365 Day Streak: The Pros and Cons of Duolingo
Duolingo, the world’s most downloaded education app, offers over one hundred courses in over forty languages free of charge. By practicing your target language for only 10-20 minutes per day, the hope is that you’ll be (almost) fluent in no time! However, the reality of language learning is far more complicated and involved than memorizing a few virtual flashcards and repeating AI recordings. Duolingo certainly helps with learning new vocabulary and short sentences, but if the goal is to speak your target language conversationally—let alone fluently—the app is not enough.
Most language applications use the same methods to help learners effectively acquire new vocabulary and phrases: listening exercises, the introduction of new words with flashcards, multiple-choice questions, and direct translation exercises. Duolingo uses spaced repetition, a learning technique that shows newly introduced and more difficult terms more frequently, while older and less difficult terms are shown less frequently. This learning method encourages users to actively recall what they’ve learned, which makes Duolingo’s flashcard system a great way to recognize new sounds and letters for languages that use a different writing system from English. A disadvantage of this learning method, however, is the lack of in-depth explanations for the “building blocks” of each language.
Languages are complex systems made up of the following components:
Morphology: the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words. Think prefixes, suffixes, stems, and root words.
Syntax: the study of how words combine to form larger units that convey meaning. Correct syntax involves the proper choice of words, correct tense, matching forms of plurality and singularity, and sentence structure.
Semantics: the study of meaning. Semantics can be broken down into subcategories, such as the logical aspects of meaning (grammatical meaning), cognitive structure of meaning (there is no subtext to a term, just the straightforward, literal, dictionary definition of the word), and the meaning of individual words and phrases.
These are complex concepts that are necessary to understand if you want to learn a new language. Duolingo used to have chat forums where users could post questions about syntax, morphology, and phonology and interact with one another. As someone critical of Duolingo, the forums were seemingly the most helpful aspect of the app. However, as of March 22, 2022, the forums were removed from Duolingo’s website and are no longer accessible. Any questions a learner might have about the specifics of their target language will remain unanswered on Duolingo’s part.
Duolingo effectively deceives its users into believing they are learning a language by teaching basic conversational phrases, such as “How much?” or “Where is the bathroom?”. Unfortunately, that’s not genuinely learning a language but instead memorizing snippets of it—and it’s impossible to get very far through strict memorization. For English natives, attempting to learn beyond the basics of languages such as Chinese, Russian, or Japanese through Duolingo can do more harm than good. Since these languages are so different from English, the best way to study them is with the assistance of a native speaker. You will need actual corrections and proper training on sounds and tones, or else you will develop bad pronunciation habits. Additionally, language is a human phenomenon. Duolingo does not provide a live conversation model, so what is the point? Live conversation practice enables language learners to actually use their acquired knowledge. In effect, this is learning by doing, which is a process unachievable through an app.
Despite its flawed formatting, Duolingo is a great place for people to start learning a language. The app sends daily notifications reminding users that learning a language is an everyday effort, and that even reviewing 10 minutes a day is beneficial. This is the optimal mentality to have when learning a language. Twenty minutes is the ideal amount of time to spend on daily study, if you can find the time, but you don't need to cram it all in at once. Eventually, when you become advanced enough in a language, Duolingo will no longer be helpful. It’s essentially a translation tool that, while acting as a supplement to formal language learning, will never replace it.
