How to use Duolingo to Actually Learn a Language

and how to use Tinder to find true love

Let’s be Duo friends!

No, let’s not. I’m not on Duo. I used to be, for a while, until I realized it’s more of an impediment to language learning than help.

To be clear, I'm happy that Duolingo exists. I’d rather see my kids and people everywhere spend time on Duolingo than consume fake news on TikTok.

In that sense, it is doing much good in the world.

Any app that doesn't have a political agenda or a built-in ability to spread fake news and moral outrage is doing a lot of good in the world.

Besides, it has done something important: it created a great PR for language learning.

Think about it. Who, before 2012, would want to spend their coffee break learning Azerbaijani? No one.

And now it’s commonplace.

It never uses intimidating terminology or makes learning explicit, but instead lets users learn through experience. This is a huge thing, especially for the millions of learners traumatized by their boring grade-school Azerbaijani lessons.

And yet, somehow there are people with 500+ days streaks who still can’t have a conversation or read a children’s book in their target language. Are they all just untalented?

The hard truth is that it’s hard if not impossible to learn a language to a decent level relying solely on Duolingo. If you stay on the app for any length of time, you begin to understand why.

Duolingo slows down your learning process - by design

Duolingo is a perfect example of so-called persuasive technology.

In a nutshell, persuasive technology exploits vulnerabilities of our minds and bodies to get us to do endless clicking, scrolling, and engaging.

Features like notifications, likes, and dings (and in the case of Duolingo — gems, streaks, and XPs) are all ways to keep us from leaving the app. You might say it’s a good thing: it keeps you from leaving the app so you can keep learning!

But I beg to differ. There is a blurry line between persuasive tech that does us good and persuasive tech that prays on our vulnerabilities.

Social media is an obvious example of the latter. Fitness apps that encourage us to eat healthy food and exercise are a good example of the former.

Duolingo claims to also be in that category but I am not convinced that its primary interest is to get you to learn the language ASAP. See for yourself.

Irrelevant vocabulary

Everyone has their examples of bizarre Duolingo vocabulary. It is arguably done to make the process more ‘fun’, but when you see stuff like that over and over again, it signals to your brain that this activity you’re engaged in is just a game that you can be playing forever and that you don’t really need to learn this language:

It makes you chase XPs rather than learning

Seriously, how many times do you need to practice translating this phase?

I don’t see any other purpose to this particular exercise than to keep you chasing the dopamine rush you get with every ding and make you stay in the app longer.

Keeps you too comfy

As Luis von Ahn, the creator of the app, shares, Duolingo is designed to maximize the feeling of success and minimize the sense of frustration in an average language learner.

On the surface, it seems like a good thing.

But the thing is that for our brains to learn something, we have to get out of our comfort zone and reach a point of frustration. As discussed in this excellent episode of Huberman Lab, making errors (and working hard to get it right) is what triggers neuroplasticity and helps us learn things.

Duolingo keeps you too comfy and punishes users for making mistakes by giving them only five hearts.

Prevents you from developing intrinsic motivation

It’s very satisfying to hear the ding every time you get something right.

You know what’s more satisfying? When after several attempts of saying the same new sentence in a tonal language, Google Translate finally gets you:

Guess which of these two sentences I was actually trying to say 🙄

Or when you say your first sentence to a native speaker.

Or when after weeks of watching the same children’s series you suddenly realize that you understood two full sentences in a row.

The problem with all persuasive tech is that it takes away your autonomy, so you can’t tell anymore whether you desperately want to do this one lesson at 11:55 pm because you genuinely want to make progress or because you just want to keep your streak going.

How to use Duolingo to learn a language

Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google and the founder of the Center for Humane Technology puts it this way: “If something is a tool, it genuinely is just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something is not a tool, it’s demanding things from you. It’s seducing you. It’s manipulating you. It wants things from you. And we’ve moved away from having a tools-based technology environment to an addiction- and manipulation-based technology environment.” ¹

I think it’s pretty clear that Duolingo is more interested in retention and engagement than in having you learn the language and get off the app ASAP.

Luis von Ahn himself said that their direct competition is Instagram and TikTok rather than other language-learning apps.

It’s hard to learn a language with Duolingo just like it’s hard to find true love on Tinder or make real friends on Facebook. I'm not saying these things don't happen. I'm just saying that when it does happen it happens almost despite the app, not because of it. It’s because the person did something different: e.g. stopped swiping right and left and instead got on the phone and went out with someone they like and deleted the app from their phone.

If you love Duolingo AND want to use it as more than a language-playing game (which is what it is, by design) you have to make sure you’re using it and not it is using you.

Use it as a starting point

Duolingo can be a good starting point when you’re just starting a new language. It lets you make quick initial gains and give you a huge confidence boost because look you’ve only been through two lessons of Finnish and you can already say tuhma koira! "naughty dog!" to your dog.

Try jumping levels

Did you know you can jump Duolingo levels? I hereby give you an official permission to do so.

You have to go through their test to do that. This is when I blatantly used all the help I could get from Google Translate because I just wanted to be let in.

Being on a slightly more challenging level will also make sure you’re less comfortable than the app wants you to be, which is great for learning.

The only caveat though is it may require you to get a premium subscription because you’ll make more mistakes and will likely need more hearts.

Break your streak

Being careful not to keep your streak for too long will help you not get pulled into the gamification of it.

When I used it to learn Finnish last fall I made sure to never keep my streak for longer than 2 days. (Ha! That will show them.)

Engage all your senses

Close your eyes and practice listening without looking at the screen.

Grab a piece of paper and write a letter to your grandma using the words you just learned. (Even if these words are “Elvis is a lynx.”)

Go for a walk and talk to stray cats in your target language (Talk about how Elvis is a lynx if needed.)

Use it to supplement your main learning

There are times in your life (or your week or your day) when you’re not in the right mental space to do some active learning. Playing Duolingo can be an easy way to still do something in your target language and keep it fresh.

Use it to practice emotional resilience

…against passive-aggressive manipulation:

from my and Duo’s email correspondence

Imagine getting a package with this message (with balloons and candies attached) from a family member. As someone has put it, “If Duo was a person, we might file a restraining order.”

It took me some time to define my boundaries and say, “I understand Duo that you’re upset, but I’ll get back to Finnish when I’m ready.” A skill for life.

Find other ways of exposure

This is possibly the most important point. If you want to make progress, you have to find other ways to expose yourself to the language.

I’m personally not a fan of language textbooks (even ones with full-color illustrations in them.) I need things to be more interactive.

Luckily, there are a lot of great tools out there that don’t have the marketing budgets of Duolingo and are therefore only known in narrow poly-glop circles.

I’m just discovering many of them now, and I promise to share with you any that I find worthwhile.

But in the end, no tool is gonna be a be-all and end-all.² If your goal is to learn a language, you have to stay proactive in always seeking new ways of exposure to that language. Watch a children’s cartoon with subtitles. Start a diary even if you only know 15 words.

In the end, what’s most important is to find something that works for you and to make sure you’re using it and not it is using you.

So. Free yourself from the tyranny of gems and XP’s and forge your own path!!!

1. From The Social Dilemma.

2. Except for Language Transfer. Language Transfer is a be-all and end-all. Only it doesn’t have a huge variety of languages because it’s developed by just one guy. For free.