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Comment by deregulateMed | Hacker News Reader

I've asked people who did 1000 days of Duolingo if they learned the language. Unanimously they answered No.

I had a similar experience.

It reminds me of Stardew Valley, the game is addictive, but it's not rewarding.

Have they (and you) been learning language in other ways concurrently with Duolingo, or relying exclusively on Duolingo?

I find it's a useful adjunct to immersion or in-person language learning. Not a complete way to learn language in and of itself (though I question if such a thing exists at all).

It's a good tool but it's not enough to learn a whole new language. As a user it helped me a lot to memorize new words and also to easily understand common sentences and expressions. For speaking and writing skills is much more limited and you would need a teacher and real-world practice.

But I used Duolingo + Anki for all the vocabulary stuff and then I could focus the paid lessons on grammar + writing + speaking to be more effective (and save time & money)

I learned a language living in the country where it is spoken, mainly using DuoLingo for vocabulary and reading comic books for idiomatic usage. I don't get a tonne of practice because of lockdown but DuoLingo plus immersion definitely got me way further than I could have done without it.

I did about a year of Duolingo. I didn't learn the language, but I learned enough that I had a chance. It is hard to learn a language, and Duolingo is a good first step: it gives you a good grasp of the most common words/grammar - enough that you can jump into something that is fun (that is you can understand enough content to do something other than focused study).

There are better ways to learn a language, but there is no method that has every possible language you might want to learn. DuoLingo is a tool in the toolbox, use it and move on. Very few tools will actually go from 0 to fluency in a language.

I'm at bit over 800 days of Russian and French.

I didn't really expect to learn Russian, but it did give me a place to start. I now use books and Youtube to keep practising.

The French course is funny because the English is a bit broken sometimes.

My goal was never to become proficient, so Duolingo met my needs very well.

> It reminds me of Stardew Valley, the game is addictive, but it's not rewarding.

For me, the reward is relaxing.

Why is Stardew Valley not rewarding? Do you have an example of a game that you find rewarding?

I don't think he means that there is anything wrong for Stardew Valley, a game, to not be "rewarding" (and thereby rewarding here is defined as something beyond entertaining). But if Duolingo as a learning tool is like that too.. that's a problem.

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