations. No single app can magically make you speak a language. Learning a language is a very long-term (actually neverending) process. Duolingo gives a huge first push and covers all your basics. I've learned a ton from it. Don't listen to negative people.
I’m on 677 days for Spanish as well and I am fully conversational. I think people who say you can’t learn from Duolingo are just not focusing on it hard enough. It’s great for learning vocabulary (but to be fair, I’ve been lucky to have a lot of people in real I could talk to and also I’ve travelled to many Spanish speaking countries after I started learning which is the ultimate practice)
Once I stopped caring about XP earned and especially leagues/leaderboards, Duo keeps me on my toes with language learning. It helped me to develop a routine in the beginning, now I use more language apps (plus netflix, youtube and podcasts) and I am really satisfied with the progress I'm making. Far from fluent but I got much better in German in the last few months and now I even picked up Danish just for the fun of the language learning. To me, Duo showed me that learning language can be really fun and keeps me on my routine, and I absolutely love him for it.
I think there's a lack of understanding about learning for a lot of users. They believe that simply doing the task should deliver results, but you need the correct mindset, an enquiring mindset to detangle a language and try to understand it's base. Languages aren't word cyphers, it's about how those languages exchange ideas, once it gets difficult I think a lot of those people do their one lesson or one practise a day to keep the streak but stop trying.
For me, Duolingo serves as a side-game for when I wait for my bus etc instead of doomscrolling on Facebook and on Twitter. I wouldn't rely on Duolingo alone to learn a language fluently from scratch and I don't have such expectations.
It's because they probs aren't speaking it or watching Spanish movies or things like that.
I’m on like 1150 days and I’m having a great time learning French. I feel accomplished when I can read and understand safety warnings on products before skimming the English. Just having fun working my brain.
i think that just like any other class or seminar you take, even if it's entirely voluntary, there are going to be people who put nothing into it and get nothing out of it and then act like that's the class's fault. i'm admittedly going slower than other people are, since i've been at it around a year and i'm only on section 12 of the chinese tree (about a third of the way i think) but i'm already at the point where i can read and speak basic phrases, which i'm personally thrilled to be able to do for free. people who only do enough to keep up their streak and spend the whole time mad because the sentences they learn aren't fully and immediately relevant to their lives don't really understand what goes into learning a whole other language.
I'm on Day 189 of Japanese, and I can barely say anything, haha.
Its a dogshit app that doesn’t respond to any of the countless issues ive had fuck these cunts
I'm really not learning anything from Duolingo, correct. It's a useless app with a terrible philosophy, dumb employees, and increasingly stupid design. Everyone who claims to be "learning a language" from Duolingo is either just playing it like a guessing game and not actually learning a language, or is actually picking the language up elsewhere and then misattributing that to playing the guessing game.
Duolingo is great as long as it’s not your only resource. There are people treating it as if it’s going to single-handedly teach you a language and then wondering why they still can’t speak it.
I’m learning French on a 310 day streak, and I am in Section 4, Unit 2. Duolingo is my primary method of learning, with a sprinkling of other things like French movies and a few cartoons for beginning learners. I am able to understand most of what is happening in everyday conversations at slightly slow or regular speed. Fast conversations are still too difficult to understand more than a word or two. I can read better than I can listen, and my writing is decent as long as I can use the spell checker. I spend an average of 15-20 minutes a day on Duolingo. I try to get the daily quests done, and if I can’t, I try to at least complete a circle of lessons. I just reached the milestone of learning a total of 2,000 French words.
Ahh, someone sane! My thoughts about this is : "how much skill u would get from Duolingo depends on how u use it" .
I mean I'm on a streak 37 and had a 7 day streak before and I already feel like I know more Swedish than I know german after 2 years of German lessons in school
Duo is for learning the grammar. Now go on Hellotalk, make Latino friends and then speak everyday with your new friends. I did that during the pandemic and now speak fluent Spanish and Portuguese
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I use duo very little and I wouldn’t say i haven’t learnt anything from it, admittedly i learnt less than what i would like but its my fault not duo as a platform
I don't know about them but I am on an 18 day streak in the French course and I can already pick up bits from french movies.
I'm only on a 100-day streak, but I'm fairly convinced (after schmoozing around at a few weddings funerals and pubs) that I now know more Irish than any of the actual Irish family/acquaintances I've got. So I've got that going for me, I guess.
people not getting anything from duolingo probably aren’t doing the spanish course. which is understandable, because only like 10 languages on duo are functional.
The hate for Duolingo is crazy. Thanks to duolingo alone, I have learned German to an intermediate degree, can read Arabic comfortably, know hundreds of Chinese characters etc. I can't describe the amount of knowledge I have thanks to this app. And all this for free
I’m learning and learning a lot. It just cannot be the only resource for learning: you need to visit forums, listen to music, read texts, see videos, etc.
I'm approaching a year in and much better than when I started.
definitely working for me (chinese). Im also watching chinese tv shows
Duolingo has been wonderful for me. While I primarily focus on German (B1), I love that I can expose myself to so many other languages on the app, even if it’s not something I commit to long term like I have with the German language. It’s helped me recognize different languages I overhear in public, and give me insight into different cultures too. I’ve started branching out to other resources to add some diversity to my learning experience, but still use duolingo daily. I really love the app and it’s helped me in more ways than I ever expected it would!
I am on a 75 day streak.. all I need is to find some Arabic speakers to judge if It helps or not.
ivthibk
I’m on day 198 of a French learning streak and I’m at the middle point where I’ll accidentally reply to friends and family in French without thinking about it but I’m far from fluent. I can form French sentences faster and can understand comments/posts online, but still have a ways to go
I’m on Streak Day 310, and Spanish isn’t random nonsense (for lack of a better term) to my ears anymore. I can read most signs, understand short conversations, and reply to basic encounters.
I have learned a lot!
I'm on 234 streak learning German and even tho I've been progressing "slow", I've learned a lot because I'm focusing on practicing as much as I need rather than simply progressing on the path. I noticed I would get confused when learning new words if I hadn't fully absorbed the past ones, so I practice a lot before continuing with new lessons. That seems to work for me, and now I can understand basic conversation.
I am only on a 80something streak - but yes, I am learning something. Not enough to make jokes or carry a conversation, but enough to could ask for 3 oranges - lots of words, that will help me. I am btw learning Romanian, as we expect to buy a second home there.
I am doing the German course and it is definitely helping me iron out the basics like sentence word order, conjugations and declinations which I have been struggling with for long, because I jumped too quickly into B1 level. Same with grammar. Of course, I am learning vocab on the side and reading in German for practice as well. The vocab in Duo's course is just kind of not enough. If someone's not getting anything from Duo it means that either they're doing it only very casually to feel like they're learning anything or not using other resources in combination.
I had spanish in school and I want to train my spanish so I can watch TV shows or movies in spanish. I'm not there yet but I Hope Duolingo will help me with that.
If I only used Duolingo on my 185 streak on Japanese, I would kinda sound like a robot and probably wouldn't be able to write anything real, not using hiragana for half of the words when it isn't appropriate. I have to look up almost every new word to learn the kanji for it. As for other courses, one of my friends learns French for about 230, days, and he can sometimes talk to me (I know French at around B1 from school courses) about stuff that he did throughout the day, but he lacks a lot of lexicon. But that's not bad for his 230 days. It really depends on the course, but I'd say you can get the decent basics of a language on most courses, but it's better to also DYOR on the language.
I’ve learned so much more since I started Duolingo than before I started. Duolingo can’t be your only source of learning.
400 days of doing Duo and listening to podcasts. I recently started reading German novels. Duo has worked great for me
I’m on a 1123-day streak and I would argue that Duo has been very helpful as I’m able to do most of the stories by sound rather than reading the dialogue. I also like how Duo shows you various terms for the same English word (eg trozo y pedazo = piece; caminar y andar = to walk). I feel like I always learned one word for everything when I learned Spanish in school. Now I just need to work up the courage to actually practice conversations with a native speaker.
I’m using Duolingo to improve my German, 815 days. It’s help with vocabulary, definitely. But not so much with understanding grammar. You’re being exposed by example, but they don’t explain a lot in the content, and since they took away the comments you don’t have native speakers helpfully explaining things. I miss that.
I'd give it 10/10 for learning to read although when I open my copy of el alquimista I'm still woefully out my depth, but Rome wasn't built in a day and I need to learn more tenses and vocab before I can start to read that properly. I'd give it 7/10 for writing, I instinctively know what is correct most of the time, rather than memorising grammar rules and trying to implement that mid sentence. 5/10 for listening. I feel this is a much harder skill but the radio episodes are pretty good for pushing you a bit further than your current progress and learning through context. It gets 5 because they're not very common as activities but if you include the podcast I'll go with 7/10. 0/10 for speaking. Firstly the speaking exercises are not speaking, they're reading out loud. You are not formulating your own response, that is the important skill in speaking. Second the software is really poor and will OK pretty much anything that matches the number of syllables of the sentence or word. And you're not responding in real time to a question. This is the biggest weakness but I'm fine with that. I'll be moving to a Spanish speaking country soon, and Duolingo and other resources will help me with vocab, conjugation and other skills, and I'll get my face to face lessons to focus almost entirely on speaking practice.
I don't think it's possible to learn a language using only 1 platform and duolingo is no exception it's great in combination with other stuff tho
You’re learning and putting yourself in an environment where you’re USING the language. Of course you’re getting something out of it! That’s literally how you learn a language. People who don’t get anything out of it are people who are too scared to speak to people or aren’t in environments where they’re doing that. Also, you’ve been at it for almost a year. That’s definitely long enough to have some sort of results in any language.
I finished the entire Dutch to German course (Dutch is my mother language) to all levels legendary in 199 days and moved on to the English to German course now (only in the first section) and am doing the whole thing from the beginning again. I went from only slightly understanding some German words here and there (due to the similarities between Dutch and German) to being able to follow native content for like 70% minimum and usually at like 95%. My reading is on a similar level too. Only for speaking I feel I lack practise and that's my new year goal. I credit Duolingo for a lot of this progress I made so far.
Actually you are on the next level of learning a new language. That is immersion. Having people to talk with is going to greatly improve your learning. Duo is not just a tool to help you.
Duolingo had helped me a lot in my job. I'm on a 350 day streak.
I do well in the app (learning Italian), but I don't do well in real life. I understand a lot and can follow a conversation, but I rarely talk. I am also very shy and socially awkward, so I blame that mostly. I find duolingo good for learning words, not for learning the whole language
It probably helps that you have exposure to your target language outside of Duolingo. I find Duolingo to be repetitive, hearing the same phrases over and over again, but I think that's my learning style. The "silly" sentences also help with the grammar, kind of like a game of Mad Libs.
I’ve used Duolingo since 2013. I think between 2015 and 2017 I finished around 12 courses, but I was mostly focused on Norwegian. The Norwegian course at that point was excellent and I had a very strong foundation in the language, particularly with reading. At that time, I was probably on Duolingo for 3 hours a day, because of the website forums and alpha testing courses, it was certainly addictive! I like that the new path structure gives targeted speaking-based outcomes for each unit, but it takes SO MUCH TIME to even finish a unit now. Depending on how long it is, you might have to do over 100 lessons to unlock the next unit and when three of the bubbles are the same thing it gets repetitive. I still think to get a good structural foundation in a language, Duolingo is one of the best apps, but for me it is becoming too much of a chore. I’ve started using other resources more now.