<story><title>Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/40555712/duolingo-suddenly-has-over-twice-as-much-language-learning-material</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>3pt14159</author><text>No way will Duo Lingo get you anywhere close to A2 for writing or speaking. MAYBE A1 if you try hard at it for a long long time in a language it well supports.&lt;p&gt;To get to A2 you need a real tutor and real communication experience. I used Verbling to find a tutor and I traveled to Eastern Europe over the summer to practice and only after hundreds of hours of practice was I able to communicate in Russian to any degree even approaching A1.</text></item><item><author>rando444</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been on duolingo since the beginning and am sure that I&amp;#x27;ve spent more time with the site and app than 95% of the userbase.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve learned languages with duolingo.. and by that I don&amp;#x27;t mean duolingo will teach you a language.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s two things that I feel that almost everyone misses.&lt;p&gt;#1: Using duolingo alone will get you to about an A2-B1 level in comprehension and an A1-A2 level in writing and speaking.&lt;p&gt;This is just the basics of a language.. enough to understand basic expressions.  You&amp;#x27;re never going to learn a language without further practice and tools.  Spending time in books, trying to form your own thoughts.  Duolingo is a great start, but if you never progress beyond it, of course you&amp;#x27;re not going to learn a language.&lt;p&gt;#2: and most important. When you complete a course you&amp;#x27;re not done.&lt;p&gt;I see this all of the time, people just get to the last exercise and stop.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re not going to learn a language this way because most people can&amp;#x27;t retain a 2000+ word vocabulary by only seeing a word a couple of times.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason why your &amp;quot;strength&amp;quot; in categories decreases as time passes.. because it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that you&amp;#x27;ve actually remembered every single word you were taught.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve participated in a large number of duolingo related discussion over the years and one thing stands out is that there is a strong correlation between people that think you can&amp;#x27;t use it to learn a language and people that go straight through the course, reach the end, and stop.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it has its flaws, and is far from perfect, but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine having a better product that does not come with a fee.</text></item><item><author>firefoxd</author><text>I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row.&lt;p&gt;Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that.&lt;p&gt;French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta course just to see. It was very awkward. The correct answers are always cringe worthy. Some of them even wrong.&lt;p&gt;Japanese: This is very different from the languages I speak. But after completing the entire suite, I still can&amp;#x27;t look at a japanese text and read it. I can&amp;#x27;t form a sentence on my own because it never teaches you how. I can&amp;#x27;t count to ten because it only gives you numbers randomly. I know a few colors. I know words, but those words make no sense on their own. I also had to follow youtube lessons to make any sense of what I learned.&lt;p&gt;Duolingo is cool at making it look fun to learn. I don&amp;#x27;t think you&amp;#x27;ll learn to speak any languages with it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>T-N-T</author><text>&amp;gt;To get to A2 you need a real tutor&lt;p&gt;No you don&amp;#x27;t.
I&amp;#x27;m French, I dropped out of school at 16 and picked up English later in life without using any formal method of learning. I started by memorizing enough vocabulary to read simpler English, after which I began reading popular fiction and watched movies with subtitles (in English) until it clicked. My understanding of the language is more based on intuition (sheer memorization of exposure to it through cultural mediums) than on memorizing the grammar rules book. The brain makes the connections as to what seems correct or not based on patterns. I don&amp;#x27;t think my skills are good enough to write literature but surely communication isn&amp;#x27;t a problem.&lt;p&gt;Duolingo didn&amp;#x27;t exist at the time, but I believe it would have helped me learn faster considering the way it introduces languages is quite similar to how I started learning and it does so in a more interactive, fun manner.</text></comment>
<story><title>Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material</title><url>https://www.fastcompany.com/40555712/duolingo-suddenly-has-over-twice-as-much-language-learning-material</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>3pt14159</author><text>No way will Duo Lingo get you anywhere close to A2 for writing or speaking. MAYBE A1 if you try hard at it for a long long time in a language it well supports.&lt;p&gt;To get to A2 you need a real tutor and real communication experience. I used Verbling to find a tutor and I traveled to Eastern Europe over the summer to practice and only after hundreds of hours of practice was I able to communicate in Russian to any degree even approaching A1.</text></item><item><author>rando444</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been on duolingo since the beginning and am sure that I&amp;#x27;ve spent more time with the site and app than 95% of the userbase.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve learned languages with duolingo.. and by that I don&amp;#x27;t mean duolingo will teach you a language.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s two things that I feel that almost everyone misses.&lt;p&gt;#1: Using duolingo alone will get you to about an A2-B1 level in comprehension and an A1-A2 level in writing and speaking.&lt;p&gt;This is just the basics of a language.. enough to understand basic expressions.  You&amp;#x27;re never going to learn a language without further practice and tools.  Spending time in books, trying to form your own thoughts.  Duolingo is a great start, but if you never progress beyond it, of course you&amp;#x27;re not going to learn a language.&lt;p&gt;#2: and most important. When you complete a course you&amp;#x27;re not done.&lt;p&gt;I see this all of the time, people just get to the last exercise and stop.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re not going to learn a language this way because most people can&amp;#x27;t retain a 2000+ word vocabulary by only seeing a word a couple of times.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a reason why your &amp;quot;strength&amp;quot; in categories decreases as time passes.. because it&amp;#x27;s unlikely that you&amp;#x27;ve actually remembered every single word you were taught.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve participated in a large number of duolingo related discussion over the years and one thing stands out is that there is a strong correlation between people that think you can&amp;#x27;t use it to learn a language and people that go straight through the course, reach the end, and stop.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it has its flaws, and is far from perfect, but I can&amp;#x27;t imagine having a better product that does not come with a fee.</text></item><item><author>firefoxd</author><text>I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row.&lt;p&gt;Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that.&lt;p&gt;French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta course just to see. It was very awkward. The correct answers are always cringe worthy. Some of them even wrong.&lt;p&gt;Japanese: This is very different from the languages I speak. But after completing the entire suite, I still can&amp;#x27;t look at a japanese text and read it. I can&amp;#x27;t form a sentence on my own because it never teaches you how. I can&amp;#x27;t count to ten because it only gives you numbers randomly. I know a few colors. I know words, but those words make no sense on their own. I also had to follow youtube lessons to make any sense of what I learned.&lt;p&gt;Duolingo is cool at making it look fun to learn. I don&amp;#x27;t think you&amp;#x27;ll learn to speak any languages with it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kiro</author><text>A2 is nothing and you definitely don&amp;#x27;t need a tutor to get there.</text></comment>