I’ve never been terrorised by a menacing green owl, and I intend to keep it that way.
I started using Duolingo in 2017. I was a massive fan of Sabaton, and I wanted to learn some Swedish to fully appreciate their 2012 album, “Carolus Rex”. It was a fun experience, but I stopped after a few months due to a lack of opportunities to actively practise using the language.
Thankfully, the messages from Duo stopped flooding my inbox about a couple of months later. None of them was threatening, if you were wondering.
Since then, I’ve started using Duolingo again to work on my Italian and Japanese. Why those two languages? I’m trained to teach Italian back home in Australia, and I’m also currently living here in Japan. It makes the most sense to focus on the two languages I have a personal stake in.
Is it perfect? Obviously not. It’s more of a gaming experience than a proper lesson, with very little pedagogy involved in the process. There will be instances when you’ll encounter obscure informal grammar points that go against what you’re trying to learn. It’s part and parcel of the Duolingo team involving native-level speakers in developing the language curriculums.
Is it irritating? It can be, but it depends on your mindset. To me, it’s also an excellent opportunity to deepen your understanding of the language. The Duolingo forum board is a great place to make sense of the context in which the language is used; if it makes sense to you, the post-learning process is where you’ll do the most learning. This is why you shouldn’t write off Duolingo as a language-learning tool.
If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to studying Italian. A Duolingo exercise a day keeps a particular green owl away.