<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>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>crazygringo</author><text>Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn&amp;#x27;t pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt;. Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user comments associated, you&amp;#x27;d see 70+ comments from people all complaining about wrong answers.&lt;p&gt;That immediately destroyed any trust with them. When you put out educational material, it has to be correct. That &lt;i&gt;has&lt;/i&gt; to be the foundation.</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>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>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></comment>