I love Duolingo, but my relationship with it is complex. I use it and I’ll keep using it… but at the end of the day, for me it has reached its limits of usefulness. There are a number of places that criticize the software (1, 2,), and do a good job of it but I wanted to lend my own voice to this discussion. And just because the price is free, I think it is perfectly legitimate to feel passionate about it and to criticize it. (It has been strongly implied on the community boards that criticism is bad because the software is free.)

For context, I am a native English speaker. I took a year of high school Spanish and a year of university Spanish. That experience was about ten years ago. I started Duolingo about a year and a half ago when I became involved with a multilingual Spanish speaker, who lives in a Spanish speaking country. Oh, and then I moved to said Spanish speaking country. Languages are not my thing. (Education, on the other hand is. I love educational theory. Worth mentioning here: I have an MSEd in Instructional Technology.) I find learning languages difficult and painful, and I would not try to learn a language to any degree of fluency if I was not motivated by living in a Spanish speaking country, loving someone who speaks Spanish and wanting to work here. It is amazing the motivation love can give you to learn a language. Outside of Duolingo, living in a Spanish speaking country, reading grammar pages and practicing with my partner… I also take intensive Spanish classes. My end goal in learning Spanish is to reach a DELE B2 level. This should assist me in the future in getting a job in this country.

Why does that context matter? Because motivation is a key factor in language acquisition. You don’t have motivation, you don’t learn it well. There are four generally accepted motivational factors for learning the language : travel, friendship, knowledge and instrumental orientation. Research suggests the different nature of these motivations, instrumental versus intrinsic, does not impact one’s ability to learn and that both are equally valuable when it comes to language acquisition. The research also suggests that there are gender differences in terms of motivation to learn a language, with women more likely having intrinsic motivations while men are more likely to have instrumental motivations.

That said, as a woman, I have the motivation to learn. I’m also apparently in that key demographic that Duolingo is trying to market itself to: a language learner. Getting into the nuts and bolts of my problems with Duolingo, my criticisms fall into a few broad categories: 1) Motivational factors not addressed, 2) The language learned is not universally applicable by Duolingo choice, 3) The focus on translation makes it less useful for people to use in a real world context, 4) It doesn’t teach grammar, 5) Duolingo uses one strategy to teach you a language.

Motivational factors not addressed

As stated above, I am I like to think highly motivated to learn. Learning Spanish would assist me personally. It would assist me professionally. It assists my education. It makes life easier. There has been little research done on the effectiveness of Duolingo, with the major study done originally having 200 participants but only 100 users having finished it. A university course was used as a control group to assess learner outcomes, but motivation was not discussed despite the importance motivation is given in language acquisition research. In any case, clearly half the Duolingo students were not motivated enough to finish the course, and that should tell you something, especially when people are comparing Duolingo’s effectiveness to other learning approaches. That said, let’s discuss language learners who have instrumental orientation motivation.

How good is Duolingo in addressing this motivation? I would argue that instrumental orientation learners would probably have a motivation to finish the tree, if their motivation is “complete the tree.” I’ve seen a number of these learners on Duolingo’s boards. They finish one language tree, and they are off to the next with the goal of completing them all. It isn’t clear based on their comments that they are actually seeking real fluency, but rather the desire to be able to read with some comprehension news sites and books. There are fewer learners that appear on the message boards that appear to be using Duolingo to get a credential of some kind, be it completing a DELE exam, a university entrance, etc. The program does not appear to attract people who have instrumental orientation in terms of meeting that goal. Duolingo appears to be trying to address this issue by creating their own more advance instrumental orientation by seeking to get more value recognition for completing the language tree and taking the test. (Also, Duolingo can easily monetize on this motivation. Having a credential is probably the easiest monetizable motivation to tap into.)

If your motivation to learn a language is for travel, Duolingo doesn’t really appear to tap into that. When was the last time you went on holiday, went to the supermarket, a clothing store, a bar, a museum or a hotel and needed to say, “La democracia es la dictadura de la mayoría. / Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority.” How about the last time you went on holiday you needed to say, “La seguridad es la cosa más important para un sociedad. / Safety is the most important thing for a society.” Maybe you’ve needed to say, “Estoy viejo, soy un fracaso. / I am old, I am a failure.” Duolingo does not really particularly tap into this language need. There are some lessons that have vocabulary that might help that, but it is rarely if ever contextualized in such a way that you can use it functionally.

Duolingo does some of this in the beginning, but it doesn’t string possible phrases together to make it possible to have short conversations. “Me llamo Duo.” and “¿Comó te llamas?” are not provided in the same little test part. For that matter, neither is “¿Qué toca?”, a phrase you may be asked at a restaurant, is not contextualized against say, “Yo quiero una cerveza y un bocadillo de calamares.” Oh, and the next follow up sentence of “¿Algun más?” also doesn’t appear. Duolingo does not prepare you Spanish wise to go into Starbucks or Burger King or Taco Bell or McDonalds or Vips or Dominos or Telepizza. I suppose when presented with “¿Algo más?” I could always respond with “Yo habría considerado comprar esa fuente.”

How useful really is Duolingo to language learners if they cannot take their language skills on holiday with them? A phrase book may actually be more useful. I cannot repeat this enough: Travel is an important motivation for many people in learning a new language. Lots of people talk about using Duolingo on the message boards because they are going to travel. Rarely have I ever seen a follow up post of, “I finished the Duolingo tree before going to a Ecuador/Spain/Argentina/Equatorial Guinea and it was so helpful!” It makes really doubt the effectiveness here. But hey, maybe people intrinsically motivated to learn a language because of travel are not the people Duolingo wants to attract. After all, there appears to be some research that shows following travels to a country where the language is different, people stop trying to improve their language acquisition in the language.

These learners may be the type not to commit to learning a language for the long haul, which means they may not be the sort Duolingo wants as they won’t be committed, motivated gamers / learners.

Friendship appears to have similar issues to travel, in that natural language patterns are needed. What’s your name? Where do you want to go? How is your family? What things do you like? This appears conversational in terms of language needs based on this motivation. And Duolingo doesn’t address that need, unless “El gobierno nosha citado en el Ministerio de Justicia. / The government has made an appointment with us at the Department of Justice.” or “Ella los dejo ir sin que hubiera consecuencias / She let them go without any consequences.” are sentences that you would use with your friends on a normal basis.

Because of this inability to learn how to create free form sentences, Duolingo may have limited use for people looking to learn the language for the purpose of friendship. Though because friendship doesn’t have the same time limits as travel plans, maybe the limitations of the game can over come this. This was true for me, though it ended up requiring everyone around me to become grammar teachers because Duolingo doesn’t teach that either. All these issues I have with Duolingo’s shortcomings interconnect a lot. The people motivated by knowledge may probably be the group best suited for using Duolingo.

The language learned is not universally applicable by Duolingo choice

This is potentially one of my biggest beefs. Duolingo advertises it teaches Spanish using the Spanish flag. Fantastic! I live in Spain. When I looked for grammar books in the USA, finding Spanish language learning materials using vosotros and Castillian Spanish was a PITA. The Spanish flag versus the Mexican flag made it easy to know what version of Spanish I was getting with a book. Duolingo? Despite that cute little Spanish flag (which needs to be changed, because new king), Duolingo does not teach the Spanish of Spain. It pretty much teaches the Spanish of Mexico, with some other Latin American Spanish tossed in.

If you need the Spanish of Spain, you can be really SOL because Duolingo doesn’t teach it. I don’t think you can be functionally fluent in the Spanish of Spain without vosotros, and Duolingo doesn’t ever teach it. Full stop. Does. Not. Teach. Vosotros. This erks me a lot. For one thing, I’ve spoken to a large number of Spanish speakers. They tell me that vosotros is Spanish of Spain, but if you use vosotros in other parts of the Spanish speaking world, people will understand you. (And they’ll know you learned your Spanish in Spain, but that’s neither here nor there.) People will not hear vosotros and think you are speaking German, Catalan or Chinese when they hear it. While they may not use it, they understand it. It makes the universal application of vosotros pretty important.

In English, different dialects use grammar slightly differently. gameswithwords.org actually looks at some of these to see if they can use grammar patterns to detect where your “accent” is from if you speak English. Awesome. These same issues that may English speaking patterns distinct exist in Spanish. The rules can be quite different. But in the “We teach language universally.”, it doesn’t inform the learner of the region their Spanish is coming from which makes it challenging to deal with situations where you see word patterns in natural colloquial Spanish settings… because well, lots of people are learning for the sake of travel and making friends. They’ll see these things a lot. The creators chose to ignore this, and it is a huge weakness in terms of preparing language learners for real application of their language learning skills. While I am on the subject, this is probably the best place to put this: Duolingo has a number of errors in it. These errors are annoying.

The further you get into the tree, the more obnoxious they become because you end up trapped in a situation where Duolingo is wrong. The tree is advanced enough that few people have done it to complain. You end up learning bad Spanish grammar, that may also be extremely colloquial too! Erk. Erk. Erk. This will take time, effort and awareness that you’ve picked up bad habits in order to fix it. If you’re not putting your newly acquired language skills to use regularly, you may never realize you have these Duolingo created problems.

The focus on translation makes it less useful for people to use in a real world context

Duolingo focuses on translation. Historically, this was how languages were often taught. Learning pedagogy underwent a lot of changes during the 1960s and 1970s, and language learning methods changed in response. Behaviorist type language instruction, translation based learning, gave way to more of a cognitive and constructivist approach. It probably explains why one of the first phrases most people learn in a new language is, “My name is” or “Me llamo” or “Je m’apelle”. This sort of approach gives language meaning to the learner, and coincidentally taps into all those motivational reasons to learn a language.

In any case, Duolingo focuses on translation. Translation serves a very specific type of language use that is not ideal for every learner. Oh. Yeah. Back to motivation again, but it is important so back we go. When looking at the four major reasons people learn a language, translation generally falls into the category of instrumental orientation, but probably not travel, friendship and knowledge. It may fall into the knowledge category, if the goal is to transmit knowledge from one language to the next, or from one source into our own internal knowledge framework.

Most people though? Translation does not work well with motivation. Also, this translation method is really, really, really useless and annoying. Remember, I am learning Spanish because I live in Spain. I need to use Spanish daily, everywhere I go unless I take active steps to make sure I can live in a world where I do not need to speak Spanish. (The feasibility of this I have addressed on Quora.) Translating takes time and mental energy. Quick, you’re … an ugly American/Australian! You’re in Madrid/Buenos Aires. “Qué quiere tomar?” asks the barista. You need to be able to answer immediately, “Un grande exclusivo chocolate caliente con nata para llevar” right away. Failure to do so will make the hoardes of thristy Spaniards/Argentines behind you get cranky. (Not really.) You don’t have time to translate what the barista said to, “What do you want to take/eat and drink?” and then think, “I want a medium hot chocolate with whipped cream to go” into Spanish. You need to be able to hear the phrase, not translate it into your head. You need to hear it and understand it, without translating it. You need to be able to think in the language.

And Duolingo never, ever, ever lets you think in the language. Everything is always though the translation pedagogy. English to Spanish. Spanish to English. The exact same pattern with the two language names changing. Duolingo does not equip you to think in a language. And that’s just not very useful at all.

If you need to learn a language to put it into practical use on a daily basis, because you’re going to visit a country that speaks the language, because you live in a country where you don’t speak the language, because you need it for work, or because the love of your life speaks another language… the time lag to translate can be huge. It can cause delays in your response time. It can create a few seconds that make things more socially isolating. This focus on translation works really well if you pretty much want to confine your language skills to written text as a reader. Otherwise, yeah, Duolingo has limited usefulness.

Duolingo does not teach grammar

Duolingo does not teach grammar. It does not teach grammar. It does not teach grammar. Have I mentioned, Duolingo does not teach grammar? One of my favorite polygots on Quora has vocabularly to the knots that hold a net together, and grammar as the rope between the net. Without both, you do not have a language. Grammar provides important links between words that aids in comprehending the rest of the words. pescado, besar, pongo, hombre, país, rojo, lo. Those are a random string of words. El hombre besa el pescado rojo. That’s a sentence. It isn’t great, but I am able to understand how to string some random words together because of the grammar rules. (In Spanish, adjectives generally come after the noun, and agree with the noun in gender and number. Verbs need to be conjugated to fit the tense and the number.) Duolingo provides some grammar instruction, but really pretty much none and what is there is not very useful. The creators assume that you’ll naturally pick up the patterns, and not need to be explicitly taught these patterns. This is real bullshit, and factually incorrect based on how users talk about their learning experiences on Duolingo’s message boards. Many talk about constantly needing to check other sources to understand grammar. Many have asked for more grammar explanations. Duolingo just ignores these. When you get to the end of Duolingo tree in Spanish, you may not be able to get from puedo to podrán, and for 100% fact, not from habéis besado to besaré despite besar not being irregular. The rules are not taught. You may actually come away being able to recognize puedo, podrán, besado and besar as individual and unique words. For me, this was 100% the case. I had problems going into class remembering puedo was poder, and how to get from puedo to pudo because the word poder is irregular. I had mentally learned these as completely different words. Now, in learning English, maybe this isn’t that hugely awful. English grammar is a pain in the ass. It is fluid. There are huge numbers of irregular phrases and words. “I am tall” and “Tall is I” both can be grammatically correct and largely convey the same concept, though people may look at you strangely if you say, “Tall is I!” Spanish? You can say “Soy alta” but not “alta soy”. Grammar rules really matter in the romance languages. You need to have them down to form sentences and be understood. And Duolingo doesn’t teach it.

Duolingo uses one method to teach you to learn a language

One of Duolingo’s greatest weaknesses is that it uses one method to teach you a language. Drill and practice, drill and practice, drill and practice where you translate between one language and another. That’s it. If you’re extra motivated, you can use another method by participating in translation and having some degree of peer assessment in the quality of your translation. In many cases, this peer assessment may not happen or may not happen for a while. This is a huge weakness. Research has shown that the most successful strategy for learning a language is doing a variety of things. Oh, and these different strategies need to be customized to the learner’s needs, age, access to the language, etc. If you’re doing Duolingo and doing Duolingo alone, you’re almost certainly setting yourself up to fail. And you know what? Duolingo’s founder has no interest really in changing things up. If mixing it up includes learning grammar, it will almost certainly never happen because the founder doesn’t see the need as he doesn’t like learning that way. Did I mention this is a huge weakness? If you take a spin on Quora and read the Learning Language area, fluent polygots make it clear that a variety of strategies are key to learning a language. These may not always be the same strategies, but learners have different tricks. Some eschew learning grammar too. They also make clear what works for one person doesn’t work for everyone. And worth mentioning? The research backs up the polygots on Quora, but not the comments by Duolingo’s founder on how to best learn a language. One strategy to learning makes Duolingo limited, and makes it awful for me as a learner.

Conclusion: I don’t like Duolingo (but I really like it despite this)

In conclusion, I really like Duolingo but I don’t find it useful. There are some key changes I would make to it in order to make it more useful for a wider variety of users. The gamification is awesome. The early parts of the game are useful, but as you move further into the game, it becomes less useful. Despite claims that the game is based on language learning pedagogy of experts, this seems a bit dubious as an important and huge body of research appears to have been ignored in order to make game production cheaper. I’m a hypocrite here. I’m a fan. I use it daily. I am endlessly frustrated by it. (I performed worse on the test after I completed by language tree than a month before.) I still want to perfect it, because it often compliments what I learn in class. It gives me the space to ask questions about how the language works. I like getting three hearts. I like finding patterns. I’ll keep playing it anyway… it’s my educational version of candy crush, where I can pretend I am being more productive.