If you want to make real progress, Duolingo is not for you. Although it is theoretically a learning app, it is not optimised to retain languages. There's so much data on this, but their marketing is really strong. It's fine if you like it though, it's better than Candy Crush, and it can be fun!
I also like dashboards better than streaks and other gamification tricks, so this was very relatable!
Their marketing is really strong! Even though I've used plenty of other resources to learn languages, I somehow always get drawn back to Duolingo. I didn't talk about streaks but I do also prefer others stats to streaks. The only streak I want to maintain is doing something in my TL everyday or at least consistently!
I think you know my thoughts on Duolingo :). I imagine it being a viable option when there's literally no other language resource available, but with more popular language, I'd go to Pimsleur, Assimil, and Michel Thomas to build a foundation instead.
That's a good point. If Duolingo had Icelandic I'd probably give it a try. I found I don't have the patience for Pimsleur. It just doesn't work with my style of learning but I can see how it works for others.
I've yet to try Assimil or Michel Thomas but I've heard good things about them. I did a quick search and there's an Icelandic Assimil course in French. I like the idea of language stacking so maybe I'll give it a try one day!
Pimsleur is the least favourite of the three for me. Michel Thomas is quite quirky and it's very low effort. Plus the recordings are from the 80s, so there's a nice old school vibe to it. I'll review it one day.
I found that Duolingo didn't help me advance in French, German, Spanish and Polish but it helped me a lot when I started learning Russian and was having a hard time reading Cyrillic. It took me over a bump of being frustrated to feeling more confident with my reading ability. One thing that recently annoys me is that sometimes I just want to study a few sentences and not do the whole session.
It seems that Duolingo can be useful when it comes to learning the alphabet or characters in different languages. I'm glad you were able to find a way to make it work for you!
I used Duolingo for years on and off, mostly for Spanish and French (with very brief forays into Italian, German, Portuguese and Irish). For maybe a year or so I had a paid subscription as well. It all changed with their latest update (well over a year ago now when I stopped using it). Like you note, the stories became hidden and they were a big attractant for me. Plus, the lessons were becoming increasingly nonsensical. I don’t mind having fun, being silly, whatever, but some of the lessons made no sense and that was too frustrating. I’ve struggled with learning languages since I was in high school. Studying Spanish on and off through whatever devices I could find (I’m old enough to have bought cassette tapes for learning Spanish 🙂); yet, when I finally had an opportunity to use Spanish in Ecuador I clammed up. Besides everyone wanted to speak English 😆 But I enjoy studying other languages … if for no other reason than it’s good exercise for my brain. Now that I’ve found your newsletter, my interest is renewed so I guess I’ll have to look into some other apps.
I'm so happy to hear that you now have a renewed interest in studying languages. I also agree that sometimes it's just nice to exercise our brains by learning a new language!
I love reading this article Victoria! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! I like to tell the teachers I work with that this is always a "hot" topic to talk about when their trying to build their own language businesses through social media and it always gets good results!
I agree with you 100% that Duolingo's gamification really did the opposite for me and 1000% stressed me out hahaha
It's great to see other people who have had the same stressful experience with Duolingo. There are so many ways to learn a language and it's disappointing Duolingo is the one people remember the most.
I don't but that would be a great topic for me to write about! Earlier this week I heard news of Duolingo using AI in the new speaking practice levels they'll be adding.
I can so relate to what you said. I learned so many languages during my time, and when I was in korea I thought I would freshen up my korean skills with duolingo, but appart from learning new words, it was not helpful at all. I think the grammar part needs to be improved on the app. The gamification like you said made me also feel like i am failing if I made a mistake instead of encouraging me. It was nice to hear you had a similar experience with the app as well.
Thanks for helping me not waste time with Duolingo! I'm new to self-led language learning. I'm now in my 40's and the last time I seriously studied a language was in college. Do you have a tool you like specifically for adults looking to reignite their language learning that may have sat dormant?
The best tool is the tool that works for you so it's a bit difficult to give an answer. One thing that really helps me is in connecting with the language/culture through native materials. This can be hard at first but if you can find a show or video that's interesting, you can watch it along with English subtitles. You may be surprised to find that you pick up a few words here and there and are more intersted in spending time with the language.
If it's more your style, you can also specifically search for "comprehensible input" content in your target language. This is usually content that is made for language learners that is comprenhisble even for beginners.
Hope that helps and good luck returning back to language learing!
I “like” duolingo (too strong of a word lol) when I’m new to a language or dabbling and deciding if I want to continue. But usually I have a few days tolerance max. I’m trying to do a 14 day streak right now in Catalan, mostly just to get some basic vocabulary since Catalan resources are less common. But I can’t imagine using it long term, the repetition is soooo boring. I keep trying and failing to pass the end unit test just so I can get some new sentences lol
Yes! The repetition is what makes it boring for me as well. With the new changes they've made it even harder to continue "learning" when you make mistakes and lose your hearts. I like your method of using Duolingo to get basic vocabulary before moving on!
I used duolingo for Arabic and found it very helpful. I'm a physical therapy student with little downtime to self study and the small bites of language a day were about all I could get in...
However, when I joined their mandarin program I thought it was terrible. I've studied mandarin since 2014 and tested out of many of DuoLingos levels because of my prior studies, but when I started using the app to learn more, it felt boring and dull and not so great.
All this to say, I think duolingo is better used for certain languages rather than others
Duolingo is definately the type of app to use when you only have a little bit of time! I've only tried to do specific study sessions with it and I think that's what has caused me to get bored.
There are much better resources out there for Mandarin. I'm glad Duolingo was useful for you with Arabic though!
I love it and I hate it. I like how it makes language learning easy and accessible to everyone,(FREE) but I don’t like how so many people fall into the trap of just doing Duolingo. I doesn’t teach you to speak for yourself. No one app can teach you a language and definitely not Duolingo. Some days I ask myself, is doing Duolingo helping me or hurting me?
If you want to make real progress, Duolingo is not for you. Although it is theoretically a learning app, it is not optimised to retain languages. There's so much data on this, but their marketing is really strong. It's fine if you like it though, it's better than Candy Crush, and it can be fun!
I also like dashboards better than streaks and other gamification tricks, so this was very relatable!
Their marketing is really strong! Even though I've used plenty of other resources to learn languages, I somehow always get drawn back to Duolingo. I didn't talk about streaks but I do also prefer others stats to streaks. The only streak I want to maintain is doing something in my TL everyday or at least consistently!
I think you know my thoughts on Duolingo :). I imagine it being a viable option when there's literally no other language resource available, but with more popular language, I'd go to Pimsleur, Assimil, and Michel Thomas to build a foundation instead.
That's a good point. If Duolingo had Icelandic I'd probably give it a try. I found I don't have the patience for Pimsleur. It just doesn't work with my style of learning but I can see how it works for others.
I've yet to try Assimil or Michel Thomas but I've heard good things about them. I did a quick search and there's an Icelandic Assimil course in French. I like the idea of language stacking so maybe I'll give it a try one day!
Pimsleur is the least favourite of the three for me. Michel Thomas is quite quirky and it's very low effort. Plus the recordings are from the 80s, so there's a nice old school vibe to it. I'll review it one day.
I found that Duolingo didn't help me advance in French, German, Spanish and Polish but it helped me a lot when I started learning Russian and was having a hard time reading Cyrillic. It took me over a bump of being frustrated to feeling more confident with my reading ability. One thing that recently annoys me is that sometimes I just want to study a few sentences and not do the whole session.
It seems that Duolingo can be useful when it comes to learning the alphabet or characters in different languages. I'm glad you were able to find a way to make it work for you!
I used Duolingo for years on and off, mostly for Spanish and French (with very brief forays into Italian, German, Portuguese and Irish). For maybe a year or so I had a paid subscription as well. It all changed with their latest update (well over a year ago now when I stopped using it). Like you note, the stories became hidden and they were a big attractant for me. Plus, the lessons were becoming increasingly nonsensical. I don’t mind having fun, being silly, whatever, but some of the lessons made no sense and that was too frustrating. I’ve struggled with learning languages since I was in high school. Studying Spanish on and off through whatever devices I could find (I’m old enough to have bought cassette tapes for learning Spanish 🙂); yet, when I finally had an opportunity to use Spanish in Ecuador I clammed up. Besides everyone wanted to speak English 😆 But I enjoy studying other languages … if for no other reason than it’s good exercise for my brain. Now that I’ve found your newsletter, my interest is renewed so I guess I’ll have to look into some other apps.
I'm so happy to hear that you now have a renewed interest in studying languages. I also agree that sometimes it's just nice to exercise our brains by learning a new language!
I love reading this article Victoria! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts! I like to tell the teachers I work with that this is always a "hot" topic to talk about when their trying to build their own language businesses through social media and it always gets good results!
I agree with you 100% that Duolingo's gamification really did the opposite for me and 1000% stressed me out hahaha
It's great to see other people who have had the same stressful experience with Duolingo. There are so many ways to learn a language and it's disappointing Duolingo is the one people remember the most.
It is disappointing for sure! Do you have an article or thoughts about AI coming into the language learning space?
I don't but that would be a great topic for me to write about! Earlier this week I heard news of Duolingo using AI in the new speaking practice levels they'll be adding.
WILD! Can’t wait to see what you write about this topic!
I can so relate to what you said. I learned so many languages during my time, and when I was in korea I thought I would freshen up my korean skills with duolingo, but appart from learning new words, it was not helpful at all. I think the grammar part needs to be improved on the app. The gamification like you said made me also feel like i am failing if I made a mistake instead of encouraging me. It was nice to hear you had a similar experience with the app as well.
Thank you for sharing your experience. It's nice to know we're not alone. I hope your Korean study and other languages studies have been going well!
Thanks for helping me not waste time with Duolingo! I'm new to self-led language learning. I'm now in my 40's and the last time I seriously studied a language was in college. Do you have a tool you like specifically for adults looking to reignite their language learning that may have sat dormant?
The best tool is the tool that works for you so it's a bit difficult to give an answer. One thing that really helps me is in connecting with the language/culture through native materials. This can be hard at first but if you can find a show or video that's interesting, you can watch it along with English subtitles. You may be surprised to find that you pick up a few words here and there and are more intersted in spending time with the language.
If it's more your style, you can also specifically search for "comprehensible input" content in your target language. This is usually content that is made for language learners that is comprenhisble even for beginners.
Hope that helps and good luck returning back to language learing!
I “like” duolingo (too strong of a word lol) when I’m new to a language or dabbling and deciding if I want to continue. But usually I have a few days tolerance max. I’m trying to do a 14 day streak right now in Catalan, mostly just to get some basic vocabulary since Catalan resources are less common. But I can’t imagine using it long term, the repetition is soooo boring. I keep trying and failing to pass the end unit test just so I can get some new sentences lol
Yes! The repetition is what makes it boring for me as well. With the new changes they've made it even harder to continue "learning" when you make mistakes and lose your hearts. I like your method of using Duolingo to get basic vocabulary before moving on!
I used duolingo for Arabic and found it very helpful. I'm a physical therapy student with little downtime to self study and the small bites of language a day were about all I could get in...
However, when I joined their mandarin program I thought it was terrible. I've studied mandarin since 2014 and tested out of many of DuoLingos levels because of my prior studies, but when I started using the app to learn more, it felt boring and dull and not so great.
All this to say, I think duolingo is better used for certain languages rather than others
Duolingo is definately the type of app to use when you only have a little bit of time! I've only tried to do specific study sessions with it and I think that's what has caused me to get bored.
There are much better resources out there for Mandarin. I'm glad Duolingo was useful for you with Arabic though!
I love it and I hate it. I like how it makes language learning easy and accessible to everyone,(FREE) but I don’t like how so many people fall into the trap of just doing Duolingo. I doesn’t teach you to speak for yourself. No one app can teach you a language and definitely not Duolingo. Some days I ask myself, is doing Duolingo helping me or hurting me?