Duolingo

The point of this is not a sense of nostalgia ("let's turn the clock back to the good ol' times when people learned through dictionaries and university courses".) I strongly believe the best learning resource out there - bar none - is YouTube. Duo can still be a useful resource, assuming the learner is aware of its weaknesses and doesn't rely excessively on it.

First, Duolingo often gets a near immunity from criticism because it's free and focused on education. However, Duo does exactly what you'd expect a company prioritizing profit would: constant advertising based on half truths and removal of features without notification. (Duo's profit was 161.7 million USD in 2020.)

Second, Duolingo has proven to be effective in teaching people at the beginner level, but exactly because it relies a lot on memorizing and translation and doesn't offer original content it might prove to be a shallow foundation for future progress. 

Third, despite appearances Duo, has a very traditional approach to language learning built on memorizing vocabulary and studying grammar. For more watch Krashen's classic vid.

Two defences of Duo in particular stand out: a) "Duo is a tool, therefore progress is the responsibility of whoever is using the tool." This isn't working because a tool is something you control and this is clearly not the case with Duo b) "People don't learn because they are lazy and don't follow the structure": the order of the courses is important, take care of your streak and (to quote an online panegyrist): "learning makes me win". A bit of self-reflection should be enough to notice that this a business rhetoric built around the app's gamefication. The streak in particular is aimed at ensuring you visit the website daily, but there is zero proof that studying a language every single day of a month (let alone a year) is more effective than doing it for twenty or twenty five days.

So what is good in Duo? It has helped enormously to foster an international community interested in language learning. It has also done an absolutely amazing job to raise awareness for small (eg Irish) and artificial languages such as Esperanto and Klingon. Gamefication is a useful tool which can be developed further and bring better results - but I expect this to take place in the context of actual videogames. I have a lot of hope we can await huge developments there not only in languages but also in more traditional humanities - check out this tweet by Cambridge's Alexis Litvine.

From a learner's perspective, Duo is a great way to keep in touch with your language while waiting at the queue or riding the bus - although there is something to be said for songs and podcasts serving the same purpose. Duo's stories are also pretty useful - and IMO a better resource than the actual courses- but the time investment needed to unlock them is unpalatable.

As I was writing this, I had taken a note to say something positive about Duo's fantastic forums, a great place to discuss about resources and learning tips. However, if you google "duo forums" you will now get to a page where it's written that "All existing posts and comments are no longer accessible by learners since forums were sunset on March 22, 2022." Another reminder that the ultimate motive is profit.

For people looking for alternative resources where they have more control over the material they are learning Memrise, Quizlet and Educaplay all allow you to create your own activities and choose what to study.