I used paid (super) Duolingo daily for a year to learn French but recently ditched it after getting increasingly frustrated until it was clear it had become more pain than gain for me. It has many good aspects - the motivating gamification, clear progress, the ease of use and relatively glitch-free. I also liked the comments section and easy feedback/reporting function for possible mistakes for each exercise. While I could afford to pay to avoid the ad version, l like that they aim at being free (though it appears they are making the free version more horrible). What I don't like about Duolingo is their insufficient grammar and lesson guides/tips, combined with their insufficient QC. Duo can self-promote their method all they like but it will never convince me it is superior to teaching WITH explanation, tips and clarification. Too much wasted time bumbling about because you arn't helped to understand or remember the language rules (ie well-established memory chunking methods). The comments section for each exercise serves a vital gap-fill function in this respect because you can often read answers and tips - by volunteers - to your burning questions - as well as realising you are not alone in being confused. Unfortunately, Duolingo is no longer updating the comments section. Comments are all old and locked and many of the lessons now have no comments at all. It appears they are doubling down on their 'no teaching' approach to language learning. This brings me to the other aspect that I found very annoying - the insufficient quality control. You can see in the comments that Duolingo quite often has not included ALL the correct ways of translating a sentence before they upload a lesson and they rely too much on feedback to correct this. Given how huge Duolingo is i find it harder to forgive the number of omissions or mistakes they appear to make in their translations. While occasionally Duolingo makes translations that native speakers and fluent volunteers disagree with, the most common problem seems to be leaving out some correct translations - like only including the 'vous' and not the 'tu' version. Sometimes of course there may be good reasons for this but since Duolingo is committed to the cost-cutting minimalist teaching method there is no way you will ever find out if there are no comments. This becomes more of a problem as the language learning gets more complicated. Too often I could not tell if I didn't understand a rule or Duo had made a mistake or ommission. And even if you 'report'an issue you don't get a response and you definitely won't get any change on Duo in a useful timespan for your own lesson progress. In this context, i became really irritated by having to press a 'Got it' button - when way too often that was exactly the opposite of where i was at. Like your captor forcing you to say 'i love you' every day (yet so easily avoided with neutral labelling). I have just started using another well-regarded but much smaller language app - which has many other positive aspects that Duo does not, like grammar and actually useful tips - but i have already noticed they have similar problems with translation rigidities. So I am now seriously wondering whether the payoff from language apps is worth it. I suspect it is - as long as it is not your main method for learning and measuring your progress. Then their flaws won't be so important or irritating.
