4 ms·

You come off attached to your existing conclusions: All duolingo users are lazy, and nobody can ever become fluent in a language from a class. You're free to be

• andrewzah 7y ago
  > All duolingo users are lazy Nope. Not everyone has a lot of time to dedicate to studying a language, which is fine. But duolingo is never going to give you any meaningful fluency. It's like saying "I want to get ripped by only doing body weight exercises for 5 mins/day". If your goal is just to say "Hi my name is X, where is the bathroom", then by all means use duolingo. > nobody can ever become fluent in a language from a class No class will ever teach you everything about a language, partly because there is way too much to teach, and partly because languages change all the time and classes can't keep up. Instead, classes give you a starting point to start reaching fluency, which begins once you start consuming native material and having conversations with real native speakers. Classes don't teach you slang, pop culture, casual expressions, and so on. Fluency is not making simple paragraphs or having a very basic, limited in scope & topic 10 min conversation. Language learning literature and other resources have lowered the bar for what "fluency" is, because nobody can sell a book or other resource by saying "use this book and learn french in 3-5 years". There is a lot of snake oil in this area, but people also want to believe in this notion that they can fluently speak a language with minimal effort.