I’ve been using Duo Lingo for about a year and my subscription ends at the end of February. I like the social aspect of it, and I have several friends on it. The streak keeps me coming back almost everyday, and the gamification motivates me to study longer. It’s easy to use briefly and on the go. I often do it during my lunch break at work; though WK is now also competing for that time. I like that it does a little bit of everything, but I feel that it does everything poorly.
There’s minimal grammar. Kanji are introduced incredibly slowly. It accepted me saying I was going to eat a washing machine when I meant to say I was going to buy one. You can’t look up vocabulary that you’ve already learned. There’s nothing remotely resembling meaningful spacing. I’ll get the same sentence three or four times in the same 5-10 minute lesson. So I think I would get a lot more progress investing my time and money in other tools.
Is it time to ditch it?
I’m thinking about getting Bun Pro and/or Migaku. I’ve heard BunPro is excellent for grammar which I’m seriously lacking in. I feel like I don’t have enough vocabulary and grammar for Migaku to be particularly useful right now but probably will in 3-6 months. That said, I’ve heard Migaku is on sale and also about to raise prices, so now would be a good time to buy lifetime. I did setup a Migaku account with a dummy email to try it out. I was a bit disappointed to find that a lot of titles on Netflix don’t have Japanese subtitles (for example FMA Brotherhood). I can afford both, but I won’t be thrilled about it. I’ve also heard good things about Renshuu. So many tools to choose from.
Sounds like this may be valuable then. I think it’s more productive to think in terms of how you want your routine to evolve. Maybe start by reducing the amount of time you spend on Duolingo and ramp up something else and see what works. Use the habit that you’ve already built to bootstrap the next step gradually.
As with so much advice about language learning, the tools you use and the path you follow should be guided by what your goals are! I used to pay for Duolingo and at one point had a 1000+ day streak. I agree that the gamification is motivating, and I liked being able to dip my toe into different languages on one platform. I know they have added some new features (like the dialogues/stories) which seem cool.
That said, I agree with your assessment that grammar is seriously lacking on Duolingo. Different grammatical structures come up, but there isn’t much opportunity to study them in depth, or understand why something works/doesn’t work. Same goes for Kanji. To that end, I think if your goals involve improving those elements, Duo alone may not cut it in the long term.
You mentioned Bunpro, which has a one month free trial. So you could always check that out and see what you think before making a leap. I am also a big fan of Renshuu.org, which has some gameified elements and has a free version that lets you study your choice of grammar/kanji/vocab and more. They have a Discord server, too, which offers a great social element + has some speaking practice events and book clubs (I’ve never done those, but they seem good!)
This is also an aside, and involves my own personal opinion about the ethics of AI, but I have seen Duolingo is moving more and more towards and AI-supported model (e.g. laying off human translators in favor of utilizing AI to translate). At least personally, this makes the platform less appealing to me.
I am a free Duo user. I use it for the habit as well as a type of immersion practice. The grammar is frequently hidden and requires additional resources to learn. This process works better for me than going through a textbook. Also the vocabulary and kanji are several levels ahead of the pace of WK. There is SRS … It is different from WK though and by definition repetitive.
If you can develop the drive to work through a textbook, then you may find Duo is a good free supplement to it. I would not pay for the app though…not worth it to me.
