Is Duolingo Effective?

Here are some apps that are better than Duolingo:

Huge thanks to Hilary, Nathan, Mark, Taylor, Brendan, Ryan, Joltrast, Tobi, and Breanna for supporting my channel on Patreon!
Kaj egan dankon al Interkultura Novelo-Konkurso (INK) pro ilia subteno! Jen kelkaj informoj pri la konkurso:

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Welcome! I am an aspiring polyglot with a degree in Linguistics. I speak English, Spanish, French, and Esperanto, and I'm currently working on Thai. I make videos twice a week to talk about my methods of learning languages and to try to help others make language learning faster, easier, and more fun.

[therm]

I only use Duolingo because the Owl bullies me :'(

[robertleslie]

If I’m being honest, if you don’t mind using the app, it is great for DRILLING certain words and conjugations into your head😂 like if I quit learning Spanish today, on my deathbed at 99 I would know how to say Juan come manzanas

[nakaharakarin]

For me Duolingo is really useful. I've been learning Dutch and now that I also use a book, I've noticed that I know a lot of vocabulary because of Duolingo. Is it a waste of time or not, I rather spend my time on Duolingo than on Instagram. At least I'm learning something

[robinc]

I don’t see how learning 2000 words in less than a year and being able to use them correctly grammatically in sentences can ever be considered a waste of time. Also, the streak feature is actually an amazing thing that helps you build a habit of learning.

[VinnieGer]

The Spanish course is really well done. It’s been super helpful in my day to day life. The Latin course however, it’s sounds like the audio was recorded in a refrigerator.

[DrVoodoo]

I'm trying to use it to kickstart my learning process. After I figure out the basics - I'm gonna start reading stuff and watching videos in languages I want to learn.

[CeLticFire]

Yes, Duolingo can be boring and repetitive at times but repetition is important for learning a new language. Taking on a new language is a workout and it’s not always going to be fun. There are going to be dull moments that are challenging but they are so worth it by the time you realize you’re becoming fluent. Nothing worth having ever comes easy!

[tanakisoup]

Saying the duolingo is useless just because it won’t make you fluent is like saying that learning how to cook by recipe is useless since it doesn’t make you a master chef. These things are a step-by-step process, and duolingo can be a decent “first step”. It can set up the building blocks for learning a language, and that will make learning it much easier. Similar to how it’d be much harder to make your own recipes if you’ve never cooked anything, than if you’ve used other people’s recipes before.

[lacydaniels]

After using Duolingo for Spanish for about 2 and a half years, and now using Dreaming Spanish as well for a full year, I am convinced that the 2 together are one of several excellent ways to really learn the language well. When I blend in reading next year, I am confident that I will be headed to fluency, my goal, within a year of that. For me, Duolingo is repetitious, endless, engaging, usually easy but sometimes a little hard, and truly helpful in adding useful vocabulary and verb usage capability. It is not perfect, and it is not nearly as helpful if used alone, but for me, I consider it a great tool.

[salah]

Duolingo is great no one can deny that he helps a lot specialy for "writing" and "reading" and the discussion form is very helpful

[jeremyandrews]

My opinion on Duolingo is that it's good for the very beginning when you have no idea what the language is about, but you get diminishing returns after about the first or second level of the language. I would say the best way to use it is spend about a week or so rushing through the course before starting on a more serious learning method. You will not achieve fluency with it, but you might get to the point where you won't need to spend as much time on the basics.

[daysandwords]

Thanks for crediting me! When I saw the thumbnail I was like "Oi I'm pretty sure that's much line..." haha.
Good video!
I feel the same way. I actually didn't mean to make my reputation as the Duolingo hater... they have so many languages they other things don't, and I appreciate them trying to make English learning for developing countries free. But when Westerners (i.e. rich people) get obsessed with it, I feel like it's as if you showed an adult Seasme Street and said "This is the greatest TV ever and you never need anything else." and everyone just buys that.

[Me-mbij]

for me duolingo is SOO useful. even if it doesnt teach you EVERY single word in that specific language, it still teaches words you would need. For example, im doing German right now and duolingo acc got the words into my brain. Tbh if u wanna learn YOU need to be encouraged. If duolingo doesnt really help maybe its just you who doesnt want to learn that language. duolingo is acc fun to learn n effective. I would acc rather sit here for an hour doing duolingo, learning a new language, other than scrolling on tiktok all day.

[NoFuqinIdea]

I'm gonna say this...
While I'm far from fluent in the 2 languages I am learning I wouldn't be where I am without it. The Streak System gave me the necessary push to build a daily studying habbit, and it structures and portions everything about a language's grammar for you, which put an end to the question "Where do I even start?" for me. I don't understand how anyone can think that they could become fluent with Duolingo as their only resource though. It has obvious short comings, like the lack of a vocabulary practice function for example. The Stories they're adding are neat tho.

[ava]

I dont really think it's a waste of time, but if you want to be fluent in a language, you definitely shouldn't be using ONLY duolingo. It's a great starter app to get used to the language and basic sentence patterns/grammar structures, as well as learning vocabulary along the way. The wacky sentences they force you to learn isn't just to make you memorize how to say "my owl can sing", but rather show you the positions of nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc in a sentence, as well as conjugations. They don't make it obvious, but after practicing it many times, you're supposed to understand how to construct sentences.

[TravelingWithKiwi]

I think that's pros cons happen on every language learning apps, so it's not about Duolingo. For example, using AnkiDroid for vocabulary training, but you miss lesson about grammar (unless somebody make flashcard deck about that). Or Babble, which is too complex for total beginner. Moreover, I don't believe if there's person who depend on only Duolingo if they're serious about learning language. That's why in the end every apps are supplementary to the others. Thanks to Duolingo, I can say this sentences: 你是加拿大人，对吗？😂😂😂

[AstraVoid]

Being overrated is not a valid criticism and nobody can fully learn a language using only one thing.

[tomaco]

I've completed a few trees in my time (Spanish, Vietnamese, and Esperanto). The only one I had any confidence after finishing was Esperanto. Esperanto is definitely an order of magnitude easier and I supplemented my language diet with Anki, Evildea, BookBox, all kinds of stuff, but in this case I thought the Esperanto tree was very useful (not to mention the huge support of the community answering questions and such).

Vietnamese on the other hand, as a tonal language with very limited voice sample (which my VN wife criticized the quality of) I graduated without much to show for it. It's probably just the first idea when we wonder where to start climbing the mountain. It's the first most obvious path, not the best path perhaps, but popular and well marked.

I'm definitely not a language learned charmed by new languages. Day zero is the worst day for me. It's the lost aimless phase for me. I remember being told by my bogepatroj to start learning Vietnamese with the alphabet and sounds, but that doesn't feel right, I didn't bother to learn Esperanto's vocab until waay into my journey.

Sorry to message longer than the video. I guess we've all got a love-hate relationship with the app.

[CasualGamesJam]

All I can say is, last year all I knew of Spanish was "Hola" and "Sí", and now I can understand most of what my Spanish-speaking cousin is saying
I believe Duolingo can definitely be a nice stepping stone

[mavincio]

Completely agree Fingtam! I think that duolingo is something that can help you with SOME things learning a language; however, duolingo is definitely not ideal to learn languages. I have always found that it has helped me with vocabulary, but that's pretty much all. Thanks for the informative video!