Not an effective way to learn a new language – Duolingo - Language Lessons Review

I have been using Duolingo for over a year now, & while I have learned some basic Spanish, I don’t feel it’s enough to be very useful, or that I have retained very much of what I have learned. Mainly, I think that’s from a few problems with the app. #1: It doesn’t really teach you anything. The app is basically just picture matching & fill in the blank. It doesn’t teach why or when to conjugate a verb, instead just short tips that pop up when you’re wrong. #2: Not enough quizzes or progress tests, there’s no way to tell if you’re retaining what you’re learning, because it doesn’t test your skills often enough, so you tend to forget what you learned already. #3: The “heart” system. It gives you 5 “hearts” per lesson(mistakes you can make)but if you use them all up your progress is lost(unless sometimes you completed enough of the lesson & it will let you pass, but that doesn’t happen very often)which is frustrating. Then it asks if you want to spend gems to continue. #4: Too many lessons. This app could condense what you need to learn, instead of each lesson having 5(sometimes more)parts, & each checkpoint having 10+ lessons. It takes forever to get to content that actually feels useful, & many parts of the lessons are repetitive. #5 Too many times you get a question wrong, but the app hasn’t taught you the new word, or usage yet. How can I get a question right, if it hasn’t been explained to me yet? Again, I feel the app has some use, & I have learned some basic Spanish, but I feel with 5-10 minutes a day over a year, I should have learned more, & be able to speak & read Spanish more easily. I think it’s a good app, but it needs to focus more on actually teaching & testing, so you can retain & use what you’ve learned.
Review by Ihatethinkingupdumbusernames on Duolingo - Language Lessons.