Before I get to the review, I want to mention that there are tons of reviews online about Duolingo, for various languages and different experiences. Everyone’s journey is unique, so you might not have the same experience as I did. However, as someone learning Spanish, I’ll do my best to share my experience with the app.
The idea of learning a LANGUAGE by only giving 5 or 10 minutes a day on your phone is fascinating. And it’s kind of a possibility now. I started Duolingo just before the winter break, the 12th of January 2024. As of now, it has been more than 500 days with a couple of streak freezes.
Fun fact, I had no intention of learning Spanish before starting the streak. It was a challenge with my friends and it went on. Now I am also taking Spanish lessons alongside.
If you have never used Duolingo, it is a gamified way to learn a language. There are new game like features added routinely but to be honest I prefer not using them (even though some people like playing those and also it counts towards your streak 🙂 ). It teaches languages without explicitly giving grammar rules, unlike traditional grammar-based learning. It teaches like how you learn a language when you were a baby. You have photos to associate the words with, and oddly-charactered people pronouncing the words.
I don’t personally do 10 lessons everyday, sometimes I do 5, sometimes 1, but I would say I don’t usually take more than 2. That’s why I have just finished unit 3. There are 8 units in total, so if I continue with the same pace, it would take 833 more days to finish the course! So it’s clear that I am not the fastest Duolingo user.
So what is my experience so far? I can definitely say that it helps overall with my learning. I hadn’t had a single Spanish lesson before I started Duolingo, and it definitely took me somewhere. Think like this: I could speak about the things it taught me, but I had no idea what I was talking about. I had no idea about the grammatical rules, and I definitely made lots of mistakes. I don’t know if it should go like that for a while and improve by itself, but with my current experience, I could confidently say that there is no way you could fluently speak a language by only doing Duolingo, but rather it might be a starting point. For me, it became a starting point to take Spanish lessons and also helped me start with confidence (even though you will be threatened and potentially intimidated by the green owl every day :))
To finalise my review, a thing that applies to everyone is that if you wish to learn and speak a language, start Duolingo. It will help you get started. But after the initial phase, you will definitely need to take classes. Start Duolingo for the streak; stay for the confidence boost. Just don’t skip the grammar lessons, or Duo might come for you.
With Peace ✌🏻,
Levent
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