Duolingo: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

What have 200 days on Duolingo taught me?

Image credit: Duolingo

Duolingo is a language-learning smartphone app that lets users study up to four languages at a time. The first time you fire up a language, Duolingo will ask you if you’re a complete beginner or if you know something of the language you want to study. If the former, it starts you off with very simple words and basic phrases; if the latter, it sets you a test that gets progressively more difficult until you begin to make errors, at which point the Duolingo algorithm assesses your level and places you appropriately so that lessons will be comprehensible and enable you to build on what you already know.

Duolingo is free with compulsory ads, or can be enjoyed ad-free with a paid subscription. I’ve used the free option and I’ve been able to tune out the between-lesson ads without difficulty. Ads do not intrude on the lessons themselves, which is great. The app is somewhat gamified insofar as it offers various little encouragements and game-like incentives (complete at least one lesson per day to maintain your “streak” of uninterrupted days of study, share your progress with friends, ascend or descend a league table compared to others who are studying on Duolingo, etc.).

Each day begins with five “hearts” which are basically tokens, one of which is deducted each time the Duolingo application believes you’ve made a mistake. Once you’ve run out of hearts, your study is over. You can, however, opt to practice to regain hearts, so provided you’re willing to embark on remedial exercises (which I personally find very helpful as refreshers) you can study all day if you want to.

Also, Duolingo provides reward points “jewels” by means of which you can also replenish depleted “hearts” by means of an exchange rate of 350 jewels per heart. There’s no limit, as far as I can tell, on how many of these jewels you can amass and retain for future use.

I’m studying four languages on Duolingo: French, which I spoke reasonably well anyway; Russian, which I used to speak adequately but then became rusty; Spanish, which I spoke a little and very briefly for a few months as a child; and Portuguese, which I’d never spoken prior to commencing a couple of weeks ago out of sheer curiosity (and perhaps a small…