You Will Never Learn a Language With Duolingo

Duolingo is a fun little app for picking up the basics of a new language, but you will never truly learn that language. Trust me! I've tried. Some Personal History If you read an article title like this, you might be expecting some ragebait, but I have quite the history with Duolingo. I started using it while studying abroad in the UK in 2014, roughly twelve years ago. Here's the most proof I'm willing to give: Back then, I was using Duolingo to pickup Spanish again. I studied a bit of it in high school, and I've always wanted to be bilingual. As a result, I figured while I had infinite downtime while studying abroad, I would at least start (re)learning a language. It was good for a bit. It felt nice to scrape some rust off the ol' cranium. Plus, it made me feel like I was making some progress. Over the years, I took breaks from Duolingo, mostly because I had lost my streaks. Nothing was more painful than breaking a streak of a couple of months. That alone was enough to get me to stop studying at times. And then at some point, I started Duolingo back up and never put it back down—sort of. Duolingo eventually included streak freezes, so you could miss a day here and there without consequence. And while I definitely miss days, my current streak as of writing this article is 2,909 days. If you're wondering how that translates to years, it's basically a handful of days away from 8 years (i.e., 2922 days). That happens to be right around the time I moved to Columbus, though probably a bit closer to when I quit my job at GE. What Makes Duolingo So Bad As someone who has used Duolingo daily for almost eight straight years, I can assure you that it will not teach you a language. For probably the first five years of using the app, I was "learning" Spanish. Looking back, I do not recall a single lesson. But, do you know what I do recall? All that time spent navigating apps set to Spanish and memorizing Spanish songs. In fact, one of my favorite Spanish musicians just started producing anime covers again: https://youtu.be/g42GHX4UfOg?si=jigSiodPJiPkLFzc Of course, I don't think my ability to remember Duolingo lessons means I didn't learn anything. Rather, Duolingo teaches you a very different set of skills: how to solve language puzzles. Basically, you will never learn how to speak or even really write. However, you will learn how to manipulate language elements between your native language and the language you're learning. The language itself will never feel natural to you. If you're wondering how I know, it's because I put my Duolingo knowledge to the test in the wild. Of course, it wasn't my Spanish knowledge (though, I did spend some time in Mexico). Eventually, I got bored of "learning" Spanish and decided to pick up Japanese. I don't remember the exact timing, but let's suppose I used Duolingo to learn Japanese for at least a year before going to Japan for the first time. Personally, this was a massively humbling experience. While Duolingo helped me learn how to read hiragana and katakana, it turns out that Japan primarily uses kanji. Like, I was incapable of reading anything. Speaking wasn't even an option. At best, I could pick out a couple of words I recognized while listening, but there was no way I was busting out Japanese. There were basically two instances where I tried. Once was with some college students who wanted to try speaking English. At that time, I was able to translate some basic phrases for them. The other time was with the hotel staff where I tried to ask if they spoke English (in Japanese) and they immediately opened a translation app. After that, I kept my mouth shut and just used the trip to work on my listening and reading. In fact, at some point, I looked for ways to take Japanese classes back at my home university. I was genuinely embarrassed with my language skills, though I thought all I needed was confidence. I'll have you know that even in the moment I thought too highly of myself. When I finally made it back home, I took a Japanese language test with my university, and they placed me in the Level One course. So, I think that's enough evidence for me to say that Duolingo will get you nowhere. What Do My Studies Look Like Now? For the last six or so months, I have been studying Japanese aggressively. My day-to-day is actually kind of a slog. As you might already know, I'm taking the Level One course now. The course number is literally 1101, but Level One is actually composed of two courses: 1101 and 1102. Given my busy schedule, I elected to split 1101 in half, so I'm taking the second two credits now. At the time of writing, I just completed the 44th session with five to go before I can say I've completed 1101. The course itself follows a pretty basic formula: I just have to memorize a couple of scripts each week and perform them in a one-on-one session. I also have to complete a few textbook activities each week, which usually involve listening tasks and production tasks. While they activities are not directly graded, I have to be prepared to handle similar tasks during the one-on-one session. Sometimes, I'm even expected to apply the knowledge in a completely new scenario or reproduce old knowledge. It's always a bit different each time. When I'm not directly working on memorizing the script or working through the activity book, I also continue to use Duolingo. How else would I still have a 2,909 streak? However, I don't use the actual lessons. Instead, I use it to practice Kanji. That's basically it. It usually takes me less than two minutes to maintain the streak. From there, I have two other apps that I use extensively. One of my peers gave me a set of Anki cards that contains all of the vocabulary from the textbook. So, until recently, I was using those to review all of the old material from the book. However, I eventually caught up, so now I use Anki to get ahead. This has been quite nice because while Anki is really painful when you're seeing the words for the first time, it relieves a lot of the pressure of learning the scripts and vocabulary at the same time. It sort of like foreshadows future material for me. Next, I recently started using WaniKani because learning kanji is hard. Therefore, I figured it would be a good idea to get started on it early, despite my course having no expectations for it until 1102. Plus, I find that knowing kanji makes it a lot easier to pick up on new vocabulary. The characters tend to give you a little extra context needed for remembering the words. Finally, I've been regularly attending our weekly Japanese language club (Oshaberikai). This is my one chance to actually work on producing Japanese among peers, and I love it. I tend to be the lowest skilled in the room, so it's been really hard. That said, I really enjoy it. All of this is to say that I'm spending significantly more time and mental energy learning Japanese than I ever was with Duolingo alone. I imagine I will be humbled again this spring when I make my second trip back to Japan, but I will be in a significantly better place than last time. Hello from beyond the separator! Thanks again for reading. I appreciate you taking the time to follow me on my language journey. You can be certain I'll follow up in June with how my travels went this year. Anyway, if you liked this, here are a few other language-related (with some being programming languages) pieces: What It Feels Like to Be a Toddler Again: Learning a Language Reflecting on My First Trip to Japan What is a Programming Language? Likewise, feel free to check out my list of ways to grow the site. Otherwise, get back to your own language learning! P.S. I really had to restrain myself from sneaking more AI hate into this article, but I really feel like using an LLM to learn a skill is akin to using Duolingo to learn a language. You are only given the illusion of progress. You will never get passed the basics.