A few summers ago I became addicted to the language-learning app Duolingo. I was a complete beginner in Chinese having spent the previous year attending a few scattered elementary classes and, like many people in my situation, was searching for a magic app that could transport me to fluency.
A friend who I met on a trip to China and whose Chinese was more advanced than mine told me he had been using an app that helped him build vocabulary and learn sentence structures. Out of curiosity I downloaded it and was soon hooked.
For the uninitiated, DuoLingo is an app that turns language learning into a simple and addictive game. The app lets you take courses that are split by topics, starting with basic introductions and progressing to more complex themes like business and travel.
Each course exposes you to words and random short sentences related to the topic covered. You are also set various challenges which you must pass to unlock the next course. These include placing words in the right order to form sentences and translating Chinese sentences into English. The end goal is to unlock an entire ‘tree’ of hundreds of courses.
That summer I spent so much time using the app that I actually completed the DuoLingo Chinese tree. Each day the app sent me a message reminding me that my friend had completed more courses and accumulated more points than me. On days when I neglected my studies the owl (DuoLingo’s mascot) would email me to express his disapproval and sadness, adding that his mood wouldn’t improve until I took another lesson.
This emotional blackmail usually had the desired effect, spurring me into action whenever I had a spare moment. Yet by the end of the summer I not only wasn’t fluent, my spoken Chinese was no higher than a lower elementary level or A1 – the lowest rung on the European framework.
I recently reflected on this experience after a friend who is a beginner learner in Spanish and an enthusiastic DuoLingo user sent me an article by the app’s producers defending it from critics. Duolingo has been mercilessly mocked on language forums with many users posting bizarre, nonsensical sentences they have encountered while using the app.
The article, titled ‘How silly sentences can help you learn’, argues that although many sentences on the app are weird this is a good thing because it helps lodge them in your memory. Sentences like “The Tuesday is similar to the Monday” might never come up in real life but they serve as a ‘grammatical anchor’ enabling you to remember key grammar concepts and communicate accurately in your target language. After all, communication, the blog’s authors remind us, is about “learning rules and flexibility.”
I disagree that communicating in Chinese has much to do with learning rules and I disagree even more that encountering isolated, unnatural sentences which native speakers would never actually say is an effective way of acquiring grammar.
The degree to which a given sentence is “memorable” strikes me as irrelevant if that sentence is unnatural or not how a native speaker would express themselves. Instead, the priority should be to repeatedly encounter and comprehend thousands of sentences – preferably relevant to our own lives – in a natural context, until eventually the structures no longer feel alien.
Years later, after closely studying the methods used by the world’s best Chinese speakers, I discovered the best way to internalise grammar patterns is through consuming lots of comprehensible content, mining sentences that are relevant to your everyday life, and putting yourself in situations where you can use them as often as possible. (I detail how I put these methods into practice myself to eventually reach fluency in my free eBook, Lessons from a Chinese Learning Phenomenon.)
Alternative tools, such as graded readers are much more effective than DuoLingo at immersing learners in grammar patterns because they are designed to enable those with a small vocabulary to read extensively rather than translating one random, isolated sentence at a time. However wacky DuoLingo sentences might be, they will never be as compelling as good stories and meaningful articles on interesting topics.
Shortly after completing Duolingo, I discovered Mandarin Companion graded readers starting from as few as 150 words. The website LingQ also has a series of mini-stories aimed at beginners in Chinese. If I had known about these resources earlier I would have quit DuoLingo sooner. In the end, it was these tools combined with taking every opportunity to practice speaking the language, not DuoLingo, that transported me to fluency.
In one limited sense, DuoLingo has a valid claim to being useful; as an aid to vocabulary building in the initial stages of learning Chinese. Learners who know fewer than 150 words will struggle to read the simplest beginner books or articles and DuoLingo can help bridge the gap to meaningful content. Learning your first few dozen words in Chinese can feel like a slog and the app is at least as fun as your average textbook.
But even for this DuoLingo alone is inadequate. Reading Chinese requires learning characters and characters can be learned much more effectively using Spaced Repetition (SRS) flashcards to aid recall and memory retention. Some of DuoLingo’s tasks do include characters but on its own, this was nowhere near enough to make them stick in my memory. Anybody using the app as a vocabulary builder should therefore combine it with character flashcards or a gamified SRS tool like Ninchanese.
Looking back on that summer it would be excessive to say I regret using Duolingo. But I do regret becoming as obsessed with it as I did while naively swallowing the notion – promoted by the company – that it would help me achieve anything resembling fluency. If I could go back I would adopt a more realistic mindset, using it for a shorter period alongside flashcards and other vocab-building tools until I was ready to tackle meaningful texts.
Then I would run a mile.
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Taking Duolingo’s Japanese-English courses here. I agree with you on the vocabulary building. I’d say Duolingo doesn’t actually teach you the language, but rather works like a cold-starter tool so people might get more interested in the language they’re learning.
I once took time on the English-Chinese course and directly unlocked the final stage so it would test me against that whole course. It was just middle school to early high school English knowledge for the average Chinese students. I wouldn’t say at that phase I could claim my language ability as fluent, but merely comfortable to use.
My plan is after finishing the JP-EN course I’ll take time to read some text books for more accurate and natural sense of the language since Duolingo has done the job for my “preschool time”.
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Thanks for your comment. It sounds like your experience of DuoLingo was similar to mine. I completely agree it’s more of a ‘cold’starter’ tool than actually tecahing you the language. I found once I had completed it graded readers were really useful as they are more engaging, fun and natural than textbook learning. I’ve written about this here: https://imlearningmandarin.com/2021/03/17/why-im-a-fan-of-chinese-graded-readers/
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Nice article on the graded readers! To share a bit more about me learning English, I recall that I read Harry Potter novels in Chinese when it was that popular, then I realized I could try reading it in English. It was when I was in junior high school, just getting started with my English. Having known the stories and scenes already, I picked up many of the phrases from the English version of the novel. Maybe because I love Harry Potter so much I didn’t quite feel the pain of all the other unknown words and phrases. Some I made guesses, and some I just let them slip through. I knew I would re-read them in the future, and I actually did.
I’d like to add one point to the graded reader: if you got some articles/books/movies you love, read/watch them in your learning language would be an exciting experience. It can rush the pain while getting your goals.
Thanks for introducing LingQ by the way. I find myself quickly addicted to it. It comes right on time when I’m getting exhausted with Duolingo! And if you got a referral link I’d love to buy premium with your link lol
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Well reading novels certainly worked in your case because your English is excellent!
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Very fascinating article, great to hear your perspective
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Thanks for your kind comment! Glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
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I speak to Chinese native speaker friends in Mandarin every day.
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I agree with Mischa, I think that Duolingo is a great learning tool for beginners. I am doing the Chinese Mandarin course at this time– the longest I ‘ve been on Duolingo– currently at 65 days, and apparently I’ve learned over 350 words in that time. I don’t know if I hit 500 yet– don’t really pay attention to its metrics. This is more than I’ve learned of Japanese Kanji, and I took that in college for 2 semester. Along with Duolingo, I’ve also used another Chinese app– Hello Chinese… which is very similar to Duolingo… but offers simple reading exercises and actual videos of native speakers. You can also change the speed of the audio. I was actually able to read and comprehend the simple reading exercise about types of food in China. Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be an advertisement for another app… Regarding Duolingo– after 65 days, and reaching the Shopping at the supermarket unit, I don’t feel I’m really learning, or being taught, the grammar points. This app pushes you to memorize phrases provided in the Guidebooks at the start of each units– and repeats them, over and over in various ways. I’m sure if you totally memorize the phrases before starting the lessons, you will breeze through that unit. And some of the spoken tests… I’ve totally botched pronunciations (or just went Lalalalla) and it says it’s correct; or I’ve tried to copy the intonation of the example and it says it’s wrong… Its been fun while its lasted but I will probably break my streak shortly. I made it to the diamond league semi-finals and placed 1st somehow, but since then, I’ve hit more complex phrasing that are not fully explained– so time to open the text book.
I don’t think Duolingo is a bad app for language learning– use it or don’t use it, complete the course or not– it’s up to you. My goal is to learn Chinese with proficiency in reading, and to understand the spoken– to watch C-dramas and translate songs! Sure, there’s subtitles– but I want to better understand the context. Duolingo has helped with the basics– I will probably come back to it in the future, but it was never my main source of learning.
I’m also looking into mandarin companion–thank you for that info. I have been more focused on reading than speaking– but I will take your advice about internalizing tones. I have another app that is tone training/and reading pinyin…
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Wow, I really enjoyed the presentation of your article and I agree! I have been using Duo Lingo for several years and have experimented with all the languages they offer, but I have narrowed it down from 37 to just 17 languages to work on. I agree with you that a person should put more energy into language learning than just one program, regardless of which one it is. I am thrilled with Ninchanese and the link to it! I had never heard of it before so I really appreciate you sharing it.
Thanks again!
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I’ve been using Doulingo to learn Chinese for over 2 years now and still cannot get passed saying “谢谢”. I fail every time no matter how many times I tried. Is saying thanks really that hard? It’s driving me nuts I even tried saying it different voices, high pitch, low pitch, any which way I could – FAIL, “Let’s move on…” Should I just quit now?
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I agree with you. Even though I am only learning spanish it only covers vocabulary and
good sentences, but only the basics of the grammar. When I took a spanish class I could understand a little but then we learned a lot of different ways of saying things
with different grammar depending on the situation and it was extremely confusing.
I would recommend not only doing duolingo, but also taking a class or doing vocabulary like you said, and the other ideas and tips you posted on the article were really helpful and good. Thank you!!!! 😀 😀
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Hello Mischa! I’m the author of Qlango. The app itself, the examples. Is there a way to try our app and give us an honest opinion about it? We translated our material to Chinese (mandarin, simplified) and some users are using it, some even say it’s good, but I can’t tell, because I’m not using it myself. Please, contact me. My whatsapp, mail, … are in the app itself. Thank you 🙂
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I am using duo Chinese as a means to maintain or improve fluency. I had Chinese classes in elementary and high school. So I have the basics down in my head. Duo helps me improve vocab through the wacky sentences. So I give it that. I think it would be completely stupid if I didn’t know Chinese before hand. Knowing this, I’ve been learning Gaelic and Spanish. I use the app to build vocabulary so I can understand some words. But definitely not using it as a means to reflect fluency. Nothing beats in person immersion
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I liked the attention-grabbing headline, and read the article to see your reasoning. I note you didn’t say NOT to use Duo-Lingo but suggested not completing the course alone.
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Thank you. Yes, this is an important distinction.
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I think Duolingo Chinese is pretty good. If there is one thing lacking, it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the tone recognition and practice. Since I am a native Thai speaker and the tones in Thai map almost one to one with tones in mandarin. I can easily skip over the tones prctice. But for people who aren’t familiar with the concept of tones, progressing through the course without getting the tones down first will make it harder to fix later. Tomes are so essential in tonal languages because different tones equate different words. Imagine saying something like, I eat wild dogs instead of I eat wild hogs. No, dogs and hogs don’t sound similar at all to the western ears. Well, ma(low tone) and ma(high tone) don’t sound similar at all to Chinese ears.
I wonder if Duolingo will eventually add a tone practice section, perhaps in a separate tab. That will really make the course much more useful.
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I’ve been using Duolingo for 75 days and hate/despise the ‘Chinese’ unit. There is no such thing as Chinese. Is it teaching Mandarin or Cantonese? I don’t know and they don’t tell you. That was the first red flag. I started using Duolingo to improve my Spanish and brush up on my French. I branched out into Japanese and have been happy with all three of those units. The Chinese however is completely a different story. It’s horrible imo. I have ZERO interest in learning to read or write ‘Chinese’ at this time but Duo forces you to dive right into learning the characters whereas in the Japanese unit there is a separate tab for studying the three Japanese alphabets. No such thing in the Chinese unit. Then the way it asks you to identify a tone or letter by choosing between 3 English letter combinations that are wholly inadequate for spelling out the sound of the original Chinese character is utterly ludicrous and does NOTHING for helping you identify the letter OR the tone yet they expect you to memorize the English letter combinations they came up with for that Chinese character because it’s going to come up again and again later. It’s stupid and badly designed. I’m dropping the Chinese unit and will be trying some of the other options you mentioned for learning ‘Chinese’ rather than wasting any more time with Duolingo’s Chinese unit. Luckily I’m only a few lessons in to this tree but I knew that something was very wrong with this unit and your article confirmed my frustrations.
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One size doesn’t fit all. Most people (especially North American English speakers) see learning a second (or more) language as something only “smart” people do. It’s intimidating. In my experience, DuoLingo uses the marketability of “apps” and “tech” to reach a broad consumer market giving them the confidence to learn basic concepts, culture, and vocabulary.
Strangely, their blatant use of dark patterns and addictive game design are used to genuinely drive you to improve yourself. Any other product that does this is siphoning your money and soul from you. In that way, we should all be watching Duolingo carefully to make sure they don’t nefariously cross that line they are thus far beautifully dancing on.
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