Duolingo: does it work?

Last September I started attending a French evening class. Not having attended an evening class for years I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, however very soon I encountered the problems that so many of my students often report after starting a course: from not having time to do the homework to not being able to attend lessons due to family commitments, I started feeling that an evening class was not for me.

On top of family, there was also the day job and having to run my own evening classes, so I stopped attending as I could not commit the time and effort it deserved to make it worth the time and money. But I was still desperate to learn French, so I succumbed to the charms of that competitor of mine that I had so often dismissed before: Duolingo.

My verdict? Excellent. Am I learning French? Yes, and I have also taken on Portuguese.

Is it manageable? Absolutely, as you learn as and when you can.

Can you learn a language only on Duolingo? In my opinion, no. It is an excellent practice platform, but I think that you need to reinforce what you are learning there with a bit further research and exercises. Here is a list of pros and cons that I am finding, and I hope they will help you decide how you use this amazing little app.

Pros:

You learn at your own pace, as and when you can
It has a lot of listening practice
It has a lot of speaking practice (although in my opinion the evaluation of correct pronunciation with Duolingo's AI technology is arguable, in other words, the app approves of my sometimes shockingly bad French pronunciation)
The grammatical contents and vocabulary you learn seem comprehensive
Each unit comes with brief grammar explanations
The gamification aspect of learning makes it a lot of fun

Cons:

It can be tricky to understand the grammar without further study
As I mention above, the app approves of pronunciation that is not always correct, and this can lead to developing bad habits that will be hard to correct later on
Duolingo is US based, therefore much of the Spanish you learn is from Central and South America, and much of the Portuguese is from Brazil. While this is not a huge issue, it can lead to some misunderstandings regarding vocabulary and the pronunciation of some words for learners who want to focus on the European variants.
Adverts hinder the flow of learning. If you are serious about learning a language, it is worth paying for a subscription. I paid for a family subscription and for us it was worth every penny - six of us are learning all sorts of languages without adverts.

So in conclusion, I do recommend this app and encourage my students to use it as a practice tool, particularly for listening practice.

However, if you are going to use it as a self-learning tool, I recommend complementing it with further grammar study based on a good grammar book and videos - there are hundreds of videos on YouTube, some of which are complete grammar lessons! Just Google what you need to revise and the videos will pop up.

Buena suerte 😊💖