Why Duolingo doesn't work

Duolingo has 500 million registered users, with most of them being English learners.

Despite this popularity, Duolingo is simply not an effective language learning tool if your goal is fluency in a language. Here’s why:

First reason why Duolingo doesn’t work is that it focuses on translation.

Using Duolingo, you don’t practise thinking in English because your native language is always involved.

This means, when you try to speak English in real life, you have to translate your thoughts into English, which takes time and slows you down in conversation.

Second reason is that you don’t learn things in context.

Duolingo teaches you a bunch of random words and sentences that may not be relevant to your life.

Learning words without context or reason makes them hard to remember.

As well, Duolingo often doesn’t even teach you useful words or words that commonly occur.

Third reason is their is only one right answer and the app relies on multiple choice.

In the translation exercises (which are the bulk of what Duolingo is about), the software is programmed to only accept one right answer.

This is problematic as most languages have many ways of saying the same thing.

Students who input an answer that is right but not recognised on Duolingo may think they are wrong.

On the flip side, I have seen instances where learners assume they are correct but Duolingo doesn’t accept it, when in fact they are wrong. As you can see, this can cause a lot of confusion for people who are self-studying. Language is a lot more than just right or wrong.

Fourth reason is it doesn’t prepare you for real life conversation.

As a result of the previous points, you end up with little practise forming sentences yourself or understanding conversation.

If all your experience in a language comes from answering multiple choice questions, how are you meant to have a conversation

For all these reasons above, it can’t make you fluent, which makes you ask, what’s the point in using it?

There are some use cases for Duolingo.

It is useful for learning the basics of language and it is useful for many people as they find it fun and easy so they constantly use it.

However, if your goal is to become conversational in English, or to find an English speaking job, then your time could be better spent doing other things.

What you should do instead

Watch, listen to and read as much English as possible.

This can be stuff made for native English speakers or for English learners.

What you consume depends on your interests and your level.

Just focus on getting English into your brain whenever you can.

This is the key to fluency.

Having lessons is also very useful.

If you want to practise speaking, or want detailed feedback and help with your English, consider finding a teacher on iTalki: