I’ve got a pretty solid morning routine. Have all five of my alarms go off consecutively. Finally drag myself out of bed on the fifth. Brush my teeth, shower, pick my clothes out and do my makeup. Somewhere in between all that, I’m almost always inclined to grab my phone and get on Tiktok, just to wake myself up a little more and resist the overwhelming urge to just climb back into bed. You know, normal teenage phone-addict behavior.
Every now and then, if I’m lucky, my “for you page” gets graced by a little green bird doing some type of mind boggling shenanigans. There’s no wake up call like an animated bird threatening to burn down your house if you don’t log onto his app.
Duolingo’s social media presence is, without a doubt, iconic. They keep up to date with the trends, their comment replies are hilarious (please, go stalk their TikTok page—it’s worth it), and their staff is, on occasion, dressed in green spandex with bird masks shoved onto their heads. Really, it’s a riot.
Duolingo is arguably the most popular free language learning app currently available. On the App Store, it’s second place on the education chart, only behind an AI math helper. And according to the Google Play Store, the app has over 500 million downloads, a statistic that blows many of the other language learning apps’ downloads out of the water.
Also, almost every single person I know uses Duolingo. That pretty much solidifies its popularity in my mind.
Yet, as popular as the app might be, I’m confident in my belief about its application: I don’t think that Duolingo is the way to go if you’re trying to achieve fluency in a language. In the past, I’ve studied languages in three different ways: through a course at RUHS, a course at El Camino College, and of course, through Duolingo.
Education is always what you make of it—while some people can see a class as effective and informative, others can find it boring and forget the lecture’s contents at the first opportunity. Because of that, I do think that an online course from somewhere like El Camino and an in-person course at the highschool are comparable. It’s really dependent on how intent you are on learning the language—if you’re putting the appropriate amount of time, energy, and some degree of enthusiasm into the class, whether that be in person or through the Canvas dashboard, you’ll become more proficient in a language.
Duolingo has the advantage of accessibility—not everyone is going to have space in their school schedule for a language past a certain point, and not everyone is going to want to take an online course. You can access all of Duolingo’s resources within a few clicks of a button; it takes significantly less effort to get started with it. It also offers 43 languages, outdoing RUHS’ three and El Camino’s six. But if you think you’ll achieve fluency through the app, you’d be sorely mistaken. No owl, no matter how passive-aggressive, is going to get you there alone.
Duolingo offers a skill tree of lessons that teach vocabulary, phrases, and sentences. The drills vary between translating back and forth, speaking out loud, and identifying vocabulary multiple-choice style to strengthen the skills taught by the app. It implements a decay-type algorithm based on a forgetting curve; when you strengthen a skill, the time before it decays—makes you re-practice the skill—is extended, but no matter how strong you become at the skill, it will eventually decay again. While that’s helpful for when you’re initially learning vocab and phrases, it gets a little redundant as you become more and more comfortable with the subject matter. At times, the translations can be a little iffy and the app tends to use convoluted or unnaturally structured sentences to showcase the usage of a certain grammar structure or vocab word. In my experience, learning grammar and tenses, as well as in what situations certain word forms should be used, has been made a lot clearer to me through structured lessons rather than through Duolingo.
Duolingo also lacks the nuances of languages, and doesn’t include more colloquial words and expressions. Learning a language isn’t always about just words—it’s also about the culture, history, and shades of meaning behind it—and these aren’t things you can find out through Duolingo. While the app can help you memorize phrases and string together sentences, it definitely won’t teach you idiomatic construction. It also won’t be as useful in being able to form accurate and quick sentences in a real-time conversation in a foreign language—that can only be achieved through having conversation with a native speaker to practice. The same goes for reading quickly—the exercises on the app will never be more helpful than picking up a book in the language you’re aiming to learn.
All this to say, while it’s a bit lofty to hope you’ll start speaking like a native through the app alone, that doesn’t mean it’s an entirely unhelpful resource. Duolingo is actually a great place to build a foundation in a language—if you’re using it in tandem with a more structured way of learning a language. It’s been most helpful to me as a way to get in daily practice, rather than my main source of learning and growth—and I do feel that’s the best way to utilize the app.
And if you choose to use it alone, while it won’t make you fluent, you’ll definitely be able to confidently ramble your way through enough semi-coherent sentences in various foreign languages—just enough to impress a friend or confuse a waiter. Pick your poison. Just remember not to miss a day, or that green owl will find you.
