[Telemakhos]

> even after all that I can't speak a single proper sentence now apart from the basic je m'appelle stuff

This is the real problem with Duolingo: it doesn't actually teach you to communicate in the language. Rote memorization and communication are two different things, and Duolingo does very little aside from drilling memorization. Streaks and gamification don't contribute to communication, which has its own system of rewards: when you communicate successfully, you accomplish some real-world task like buying yourself bread or getting a date, and that accomplishment doesn't need game-level rewards. Gamification is only effective when trying to palliate some sort of otherwise boring "grinding" (to use a gaming term from RPGs).

[NoSorryCannot]

Duolingo can absolutely get you reading and listening. Which is let's say half the battle.

I think it's too dramatic to say it's a "real problem" with it! Anybody who intends to become fluent in a language is going to need to practice actually speaking and writing.

[timr]

Every tool has its use, but sometimes that use is pretty limited. I don't know if it's a "real problem" that Duolingo focuses on this stuff so much, but honestly, it's probably more about Duolingo's engagement numbers than it is about learning.

Is rote memorization essential to language learning? Absolutely. Should it be the focus of your learning after the very early stages? Probably not. It's just something you do, all the time. Memorize all you like, but true acquisition only comes after you've used your words in real conversation / listening, so that's should probably be where you place your effort. But that doesn't help Duolingo.

In the Japanese learning community, the seduction of this kind of rote, mechanistic, "streak-y" learning has been a trap for a long time -- so much so that there's a popular methodology that has people spend a great deal of time "memorizing kanji". It's appealing because Japanese has a big alphabet of complex characters and the methodology suggests that you can turn learning into a simple memorization exercise with discreet, measurable progress. The problem is, it's pretty much orthogonal to the act of speaking (or reading, or listening to) the language. Learn 2000 kanji and you might gain some ability to infer the meanings of words, but you're still essentially illiterate. The same thing applies at the level of words and sentences -- I have lots of words that I "know" on flashcards, but aren't available to me in actual conversation.

People get absolutely addicted to this stuff, spend years on it while gaining no meaningful level of language skill, then get frustrated and quit. The tragedy is that most people could put in a fraction of that time engaged in listening and speaking with a simple vocabulary, and end up in the kind of virtuous cycle that actually leads somewhere.

[oneoff786]

I’m not sure I would be so pessimistic. Learning a language is hard and you’re probably correct that you won’t be able to speak it with just duolingo. That doesn’t mean duolingo isn’t providing a substantial amount of necessary foundation.

I’ve never tried it but I feel like it’s probably similar to Spanish classes in high school.

[mastax]

It is similar in that Spanish classes necessarily require learning a lot of vocabulary and grammar. However once you have a base level of knowledge you can take advantage of being near real people to practice conversation skills. By the end of my second year of Spanish class we were being tested speaking for several sentences about a topic (with some advance preparation) to the teacher who would ask questions. Holding a conversation, more or less.

Duolingo doesn't put so much emphasis on conversation in my experience. Most of the questions give you the words in one language or the other and have you write out an answer. This allows you to lean on reading. Listening and speaking are the hardest parts so the should have the most practice, not the least.

[juancampa]

I find myself thinking about the answer before looking at the options. Also, not reading the prompt but trying to figure it out by listening.

If it's too easy, you can make it a bit more challenging yourself.

[lb1lf]

That it doesn't - teach you to communicate, that is - but I found DuoLingo great at providing the base vocabulary and phrases to enable me to make my first small attempts at communicating.

(I suddenly found myself stuck in Brazil for work for two months this year, and after a couple of hours of DuoLingo I was able to exchange a few phrases with hotel staff, often interspersed with the most useful phrase 'O que isso significa?' (What does that mean?')

The best part of DuoLingo was (and is) to save my conversation partners much of the 'Oh, in Portuguese we call that...' we'd otherwise be doing.