No, You Can’t Master A Language Just With Duolingo — Nor Trust Their Research
Duolingo is one of the most popular (education) apps in the world with over 500mln downloads. The company claims you’ll learn faster than in a university. Yet, those claims are very misleading. There are clearly better ways of learning languages in both cases.
How Is Language Proficiency Measured?
Proficiency in a language can be measured in different ways. But it generally consists of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
However, even tests that measure all four skills are biased. They leave out immersion and naturalistic assessments that observe a person’s ability to function effectively in real-life situations where the language is spoken. This includes knowledge about culture.
I’ve experienced this first-hand. I’m fluent in English but sometimes I’m not being understood. Just because of my accent or the vocabulary I use. Even by people who are also fluent in English or whose native tongue is English. It’s also very easy to commit a faux pas when living or traveling abroad.
What Do The Duolingo Studies Really Show?
Duolingo provides many studies that claim that it can help you learn languages fast. However, all of those studies are biased. None of them measure language proficiency in a comparable manner.
For example, in a “study” called “Developing reading and listening proficiency with Duolingo: A cross-sectional analysis” (2022) they attempted to compare Duolingo learners with students who learned languages in university.
For some reason, they chose ACTFL as the test. ACTFL should measure all four skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking).
However, Duolingo only measured reading and listening which are passive skills. Writing and speaking were not taken into account.
So, in the white paper, they claim that:
“Across most measures, the difference between Duolingo Spanish and French learners completing Unit 5 versus Unit 7 was comparable to those of US university students between the 4th and 5th semester”.
There’s no way of knowing as the study didn’t measure all four skills nor did it measure cultural knowledge.
Similarly, in the accompanying blog post, they claim: “Learners who completed the first sections of our intermediate content had reading and listening scores comparable to 5 semesters of university classes!” A totally misleading claim, again.
Other people have pointed out similar flaws in Duolingo’s research methodology before. One linguist even went a step further:
Intrigued by Duolingo’s “34 hours” claim [34 hours = 1 university semester of language learning], he put it to the test, studying Swedish on the app for a total of 300 hours. (Most introductory university Swedish courses amount to 150 or so hours of coursework, he reasoned; 300 would be more than safe.) He then convinced the professor of UCLA’s Elementary Swedish course to let him take the final exam. He got an F.
The Biggest Problems With Language Apps And Courses In General
It’s not that language apps like Duolingo don’t work at all. They definitely do work to some extent. But they strip learning of meaning and context.
Apps show you random vocabulary, sentences, and grammatical structures, and force you to memorize them. No child ever learns their mother tongue this way.
Children point to things and learn the names of things because they need it. It’s what is in their environment. They start to form sentences because they need to make their needs and wants understood — at that moment, in that environment. And the stakes are high – so, failures and successes are memorable and enforce learning even more.
Duolingo and other similar apps (and many offline language courses as well) however, provide you with nonsense sentences like these:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a cow open its favorite book or a cat write a letter in Japanese.
Even when the sentences do make sense, they have no immediate purpose. When I learn how to say “Is the bus stop far?” I’m not actually looking for a bus stop. I’m at home in Estonia, laying on my couch, and have no immediate plans to take a bus in Mexico or Spain.
How To Add Meaning Back To Your Language Learning
The article cited above has some clues:
To learn a language, says Cable, “you need habit, human contact, and you need varying resources, otherwise language learning doesn’t really go anywhere.” Sacco puts it even more bluntly: “There’s nothing but immersion, period.”
Visit The Country
The best way, by far, is to move or travel to another country where that language is spoken natively and immerse yourself in every aspect of the language. However, this might be out of reach for a lot of people.
Talk To Native Speakers
The second best option is to talk with native speakers. Again, it can be challenging but it’s possible.
Personally, I’m learning Spanish and I do a lot of gaming with Spanish speakers for that very purpose.
There are also apps like HelloTalk and Tandem that let you connect with native speakers. I’ve recently started experimenting with both.
Tandem seems to have (at least for now) more people actually texting me back but HelloTalk has a correction feature in messaging (see screenshot) which is very useful. Both also have live online audio rooms (Tandem calls them “Parties”) for group discussion.
Some bigger cities have in-person language practice meetups too. I’ve even been stopped on the street in Vietnam by an eager language learner who wanted to practice German with me (apparently I looked like a German to her). We did hold a brief conversation in German. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Immerse Yourself Based On Your Habits
The third best option is to immerse yourself in the language based on your existing habits.
You can watch movies or listen to music in foreign languages. This is how I largely learned English — from Finnish TV which had English movies with only Finnish subtitles. There are some extensions that let you add captions to Youtube videos.
You can also switch your mobile phone’s and computer’s system language. You’ll learn by using the menus. And you have to understand what each menu item means — you don’t want to accidentally delete something where you want to share it instead.
You’ll also see much more content in apps like TikTok in that language once you switch your iPhone or Android system language.
Another way is to browse the websites in the language you want to learn. It can be annoying to change it manually every time though. Something like Duolingo Ninja can help you with that (disclaimer: I created it).
It translates part of websites to the language you’re learning automatically based on your Duolingo vocabulary. This means that you’ll learn the words and sentences that actually have meaning and that you have a use for.
Increase the input 100x
We don’t first learn to speak because we studied grammar. We learn it purely because of input — hearing the language. Increasing the amount of input is the key to fluency.
There really are not shortcuts. If you want to get fluent, you need to increase your input drastically. And I mean drastically.
Children who hear at least 21,000 words per day are more likely to have both a wider vocabulary and later academic success. How many words do you hear per day if you just rely on Duolingo or language classes? 200? 500? 2000? It’s nowhere near enough.
Tools like Lingo Champion can you help with this (disclaimer: I founded this as well). These are built for comprehensible input.
The focus is on reading and listening not on speaking and writing (which later come automatically anyway). You can’t speak if you can’t understand first. And you can’t understand if you don’t read and hear enough to start seeing the patterns. Picking up a language is largely subconscious. You can’t consciously memorize every grammar rule and every single word.
Another important point is that it’s real content. You can’t learn to swim on dry land. You need to get wet. Reading or listening to real content also makes it meaningful — therefore more compelling and more memorable.
As the man said — there’s nothing but immersion, period.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve come across any other ways to immerse yourself in the language.
