Duolingo was always, at most, a game which could potentially reinforce language learning. People who think they're learning a language from it are fooling them

Duolingo was always, at most, a game which could potentially reinforce language learning. People who think they're learning a language from it are fooling themselves. They may learn some things, but the time would be much better invested in language exchange (after all, what better way to learn a language than to use it with somebody who speaks it natively) and books when that's not possible. Saw the writing on the wall when they began adding "Leaderboards", and the Reddit / Duolingo forums (since shut down) would fill with complaints about people "cheating" to get "XP" for winning the leaderboards each week. For me, the biggest clue an app isn't really that effective is when they add "streaks" for using the app. They're trying to lock you into something, under the guise of "being consistent". I'm pretty sure anybody with a high streak just turns the app on and runs the first lesson (Hello, hi, how are you) to keep it going.