[deregulateMed]

I've asked people who did 1000 days of Duolingo if they learned the language. Unanimously they answered No.

I had a similar experience.

It reminds me of Stardew Valley, the game is addictive, but it's not rewarding.

[swiftcoder]

Have they (and you) been learning language in other ways concurrently with Duolingo, or relying exclusively on Duolingo?

I find it's a useful adjunct to immersion or in-person language learning. Not a complete way to learn language in and of itself (though I question if such a thing exists at all).

[user568439]

It's a good tool but it's not enough to learn a whole new language. As a user it helped me a lot to memorize new words and also to easily understand common sentences and expressions. For speaking and writing skills is much more limited and you would need a teacher and real-world practice.

But I used Duolingo + Anki for all the vocabulary stuff and then I could focus the paid lessons on grammar + writing + speaking to be more effective (and save time & money)

[AlecSchueler]

I learned a language living in the country where it is spoken, mainly using DuoLingo for vocabulary and reading comic books for idiomatic usage. I don't get a tonne of practice because of lockdown but DuoLingo plus immersion definitely got me way further than I could have done without it.

[bluGill]

I did about a year of Duolingo. I didn't learn the language, but I learned enough that I had a chance. It is hard to learn a language, and Duolingo is a good first step: it gives you a good grasp of the most common words/grammar - enough that you can jump into something that is fun (that is you can understand enough content to do something other than focused study).

There are better ways to learn a language, but there is no method that has every possible language you might want to learn. DuoLingo is a tool in the toolbox, use it and move on. Very few tools will actually go from 0 to fluency in a language.

[forinti]

I'm at bit over 800 days of Russian and French.

I didn't really expect to learn Russian, but it did give me a place to start. I now use books and Youtube to keep practising.

The French course is funny because the English is a bit broken sometimes.

My goal was never to become proficient, so Duolingo met my needs very well.

[fullstop]

> It reminds me of Stardew Valley, the game is addictive, but it's not rewarding.

For me, the reward is relaxing.

[Kiro]

Why is Stardew Valley not rewarding? Do you have an example of a game that you find rewarding?

[thrdbndndn]

I don't think he means that there is anything wrong for Stardew Valley, a game, to not be "rewarding" (and thereby rewarding here is defined as something beyond entertaining). But if Duolingo as a learning tool is like that too.. that's a problem.