Fluent with Duolingo alone? Very unlikely in my experience.
From my point of view, you can make it to A1/A2 proficiency in a language with Duolingo alone - after that, it gets quite hard. Teaching grammar and conjugations isn't its forté, without resources outside of Duolingo it will get rather tricky.
That being said, I still use Duolingo for my daily dose of language exposure - but without Anki (for vocabulary), youtube videos (to explain various specific topics) and evening courses (which help a lot by giving a structured approach on what to learn in what order), my learning curve would probably flatten out.
You can't do it with just Duolingo. But I truly believe that there is no method except for full immersion which can make you learn a language alone. It's always: in person classes, reading, watching medias, changing your phone's language, going out to restaurants, language learning apps, making new friends.
I live in a country and I'm trying to learn the language. I also take weekly classes and occasionally use private tutoring when I have time. I still get a ton of value out of duolingo, its exercises are easy to do in spare moments and it's a great way to work on vocabulary and passive grammar understanding, I love it.
It's not nearly enough on it's own to learn a language though, it's very very good as a supplement though, ime
I need to take exception with many of the comments here. Does Duolingo make you fluent in any language? No. But if that's what you're looking for (from any language learning tool), you need to readjust your expectations. The only thing that teaches you a language is immersion in a society that speaks it, in my experience. All language-learning exercises are just prep work for that. And on that front, Duolingo is exemplary.
I've been doing Spanish with it for the whole pandemic. I'm far from fluent but my retention is high and the learning process is easy and fun. Couldn't ask for more.
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.
If you devote a couple hours a day to it you can acquire significant proficiency, just like with a classroom setting. But just like with a live course, merely participating and doing the homework will not be enough to achieve conversational proficiency. You need to do a lot of off-curriculum study/practice with a lot of different resources (some of them ideally real people with high linguistic competence).
Edit: I say this from a theoretical vantage as someone who studied applied linguistics in undergrad and from an anecdotal perspective as someone who did enough Duolingo over the span of a couple months to start reading news articles in Spanish with little need to consult translators/dictionaries but who still couldn’t navigate their way around a Latin American city. It took me a couple of weeks in Latin America to begin to communicate fluidly (still more time for conversationally) with locals despite the strong syntactic and broad semantic base heavy duo use afforded me.
I found Duolingo very good while I was actually in the country and speaking the language I was trying to learn.
It didn't teach me to speak alone but expanded my vocabulary enough to stumble through conversations. Which was enough to being improving through speaking with locals.
I love duolingo, but you wont master language with duolingo alone no matter for how long. There is a ceiling of how much it teaches. And to their credit, their own claim is that they teach up to B2 level in reading and listening.
Duolingo is basically the app equivalent of flashcards. It's a little smarter than that, but not much. If you're serious about learning a language, it absolutely has a place. But Duolingo __alone__ is not going to make you competent, much less fluent.
Personally, I'm happy with it. I took years of Spanish and started with Duolingo in French with zero prior French, and I can now recognize phrases and hold some basic conversation; for 5 minutes a day with no significant continuous time commitment that's not bad!
Yeah, that's reasonable. It's incredibly good, but Duolingo alone isn't enough to become fluent. As a way to introduce yourself to a language it's brilliant though.
This proves the OP's point. Duolingo is trash if you aspire to fluency. It's only useful in fluency as an additive to a robust training program. You don't get fluent by following Duolingo alone.
I find it works better for languages with simple grammar rules Swedish/Danish/Norwegian
I was able to jump from Duolingo straight to young adult books, and became conversational from there.
Languages with complicated grammar rules, you don’t get the support you need for the grammar foundation and is only really helpful for learning vocabulary, not necessarily how to form sentences.
You need to have multiple sources of learning, not just relying on Duolingo
The scope of Duolingo is very limited. I think it's well established that most courses get you to somewhere around A2, B1 at best, which is just enough to be a bit challenging, but not enough to make you able to expand your knowledge on your own.
For a frame of reference, I also started doing DuoLingo daily about 12 months ago and am still at ~A1 proficiency, as far as speaking or writing. I might be at A2 listening, or even B1 reading comprehension. I definitely spend less than two hours a day on it and don't converse with native speakers, which doesn't help.
Let's be honest, Duolingo is a joke in comparison to anything serious like Anki. I agree that Anki alone doesn't cover it. One has to immerse in the target language to make progress. Anki is only there to speed up the process.
I spent about a year studying Italian on Duolingo and had a positive experience. But I also augmented Duolingo with Anki: I made flashcards for every single word I learned in Duolingo, and went over them every day. That really helped me memorize the vocabulary. I also got a workbook on verb conjugations to practice those (I didn't end up finishing that workbook and my verb conjugations are weak).
The real benefit of Duolingo is that I can do it while I'm waiting for my coffee order, or on the train. My only free time is spontaneous, and in short increments; e.g., 5 minutes here and there, unexpectedly. It's hard to learn anything in that context! I'm surprised I learned Italian as well as I did! Taking a class in Italian with a human teacher would no doubt be superior, but I unfortunately don't have time for that!
I know of some people who have learned languages through Duolingo. I also know some people who took classroom courses and accompanied those with Duolingo – and they believe Duolingo was helpful in that sense. I know people who learned foreign language by a combination of Duolingo + staying in a foreign country at the same time.
I myself have used Duolingo to learn some rudimentary basics of a foreign language and I haven't forgotten those.
I doubt Duolingo is the most efficient, but that doesn't mean it's useless.
Duolingo felt Like a massive waste of time to me. I don't remember it helping me beyond reinforcing my hiragana a bit. Multiple choice vocab training doesn't work and the amount you learn per day is way too low considering I did 30 minutes per day. After I switched to Anki my vocabs took off like a rocket. Duolingo basically cost me 3 months without learning anything. Of course back then I was lazy so maybe Duolingo helped me get started without losing interest quickly.
From my point of view, you can make it to A1/A2 proficiency in a language with Duolingo alone - after that, it gets quite hard. Teaching grammar and conjugations isn't its forté, without resources outside of Duolingo it will get rather tricky.
That being said, I still use Duolingo for my daily dose of language exposure - but without Anki (for vocabulary), youtube videos (to explain various specific topics) and evening courses (which help a lot by giving a structured approach on what to learn in what order), my learning curve would probably flatten out.
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