Duolingo works. Don’t listen to the critics. Here are my tips for getting the most out of it.

I once heard someone say that the best healthy diet is the one you stick with. I feel the same about language learning programs.

A friend in Barcelona called me recently. Her cousins and husband were also on the call. I spoke Spanish for almost the entire 17 minutes. There were all stunned at how much my Spanish has improved since the last time they spoke with me, back in 2012 or so. And in May of this year, I was in Paraguay, and got so many compliments on my Spanish conversation skills.

And credit has to go to Duolingo.

To be fair, I had three years of twice-a-week 90 minute Spanish classes, from sometime in 2001 to 2005, and in that time, I also went to an intensive-learning language school for Spanish twice, for two weeks, in that time as well. That gave me a base for Spanish good enough to pass what is now the A2 DELE. So I’m not at all learning from scratch. But I haven’t had traditional classes since.

I have been using Duolingo almost daily since Spring 2021. It took me a while to find out what really works for me, what helps me build my skills and retain what I’ve learned. This is how I do it:

• A dear friend has the family plan, and had enough space for me AND one of my friends. That means I use Duolingo ad free. Getting together with friends is a great way to make Duolingo affordable.
• I am committed to doing Duolingo every day. It’s a personal challenge and I believe it pays off. I believe it is the absolute best strategy. If I can do just one thing a day, then I do the “words” section under “practice” – it’s the shortest and the easiest Duolingo lesson. It takes me less than two minutes. When we are on motorcycle trips, I have whipped out my phone in restaurants and convenience stores because I know I have a cell phone signal and can do a words “practice” before we are in a camp site where I can’t.
• What’s most important to me is advancing through the units. That’s the most important form of progress – where you are in terms of A1, A2, B1, B2, etc. skills. Those are the measures that all of the official institutions in Europe use to measure language skills. Governments use those measures to determine if you can immigrate there.
• I really don’t care about the XP, by itself. What I care much more about are gems, because I can use them to “pay” for a day that I miss. And there is something about seeing my daily streak in using Duolingo that is incredibly inspiring and keeps me going. I don’t want to lose my streak, and if I have enough “gems,” and use them wisely, I won’t. If you miss a day, you need to log in within 48 hours to use your “gems.”
• Each section is made up of units. When I finish a unit, I go back and re-do either the unit before or two units before, to obtain the “legendary” status for each lesson. When you re-do a lesson as “legendary”, you do not get hints. That’s how a real language test would be. If you haven’t been doing this all along, then make a point of going back to the very beginning and starting. When I first started, I waited until I was about 10 or even 20 units in before I started. Doing legendary is an easy way to get the XP points and the gems.
• The practices I like most are “words” and “pronunciation,” probably because those are the easiest. I also really love the xx challenges, where you have to quickly translate words within a set time, because it feels like a game. These practices and challenges don’t advance your language score, but they are a great way to solidify what you are learning.
• I do like the daily quests, which earn a monthly badge. It keeps me from doing just one lesson a day – it pushes me to do more, to obtain at least one daily quest. Anything that makes the app more sticky and gets you to use it longer is good.
• The quickest way to get a daily quest if one of those quests is for XP is to re-do a lesson via the “legendary” status.
• I use it more on my phone than my laptop. There are more lessons within a unit on a phone than a laptop. But, absolutely, I sometimes use my laptop.
• I don’t care about the leagues. Not at all. I don’t care which league I’m in. I don’t care if I get promoted or demoted.
• Friends Quests I do for the gems. It’s just another thing to get me to do more than one lesson in a day.
• I am also learning German on Duolingo. I have a base for German, more from having lived there than from the five week not-at-all intensive learning language class I took in Bonn. I did not start German until I was in the A2 levels of Spanish on Duolingo, and I don’t progress as much – I’ll often do one lesson in German and then far more in Spanish. But I am struggling and it’s clear I need a proper, traditional in-person class to better build my base. And that’s why I probably won’t use Duolingo to start using French, once I’m ready to start learning French.
• I tried to use Duolingo for Arabic. Total bust. I have no base in that language other than thank you, no, peace be with you, enough! and dear one. Plus, it’s not written with an alphabet I know. Not saying don’t try it.

And that’s my advice for leveraging Duolingo.

Is Duolingo perfect? No.

• It doesn’t do a great job of correcting your pronunciation. A human native speaker is best for that.
• Some of its English translations are wrong, in terms of both the translation and the grammar used (you don’t only live twice, you live only twice).
• By A2, it shouldn’t be asking you “What does lucha mean?”, it should be asking “Que significa lucha?”
• It sometimes repeats exercises immediately.
• The people (now AI) talking are not always clear when they speak.
• It freezes on my laptop sometimes – and that means I lose all my progress in that lesson.
• Some accountant or marketing person or software designer will eventually suggest changes to it that, when implemented, won’t be improvements and will negate most of the advice I’ve just given.