I meant that someone moving to another country, for example, would be motivated enough to take a more efficient route. Nobody who needs to learn another language for work or life considers Duolingo to be the best option.
You can’t seriously blame Duolingo for portraying itself positively in light of the difficulty of language learning. With 15 minutes a day, you can make progress. That’s not wrong. “Hey you lazy piece of shit who isn’t willing to buy a Spanish textbook, we have an app for you to learn to count to three in Spanish” wouldn’t do very well.
You use the word “dupe” as if the point of advertising isn’t to portray the most positive technically correct aspects of a product. People settle on Duolingo because becoming fluent is easy. It’s that simple. It’s the easiest path to fluency. Duolingo won’t get you all the way there (and it may even give you some bad habits), but it’s the lowest effort route through the hardest part. It’s a slow route, but it’s the only route if you’re too low-motivation to take a harder route.
You’ve clearly learned a language through better means, and you’re shitting on a tool that others use. Not only that, it’s the tool with the lowest barrier to entry. You’re the definition of a gatekeeper.
I can blame Duolingo for making outsized promises in their marketing.
You're making a lot of assumptions about other people. Not everyone is as savvy as you. I know people who used Duolingo to learn French so they could move to Montreal. It didn't work. They can't have conversations and they can't remember vocabulary or syntax outside of specific cues. Is that "Duolingo's fault?" not entirely, but they definitely were under the impression that "15 minutes is all I need!"
Duolingo is great at getting you to use the app. That's fantastic. Use it if you find it helps. Just don't expect it to make you fluent by itself.
And I can point out that your accusation is completely unfounded. Every single commercial language learning tool is marketed similarly. Duolingo is just the most popular/successful, so people hear about it.
Terrible planning on the part of said Montreal people has nothing to do with Duolingo. I’m sorry that their plan didn’t work out. Ironically, their forced immersion has probably done wonders for their French.
Sorry you caught the brunt of my frustration. You seem reasonable. Duolingo’s great lol.
I'm not saying that its proof Duolingos a bad app, im saying that its not true that people dont see the claims and think that they can quickly become fluent with Duolingo. Ive seen people do it!
Well you're definitely passionate about Duolingo so you must be happy with the results!
You can’t seriously blame Duolingo for portraying itself positively in light of the difficulty of language learning. With 15 minutes a day, you can make progress. That’s not wrong. “Hey you lazy piece of shit who isn’t willing to buy a Spanish textbook, we have an app for you to learn to count to three in Spanish” wouldn’t do very well.
You use the word “dupe” as if the point of advertising isn’t to portray the most positive technically correct aspects of a product. People settle on Duolingo because becoming fluent is easy. It’s that simple. It’s the easiest path to fluency. Duolingo won’t get you all the way there (and it may even give you some bad habits), but it’s the lowest effort route through the hardest part. It’s a slow route, but it’s the only route if you’re too low-motivation to take a harder route.
You’ve clearly learned a language through better means, and you’re shitting on a tool that others use. Not only that, it’s the tool with the lowest barrier to entry. You’re the definition of a gatekeeper.