[andy_wrote]

I've done the Duolingo Spanish tree, and my feeling was the same as the author's regarding "% fluency," which I thought was kind of a joke. Especially for speaking and listening, there's really no substitute for immersion and real-life regular interactions.

But I do feel that Duolingo was honestly pretty good about helping me to read and write. In NYC there's a little ambient Spanish everywhere and I went into it not with the goal of being fluent, but just being able to read signs and understand a little bit here and there. (I haven't kept up with it and now I've forgotten a good chunk, but I'd say that's a different issue.)

At least in my case, it's also been a good entry point because it's free and convenient. I'm actually working on Duolingo's in-beta Czech tree (significant other's family is partially Czech) and it's actually been an inspiration for me to inquire about in-person classes, especially knowing that if I ever want to hold conversations, I will need to have real-life speaking experience. I probably wouldn't have done this if I hadn't started off on Duolingo and had some fun with it!

[cloverich]

I think Duolingo's main issue w/ Fluency is its just too easy to pass lessons. You can repeatedly miss a phrase, click on every word in the phrase (to get the translation), get it correct once, and now you've passed. You can get the entire tree Gold without actually _knowing_ the words. So if you want to get the most out of Duolingo, imho, you have to really force yourself to do your own review, and only consider it learned if you can repeatedly get through without missing any in a row or looking up any words. Its still got an upper limit, but I feel like (in Japanese) I"m learning it much faster than I was before.

[mercer]

I've been doing about 30 XP of Spanish on Duolingo for more than year now. 30 XP is about 10 minutes of practice, so very little.

One day I was watching a show or movie that had many scenes in Spanish, and to my surprise I could actually follow much of what was said! I didn't realize how (relatively) effective even those 10 minutes a day can be.

[andy_wrote]

Awesome! I did notice when doing the Spanish tree that I recognized a lot of words just from seeing them around the city, especially from ads and public service announcements on the subway.