How Duolingo is destroying your language learning
$1,000,000,000 Thats how much Duolingo made for 2026 and I know its a bunch of 0's and a 1 But its more than that…. Duolingo's goal is for you to stay as long as possible get OK at grammar and stuff and switch to premium and stay there as long as possible If you think duolingo is "good" Lets see what a couple linguistic professionals say: It doesn’t teach grammar: "The first and only time I used Duolingo, I gave up pretty quickly because it didn’t give me any explanation of the grammar used to form the sentences it was teaching." It gives you no context: "Sure, you can tell Duo your goals for learning the language, but still, most of the sentences or words given are completely random and don’t represent anything you’d normally say in real life." It doesn’t prepare you for real-life conversations: "This is the logical result of the previous two points. The goal of learning a language is usually communication, right? To communicate, you have to not only understand what others say, but produce sentences yourself, too." It only allows one right answer: 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. Duolingo won’t make you fluent: You may have been able to reach the top of the Duolingo tree, but have you mastered the language? I doubt that anybody has become fluent using Duolingo alone. So you’ve spend all this time completing the whole programme up to their most “advanced” level, and still you’re not even close to being able to genuinely connect with a native speaker. It focuses on translation: The main tool used on Duolingo is translation. This means they teach you the language by getting you to translate things from one language into another. This isnt MEE These are neuroscientists, Language professionals, and linguistic experts