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Honestly, Duolingo is so bad at teaching people a language that I think the language learning community, on the whole, would be better off without the app in bu

Honestly, Duolingo is so bad at teaching people a language that I think the language learning community, on the whole, would be better off without the app in business. Then again, teaching is not really their goal; rather, they'd sell you a language learning game.

ainiriand 3y ago
I practiced my German with Duolingo for some time and it it's absolutely useless for that purpose.
jeffrallen 3y ago
I did 3 months of Swahili, and stopped cold turkey when I realized that the gamification part of it kept me coming back, but somehow prevented me from learning anything. Would have been better to pass my time with Candy Crush.
- groggo 3y ago
  It prevented you from learning anything? You really would have been better playing Candy Crush? Like other comments say, there's a lot of misguided hate towards Duolingo. The lack of original criticism is almost a meme. Duolingo is fun and addicting, and it 100% helps you learn vocab and grammar. You can argue that it's not sufficient to fully learn a language, but no single tool is. You need to mix it with other media, podcasts, music, immersion, and personal lessons. But it's a great starting point. You can argue that there's more efficient, non-gamified ways to learn the basic vocab and grammar, but for a lot of people that's too much effort or not as fun because it's not gamified.
  - jeffrallen 3y ago
    I have learned other languages and I know the feeling of a successful study session. Duolingo is not it. It's a quick hit of, "ok, got the points for the day" or whatever, and the next day same thing. The words I learned went into some place in my brain related to getting points in video games, not into the language part of my brain.
  - BossingAround 3y ago
    It might prevent you from spending time on a different learning method, which would most likely be a lot more efficient than duolingo.
Tijdreiziger 3y ago
Duolingo is pretty obviously gamified, and meant to be fun way to learn something in your down time. It's competing with TikTok and Candy Crush, not with comprehensive, focused study methods.

ainiriand 3y ago

I practiced my German with Duolingo for some time and it it's absolutely useless for that purpose.

jeffrallen 3y ago

I did 3 months of Swahili, and stopped cold turkey when I realized that the gamification part of it kept me coming back, but somehow prevented me from learning anything. Would have been better to pass my time with Candy Crush.

groggo 3y ago
It prevented you from learning anything? You really would have been better playing Candy Crush? Like other comments say, there's a lot of misguided hate towards Duolingo. The lack of original criticism is almost a meme. Duolingo is fun and addicting, and it 100% helps you learn vocab and grammar. You can argue that it's not sufficient to fully learn a language, but no single tool is. You need to mix it with other media, podcasts, music, immersion, and personal lessons. But it's a great starting point. You can argue that there's more efficient, non-gamified ways to learn the basic vocab and grammar, but for a lot of people that's too much effort or not as fun because it's not gamified.
- jeffrallen 3y ago
  I have learned other languages and I know the feeling of a successful study session. Duolingo is not it. It's a quick hit of, "ok, got the points for the day" or whatever, and the next day same thing. The words I learned went into some place in my brain related to getting points in video games, not into the language part of my brain.
- BossingAround 3y ago
  It might prevent you from spending time on a different learning method, which would most likely be a lot more efficient than duolingo.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago

Duolingo is pretty obviously gamified, and meant to be fun way to learn something in your down time. It's competing with TikTok and Candy Crush, not with comprehensive, focused study methods.