[galleywest200]

It is because you never really practice talking with Duolingo. I am quite good at reading French now, though.

[pessimizer]

> I am quite good at reading French now, though.

If you are, that's actually quite an achievement and good. If you're talking about French outside of Duolingo, that is.

I do not normally hear of people getting to reading fluency through Duolingo.

[wizzwizz4]

Duolingo used to have a really good feature where you read through and collaboratively-translated texts, but they shut it down years back.

[j_bum]

Wow I forgot about that! When I was using it for French many years ago, I imagined they were using it as a way to get generate free translations, but still found it enjoyable and useful.

Wonder why they took it away.

[smcin]

Well you can't practice producing unconstrained sentences. Only with their very narrow training-wheels.