Anything that claims it can teach you a foreign language is a gimmick, unless it offers to give you in depth and detailed education over at least a year.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

You also never get fluent in a language beyond basic phrases not talking to people who speak it. And not to a computer program, I mean conversationally speaking for real. That's why people pay lots of money for in person lessons or lived around people who spoke the language 99% of the time when they're conversationally fluent.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I used it for a few months, think it would be a good tool in association with formal education, but is insufficient to learn a language on its own. In my opinion, a large portion of the problem is it advances too quickly and it goes from being easy to nearly impossible all of a sudden. I was trying to learn Korean and I think it's drills were good for learning the alphabet and words but when it got to sentences it was too much too soon. The drilling of the alphabet and words in this way while people were formally learning a language would probably be great, but on its own it doesn't stick.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

Your local library probably gives you free access to very helpful audio courses, just fyi. If there's a clearly better option than that that's not as impractical as immersion, I'm all ears though.

by domenic11 4 weeks ago

I've never spent a penny on Duolingo, what are y'all doing wrong.

by Noahkreiger 4 weeks ago

This is one place where I think AI could be immediately, hugely impactful. It if could basically be a full-time, immersive language coach that you talk to and it talks back, teaching you words, correcting pronunciation and grammar. Point camera at something, AI tells you how to say it. AI generates a conversation, corrects you as you speak to it. AI listens to a conversation you have with a person, gives you notes on it afterwards. It could completely change how we learn languages from rote memorization to how we learned our first native language.

by Anonymous 4 weeks ago

I don't think anyone expects Duolingo to give you fluency, but the Pro is only like $100. Sure you could buy some books for that money, but it takes discipline to study books. Duolingo makes it easier to dabble. Eventually you will need to branch out, but for an initial entry point I'd say it does a good job. I am basing this off of the Spanish course, which is the most developed course they offer. Others may differ.

by Straight-Height 4 weeks ago