Duolingo is fun, but does it make you fluent? | Hacker News Reader

Duolingo is fun, but does it make you fluent?

5 pointsayoubdrissi8 comments

A lot of people spend months or even years grinding through Duolingo but when they try to actually speak the language they freeze. It’s like knowing all the rules of a sport but never playing a real game.

Speaking is the hardest part of language learning because most apps don’t prepare you for real conversations. You recognize words, you can form sentences in your head but when it comes time to talk everything feels unnatural.

The best way to improve is by speaking with native speakers but that’s not always easy. Tutors are expensive and finding the right language partners takes time.

I’m working on something called Lengpal that connects you instantly with native speakers for real conversations. No scheduling no awkward chats just click and talk. The goal is to make speaking practice as easy as opening an app.

Curious to hear what’s worked for you. Have you found a way to actually get fluent?

Duolingo is a great kickstarter from zero knowledge, in my experience it also leads to very fast reading proficiency.

I'm convinced I can make sense of a newspaper within weeks and read novels within months in any language just using Duolingo (maybe longer if I also have to learn a different writing system). I did it with Danish years ago. I could read newspapers after a month and after four months I read a few novels at a slow but still enjoyable pace.

Or another example: my daughter was struggling with English at school and I bribed her to keep a 200-day Duolingo streak. That was enough to allow her to understand sources in English about her hobbies and interests, and now after a couple years her level is way above what is taught at school, she aces every test effortlessly.

Fluency... English is not my first language, but I can write, read and understand it pretty well. I even "think in English" at times, but I have never spent more than 4 consecutive days in an English-speaking country, and my fluency suffers a lot comparatively.

I can speak about anything, even give a talk or teach, but my accent is very thick, I'll stammer and stutter and stop here and there to find the right turn of phrase, or struggle to pronounce words that I have written a thousand times but never said aloud.

So in my opinion if you want to speak well, you have to speak a lot and I don´t think Duolingo is very good for that.

Of course not. It's not aimed at fluency.

It's glorified flash cards. Which is great: new language learners need glorified flash cards.

People need real communication to get past that. Podcasts and movies are an extremely useful intermediate step, and free.

An interaction app would be good, but...

I'd caution you to learn the lessons of ChatRoulette and every other social site: there will be bad actors, and you need to think about that first. It can't be layered on after the fact, and bad interactions can kill your site/app before it gets off the ground.

The only to actually become fluent for most people is through immersion. Duolingo definitely doesn’t provide that but speaking with native speakers is definitely a step in the right direction.

Yes, it works.

In my opinion, you always learn more when having fun...

Yeah, enjoying the process definitely helps. I just found that when it came to actually speaking, I still struggled despite using apps for a while. Have you tried practicing with real conversations too, or just apps?

Take a look at r/languagelearning and the subreddit for whatever language you're learning.

Also, people have already made this concept. They apparently mostly turn into dating apps in practice.

Sounds like a fun way to immigrate to another country.

Thanks for the suggestion! We’ve definitely taken that into consideration. We’re working hard on a reporting system and AI moderation to ensure that only serious language learners are using the platform. Our goal is to create an environment where people can focus on language learning, not on anything else.

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